Tomorrow series

The Tomorrow series is a series of novels written by Australian author John Marsden, detailing a high-intensity invasion and occupation of Australia by a foreign power. The novels are told in first person perspective by the main character, a teenage girl named Ellie Linton, who is part of a small band of teenagers waging a guerrilla war on the enemy garrison in their fictional home town of Wirrawee. The name of the series is derived from the title of the first book, Tomorrow, When The War Began, which is one of the most celebrated and widely recognized books of Australian literature.

The series consists of seven books, published from 1994 to 1999. A follow up series entitled the "Ellie Chronicles" began publication in 2003. It deals with the aftermath of the war and Ellie's attempts to regain a normal level of functioning in the face of the psychological damage sustained during the war.

The invading nation is never specified in the book; in fact, no nation in the world meets the criteria laid out in the series.[1] Likewise, no parts of the war outside Ellie's immediate perspective are covered; the reader is not informed exactly how much of the country is under enemy control, or how well the war is going for the Australian military. This is understandable, given that the series focuses on the characters more than the actual war, and is an accurate reflection of how Ellie and her friends are isolated and cut off from outside communication.

Tomorrow, When The War Began and its subsequent sequels are one of the most popular and critically-acclaimed series of novels aimed at young readers in Australian Literature history.

The Tomorrow Series - Plot Summaries

Tomorrow, When The War Began

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Tommorow When the War Began

Ellie goes out camping in the bush for a week with her friends Homer, Lee, Kevin, Corrie, Robyn and Fi. They find a large, vegetated sinkhole in a remote area of bush the locals have dubbed "Hell", and camp in there for the week. During this time they see large numbers of planes flying through the night without lights, but think nothing of it.

When they return to their hometown, they find that everyone is missing and their pets and livestock are dead. They soon discover that Australia (or at least, their part of Australia) has been invaded and local citizens are being held captive. After finding their friend Chris also hiding they retreat back to Hell. The group decides to wage a guerrilla war against the invaders and Ellie, Fi, Lee and Homer steal a petrol tanker to blow up a bridge. In the meantime Corrie is shot while finding food, and Kevin sacrifices his freedom to drive to an occupied hospital with her to get help (thus turning them over to the enemy).

The Dead of the Night

man this book is ful of penis and ass

The Third Day, The Frost

The group discovers their friend Kevin working as a slave on a nearby farm, and rescue him by faking his death. He rejoins the group, and tells them that he learnt about explosives from other POWs. They use this knowledge to organise an attack on Cobbler's Bay, a major harbour in the area being used by the enemy. They successfully destroy at least one ship, but while attempting to escape they are captured by the enemy and put in a high security prison being used by the enemy to house "troublesome" Australian citizens. Here they discover that New Zealand has declared outright war on the invaders, but the United States refuses to get involved (although under the ANZUS pact, they are obligated to).

Working at the prison is Major Harvey, the traitor from the last book. He repeatedly tries to convince Ellie that the war is good for Australia, to no avail. Eventually the prison is targeted for a bombing raid by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and Ellie and her friends manage to escape in the process. Major Harvey tries to stop them, but Robyn kills him and herself with a grenade in a kamikaze attack. The rest of the group are picked up by a Kiwi pilot and taken to New Zealand.

Darkness Be My Friend

The group tries to live a normal life in New Zealand with other refugees, but are haunted by the war (which is still ongoing). Five months after arriving in the country they are approached by Colonel Finley of the New Zealand Defence Force, who is seeking out Australian refugees to act as guides for Kiwi SAS units which are being dropped into occupied Australian territory to act as guerillas. The group agrees, and returns to Wirrawee accompanied by a platoon of crack special forces troops.

The SAS troops go missing while on a mission, and while searching for them, Ellie's group is spotted and forced to flee. They take shelter in their old high school, and while scouting out the town they discover that Corrie died even after Kevin took her to the hospital, and Lee's parents were killed during the initial invasion. The group make radio contact with Colonel Finley in New Zealand, who tells them that they have no chance of extraction and will have to return to their old life in occupied territory (camping in Hell).

The group attempts to destroy the local airfield (which had been the target of the SAS unit), but fail, and are forced to flee back to Hell.

Burning For Revenge

While on a scouting mission, the group hide in enemy trucks to avoid being spotted. After a dark and uncomfortable journey they discover that they have been transported right into the airfield. Security is lax within the airfield, enabling them to destroy the fuel trucks and several planes before making their escape - by drifting down to the river, to the nearby town of Stratton. Here they discover a tribe of feral (and hostile) children, who have been living on the streets and hiding from enemy troops since the war began.

The Night Is For Hunting

The group, while encountering a small bunch of feral kids, are also discovered by an enemy patrol. They take five of the children and escape back to Hell. The children do not trust them, and their leader (a boy named Gavin) convinces the others to try and escape into the bush. Ellie and the group manage to track them down, but not before one of them dies of dehydration. They convince the children that they will be safer with the teenagers in Hell than anywhere else.

To make the kids happy, they decide to celebrate Christmas - which will neccesitate a raid on an occupied farmhouse to get supplies. The group is captured but manage to escape, and return to Hell to celebrate a happy Christmas. They soon discover, however, that their attack on the airfield made them a major target of the enemy. A group of soldiers patrolling near Hell ambushes them, and the group realises they aren't even safe in Hell anymore.

The Other Side Of Dawn

The group makes radio contact with Colonel Finley in New Zealand, who sends them a lone SAS soldier named Ryan within the next few weeks. Ryan tells them that the war is in its closing days but could go either way, and the Australian and New Zealand forces are trying to press the enemy hard. He gives them plastic explosives and tells them to continue their guerilla attacks. Ellie's group also forces him to take the kids back to New Zealand with him, as they would hinder their movement. Ryan grudgingly agrees, and the kids are loaded onto a helicopter with him in the middle of the night. Gavin, however, refuses to go and stays with the teenagers.

The group moves off to the town of Cavendish, stopping over in Stratton on the way and killing several soldiers in motorbike patrols. The group then attacks a petrol station, and are separated while fleeing. Ellie jumps onboard a train and manages to destroy it with the plastic explosives, but it is packed full of soldiers who pursue her into the bush. She is shot, and captured.

While in a prison hospital Ellie is told that Kevin, Homer, and Fi were all killed while trying to escape the petrol station and she despairs, but takes heart in the fact that Gavin was not mentioned. She is sent to a POW labour camp, where her true identity as one of the partisans is revealed, putting her life in danger. She manages to escape however, and heads towards the place she thinks her parents are being held captive. On the way, however, the war is declared over - Australia signed a peace treaty with the occupying power, resulting in the formation of a new nation on the continent (a theme further explored in the Ellie Chronicles).

Ellie's life returns to a semblence of normality on her old farm (which is right on the border with the new nation). Although both her parents survived, she is saddened by the death of her friends. The novel takes an upbeat turn when it is discovered that they had survived, and had been placed in a high security prison along with Gavin. Her friends return to their old lives as well, and Gavin moves in with Ellie on her farm (as his parents were killed in the war). Ellie continues her life as a cattle farmer, a much stronger and wiser person.

Characters of the "Tomorrow Series" universe

Although there are fairly few main characters, the characters depicted in The Tomorrow Series reflect a wide range of personality types and social backgrounds. This is one of the strengths of the series, since most teenagers can strongly associate with at least one or two of the main characters and understand their emotional conflicts.

Main Characters

Ellie: The story's main protagonist and the series' narrator. She comes from a sheep and cattle property, presumably somewhere in New South Wales or Victoria, but Marsden has said the story's events could have taken place in any Australian state. A detailed description is never given -- this is the case with many of Marsden's characters. Her character is stubborn, and she rarely seems to back down in an argument or conflict, especially against Homer. She moves through several stages as a character and becomes colder and more violent as the series progresses. However, she finds redemption for her soul later in the series by her interactions with a group of "feral" kids, living wild on the streets of Stratton.

Corrie: Corrie was a childhood friend of Ellie's who grew up on a nearby property. Her time in the series is short, however, for she is shot in the back at the conclusion of the first book (When the War Began). She was dumped at the Wirrawee hospital by her friend Kevin, who was captured. Corrie continued to survive, in a coma, until her death is learned when Lee discovers her grave in the fourth book. Therefore it can be assumed that her death was midway between the third and fourth books.

Homer: Homer lives next door to Ellie, on another property, and he is another childhood friend. His appearance is never described totally, but he is "big" and "strong" and also of Greek parentage. He was famous in the Wirrawee district pre-war for his pranks and antics, many of which Ellie reflects on during the series; however, when the war comes, he reveals himself as a leader. He guides the group almost single-handedly through the first book and early in the second book. His authority is diminished, however, when the group learns that Homer took a shotgun on one of their guerilla attacks: the group agreed not to take firearms, as their use was limited and if they were caught with them, they would have been, in Ellie's words, "put against a tree and shot". The incident was a cause of much friction between Homer and Ellie. The ensuing argument between Homer and Ellie was in many ways a true revealer to the characters, not only Homer and Ellie. The diminished respect for Homer does not seem to hurt the group too much however, because it is somewhere at this point that the leadership moves to Ellie and Robyn together with Homer.

Lee: Lee is an introverted, part-That part Vietnamese Asian-Australian. He plays violin and piano, and is very good at them, and he is also very good at visual arts. He is Ellie's primary love interest, although their relationship was a highly turbulent one. Like Ellie, he becomes colder and more violent, starting with his knife murder of an unconscious enemy soldier who was wounded in a fight with Homer and Ellie. Things get tough for Lee when he learns of his parents deaths -- this seems to make him more violent than ever. He also seems to find some salvation in the feral kids.

It is interesting to note that of the eight primary characters, only four of them kill directly -- Lee, Ellie, Homer and (arguably) Robyn.

Robyn: Robyn is a Christian and it is clear she is a very close friend of Ellie's. She is athletic and good at sports, and she is also very aggressive at them. Of all the characters, Ellie says that with regard to the war Robyn seemed "least affected by it", and she wonders whether her faith had anything to do with this. Robyn refuses to fire a gun or kill people, which creates pressure in Ellie's mind at the morality of what they were doing. After Robyn is handed a gun and she puts it down, during a potentially explosive situation, Ellie writes: "...was she right or wrong? If she was right, that made me wrong." Robyn dies as a martyr when she sacrifices her life to kill Major Harvey with a grenade, allowing the rest of the group to escape to safety.

Fiona: Fiona, or Fi, is pretty, "posh" and knows virtually nothing about camping or living in the bush. She is frequently frightened by the rising ambitiousness of Homer and Ellie when selecting targets, however she continues to aspire and do her best. Unlike Ellie and Lee, she does not become colder or more violent -- she strives not only to be brave but also to be true to herself, thus proving her real worth.

Kevin: Kevin is Corrie's boyfriend, and he grew up on a property. He is the only one of the characters to have his "P's" but most of the driving required is done by Ellie, or, on rare occasions, Homer. His defining trait is that he had some form of nervous breakdown a reaction to the trauma of the war. This was a key plot point for most of the fifth book. After this, there was always an underlying tension between Kevin and the others, especially with Ellie and Lee. At the end of the series, he moves to New Zealand. This may have it's roots in that Kevin was imprisoned for the entirety of the second book until he was rescued early in the third.

Chris: Chris joined the group when they found him hiding at his parents house. Chris was a small, lightly build boy, with light brown hair. His motto was "if it grows, smoke it" a reference to his attitudes towards drugs and alcohol. He writes a lot of poetry, some of which Ellie reads. However his distance from his surroundings seemed to place a barrier between him and the rest of the group. He asks to be left alone in Hell, to which the group agrees. The rest of the group leaves but when they return Chris is missing. Later it is discovered that a drunken Chris, attempting to drive into town to loot alcohol, rolled one of the group's utes, and was killed.

The Ellie Chronicles - Plot Summaries

While I Live

The first book in the Ellie Chronicles, While I Live, was released in 2003. Ellie's parents are killed early in the book, and it deals with her attempts to keep the family farm running, warding off both developers and enemy militia crossing over the new border to attack Australian citizens. The nation which invaded is still not specified, nor is it said how much and what areas of the continent the new nation controls. The book was criticised for not being as action-packed as the original series, with one reviewer comparing it to "an episode of McLeod's Daughters.[2]

Incurable

Incurable (released on November 1, 2005), is the second book in the Ellie Chronicles, which continues on with Ellie Linton's struggle to handle life with Gavin without her parents. Incurable features Gavin more prominently than the previous novel, with more of his past unveiled while also evading death a number of times. While handling Gavin, the Farm and school. Ellie also participates in a guerilla raid with 'The Liberation', a guerilla group which raids the newly foreign settlement, consisting of original characters and new locals including Homer and Lee.

Tomorrow Movie Projects

The Tomorrow Series has been considered for film production. Marsden sold the rights to bring the series to television/film to Sydney writer and producer Esben Storm. Storm is currently looking for interested overseas investors, because (paraphrased) "the money isn't here in Australia".

A petition started in December 2004 reached it's target of 1000 signatures as of March 2006. [3] The petition continues to rise.