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| Fig. 1: The Cover We All Know and Love |
All Tomorrows and Kosemen came to many soon-to-be fans through popular YouTubers like Alt Shift X and Trey the Explainer covering the then-niche book. I’ve discovered Kosemen merely by accident as a child and followed him ever since. I remembered Snaiad during its infancy, the start of the Dinosauroids project, and the leadup and release of All Yesterdays, the manifesto of the 2010s paleoart scene. I’ve heard about All Tomorrows through long-gone forums and searched for a PDF of this elusive. Finding one back then felt like a secret room in the levels of Doom and Quake. A great award but sometimes Sandy Petersen and viruses have other surprises too – I hated the former’s monster traps more.
The spectacular and disturbing post-humans inspired my young self. I crafted new species of humans, and sadly, bluntly stole Kosemen's works for these juvenile projects. Yet over the decades, I’ve return to All Tomorrows and loved how other people came along as well. I’m glad that most people get what the story was trying to say to us. A story about the flaws and strengths of humanity, our humanity. This was the original intention, as Kosemen stated a few times across interviews and personal podcasts. The artwork themselves reflects our humanity even when we can’t recognize it. The tattooed Pterosapien on her vacation, the Lopsiders feeding his pets, even the Worms posing together in a family portrait despite being animals. The cold machine known as the Gravitals justified their war and exterminations of peoples through a grand narrative of being the chosen people, something too close nowadays, or even the Terrestrials justifying their rule over the Subjects as a necessary evil for the great plan of the Asteromorphs. We all recognize these tales, because it’s our tales we hear and tell.
But is All Tomorrows really for us?
When All Tomorrows was published, humanity had been extinct for a billion years. The Author, we will call them Nemo Ramjet to differentiate themselves from the real author C.M. Kosemen, is not human themselves. For us, it was a shocking reveal yet would we hold the same feeling if we were Ramjet’s species? Is this book really just examining the history of humanity, or are they using us for something else? This is a thought experiment to explore not just All Tomorrows, but our own relations with history itself. History is our story.
Kosemen is no stranger to history; Turkey breathes thousands of years through the streets, buildings, and graveyards, and one of the largest influence on Kosemen’s All Tomorrows was Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. In fact, Kosemen says the reading of All Tomorrows should be seen in the light of “a high school student fanboying on Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Speculation around Ramjet’s identity has plagued the minds of readers; a Qu descendant, a human in disguise, a grown-up of a time traveled, genetically modified fetus of Kosemen. It doesn’t matter who they are, but what they are. Ramjet is an alien Edward Gibbon – a teenage fan of him.
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| Fig. 2: The author, Nemo Ramjet, with a billion year old skull |
Ramjet wrote about the history of their subject in a similar manner to Gibbon. Distanced yet invested, using primary sources; the ‘illustrations’ had to come from archives somewhere, and the history itself is a narrative examining how and why their subjects came to be. A list of dates and names makes poor history, history itself seeks to understand what has appeared and a narrative fulfills this. The word ‘narrative’ is often seen as dirty, Nemo Ramjet discusses the flaws of a grand narrative with the Qu and Gravitals as prime examples, yet it serves a necessary purpose for history. How can one explain the how and why the Roman Empire or humanity rose and fell, how can one explain the chain of causes and effects that lead to where we are, and how can one simply say this happened and do nothing with it? Storytelling is essential for history. And like many great novels, there’s more to a good history book than just what has happened.
An average reading of a history book is simply reading the book at face value and knowing the events and names by the end of it, a good reading of a history book is knowing the historiography of the subject AND seeing the academic debates. Gibbon’s thesis often gets simplified to Christianity causing the downfall of (Western) Roman Empire, although he challenged the notion of divine intervention and heroes that filled many early history books. Ramjet argued that humanity lasted for a billion years was due to their humanity fighting against all kinds of odds alongside learning from their own history. Ramjet’s species might be facing a similar dilemma. Interestingly, Ramjet does actively ignore parts of history for his narrative. He talked about how one could wax on about the Asteromorphs’ Dyson spheres and where did humanity go, but he chose not to. Ramjet’s fellow historians might have focused on these elements currently than the actual humanity of the post-humans.
History can feel distant not because of time itself, but the people of the past are rarely seen as us. Ancient history and early modern history transformed leaders and generals into demigods. Great men that we should look up to as demigods, even uplifted into godhood. Alexander and Julius Caesar stood with Zeus and Jupiter – Ahriman and Hades in the eyes of the many victims of these men. Additionally, the stories of the common people rarely get written down and become reliant on censuses, records, and archeology to be told. Our histories can be influenced by our backgrounds and period. Gibbon’s focus on Christianity causing the downfall of the (Western) Roman Empire can be seen as a product of being a man living in the so-called Age of Enlightenment. Ramjet is an alien, yet they seem to have a hostile view on the Qu.
The Qu had been heavily written about in All Tomorrows, but solely for their relationship to humanity. Has one considered their point of view? The Qu punished the Star People for desecrating their worlds. Is it coincidental that many of the post-humans fulfilled roles that the Star People might have driven to extinction? Humanity made pugs and exotic pitbulls, but only the Qu’s Tempators and Hedonists are repugnant. The Astermorph’s enslavement of the Gravitals is justified even a necessary evil, but the Qu’s creation of the Colonials is deplorable. And isn't it strange that the Gravitals with their ‘master race’ ideology had been rounded out more than the Qu. We learned about the Gravital civil war, splitting between that their enslaved Subjects are people or not, yet the Qu are seen as a superorganism. There might be an anti-Qu bias from Ramjet, perhaps they’re using humanity for their own purposes.
But should we really be harsh on the alien author for their detachment of us, even exploitation of us? We already do this with our own kind right now; 200,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, or 2 minutes ago on your social media feed. My personal interest in antiquity seen brushes paint entire peoples as stereotypes and whittled down complex individuals to simply being puppets of predeterminism. Julius Caesar may have been deified by the Roman state, but he was a human. He didn’t want to kill his enemies like his former friends Pompey and Brutus – he remembered being hunted as a teenager and the bloodshed of Sulla's enemies during his dictatorship. He slaughtered and enslaved half of Gaul and used their plundered riches to pay his legions. Additionally, we bring up figures of history if they only serve for our own narratives. Vercingetorix, the rebel Gallic king, paraded through painted streets and executed at the temple of an alien god. He became a national hero for French nationalists yet did any of them cared about him beyond using his rebellion for symbolism. Did they wonder if he was thinking about his people during the triumph, feeling their doom?
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| Fig, 3: Inspired by Plutarch's account, I've always wondered about how Vercingetorix truly felt. |
And we shouldn’t see history as events fitting into place so easily. Gibbon wrote that the Roman Empire’s decline was natural and inevitable. Predeterminism plagues the field of history as the events had to happened. We sometimes delude ourselves into thinking history really repeats itself, but we sometimes forget to consider the chances of events occurring and the individuals who have their own agency. Would Julius Caesar known that his nephew, Octavian, was going to become the first emperor? Octavian could have died numerous times in a few shipwrecks. What if Caesar kept Mark Antony in his will, like he originally did, how would things be different? But this doesn’t mean we can’t learn from history. In All Tomorrows, the Astermorphs studied the past and led them to possible ascension. They saw the flaws of Qu and the Gravital as these beliefs nearly destroyed our humanity.
Ultimately, history is our interpretation of the past. We only have so many pieces of the past that we have to come up what was the most likely cause. The Astermorphs didn’t ascend just cause of their greater technology, they ascended by understanding their history in their own interpretation. Ramjet possibly came to the same conclusions as these long-gone gods with fewer pieces to interpret from. And our interpretation of the past can change for the better and for the worse. In some sense, we should seize All Tomorrows from Nemo Ramjet. It is our story. The Romans might have seized Gibbon’s works. At the same time, this is simply a historian questioning All Tomorrows at face value. We know we’re not seizing the literal story of All Tomorrows. Historians, like most of us, can get lost in the past and wrapped themselves in strange narratives. I’ve wrapped myself in an odd story with All Tomorrows. All Tomorrows is about the journey of humanity, just like history. And if we can seize all tomorrows, we need to live for the today.
At the end of the day, All Tomorrows is fiction, yet the points and questions I’ve been bringing up might illustrate what Kosemen is thinking for the second incarnation of All Tomorrows. I do worry that Kosemen might move away from the core of the story; the journey of life itself, to fulfill the desires of the ever-growing loreheads. Ramjet looking over certain aspects like how the Second Human Empire really ran as these pieces did not matter for the story about our humanity. Less can mean more. But seeing Kosemen’s works and projects throughout the years, I feel confident that he will stay true. At the same time, the subject of history seems daunting for outsiders because it is literally everything that happened and is happening right now. I hope that by showcasing All Tomorrows as if it were real, one could digest and understand the study of history easily. We need to remember that the subjects in our books are not intangible and distant like the Asteromorphs or the Qu. They are us. They are you.
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Before wrapping up completely, I would highly recommend reading All Tomorrows if you still haven't. Additionally, you should read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. If you do not want to commit to the full six volumes, you can simply read the Abridged Novel by David P. Womersley. The prose is beautifully written, although there are some dry parts. Personally, I will be challenging myself to read all the volumes of Decline and Fall. Be warned that most of classical historians have moved away from Gibbon's work, it's source better for historiography rather than actual history, and I would recommend Pax Romana by Adrian Goldsworthy and SPQR by Mary Beard for more recent and updated views on the Roman Empire. A wonderful read from antiquity is the Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. And finally, I have talked about the Qu at some length and I would recommend reading "Conspectus of the Qu from All Tomorrows" by the Giant-Blue-Anteater. He writes a wonderful document about the Qu alongside questions about them.
References
Gibbon, Edward and Womersley, David P. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. London: Penguin Classics, 2001.
Online Sources:
All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen
Image Sources:
Fig. 1 and Fig. 2: All Tomorrows by C.M. Kosemen
Fig. 3: Vercingetorix throws down his arms at the feet of Julius Caesar (1899) by Lionel Royer, currently held in Musée Crozatier.
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