This Time Tomorrow: A Novel

A girl's father is dying on her 40th birthday. Her mother had abandoned her when she was young, leaving her to be permissively raised by her father. She has not had much to do with other people in her life (other than her best friend), and has even turned down a marriage proposal. Her father was a science fiction writer, known for his time travel book.

She is saddened by the passing of her father and finds herself revisiting her past. She inhabits her teenage self in this odd way of reliving life with some future experiences intact. She knows that she is a future self, but still has the feelings (such as being attracted to teenage boys) of her youth. The novel goes through a "groundhog day" cycle, with her reliving the same time period over and over, and seeing what changes it causes in her future life. She finds herself married with kids and her dad quits smoking, yet he still dies. 

Finally she accepts the past and goes on with her life. Time travel plays a key role in the store, yet it does not feel like a science fiction book.

The Nineties: A Book

In the 90s, the Internet made great headways in culture. Before the internet, it was normal to just not know things. You couldn't easily look something up, especially if it happened relatively recently. There could be a communal remembrance of the "wrong" fact. With the internet it became much easier to find obscure facts. 

Growth in technology also allowed for a move from a populist culture to more niches. Blockbuster and video rental stores allowed for even the most obscure foreign movies to be watched in small towns. Compact discs helped enable independent music to have a more widespread footprint. Online music stores made it easy to find almost any music. Then Napster came around and made it easy to get a desired song for free,

Decades don't necessarily fit into their chronological time period. The 90s pretty much started with Nirvana's Nevermind, and ended with the twin towers. Nevermind was not the most popular album (Many other albums by artists such as Shania Twain, Metallica and Backstreet Boys sold more copies.) However, it espoused the ethos of the 1990s. Being "real" was important. You could be famous as long as you didn't want to be famous. The pop culture mentality of the 90s took on personal responsibility for your condition but didn't do anything about it. The world is falling apart and you are miserable. Oh well. You will not do anything about it. Even the best-selling artist of the decade, Garth Brooks, expressed this "authenticity". He was himself and made music that he liked - it just happened to be very popular.

The books is a series of interrelated essays about the 90s and the "Generation-X" that inhabited them. (Included is a discussion of the book Generation-X and how it came to signify an entire group.) The generation is smaller than the one before and after it. There are many parts of the "mythos" of the 90s that don't match the lived experience. That is all part of how our "remembrance" of things in the past is colored by our future experiences.