Department of Defense physicist with whom he discussed time travel, and his brother-in-law, a real-life NCIS agent whom he once asked how time travel would affect criminal investigations. For The Gone World, he took inspiration from conversations with his late father-in-law, a U.S. More specifically, for Tomorrow and Tomorrow, he was inspired by The Invention of Morel, by Adolfo Bioy Casares and by The City & The City by China Miéville. Outside of science fiction, Sweterlitsch has expressed appreciation for the works of Dante, Emily Dickinson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Gustave Flaubert. He is also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, additionally mentioning William Gibson, Jeff VanderMeer, and Stephen King.

Dick, Alice Sheldon, and films by Paul Verhoeven. Science fiction creators that have influenced him include the writers J. He discovered his love for storytelling while remixing a novel from the Dragonlance Saga in sixth grade. Sweterlitsch was introduced to fiction while playing tabletop role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, when he was teenager. Unfortunately, the protagonists discover the end of the world is getting closer and closer to the present as they explore the future. In the novel, the technique is used for solving crimes. In The Gone World, the author uses time travel in a new way: people can travel only to the future, creating a temporary possibility that disappears when the traveler comes back. He also looks at problems created by highly personalized advertising.

Facing depression, the main protagonist spends too much time in virtual reality, mourning his pregnant wife, dead in a nuclear terrorist attack that destroyed Pittsburgh. In Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Sweterlitsch addresses the cultural shift of recent years in a dystopian version of the United States. Tom Sweterlitsch (born 1977) is an American author who has published the novels Tomorrow and Tomorrow and The Gone World.

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch