No Time Like the Future

No Time Like the Future is a memoir by actor Michael J. Fox. Diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson's disease (PD), a progressive neurological movement disorder, at age 29, Fox spent decades publicly advocating for research and projecting an optimistic worldview. This book recounts a stretch of medical crises and emotional reckoning that tested his optimism to its limits.

The memoir opens on August 13, 2018. Fox, then 57, collapsed on the kitchen floor of his Manhattan apartment, his left arm unresponsive. Four months earlier, he had undergone high-risk surgery to remove a benign spinal cord tumor unrelated to Parkinson's, then painstakingly progressed from wheelchair to walker to cane to walking. His daughter Schuyler, one of his 25-year-old twins, had offered to stay overnight, but Fox insisted on being alone. He called his assistant, Nina Tringali, who rushed over. Lying on the floor, Fox felt deep shame. Everyone had repeated one instruction after his spinal surgery: Don't fall. Declaring himself "out of the lemonade business," he signaled a break from the optimism that had defined his public identity.

Fox reflects on his family. His eldest son, Sam, was born before the PD diagnosis. Fox pushed for children early in his marriage to actress Tracy Pollan while drinking heavily and reeling from his diagnosis. The turning point came when Tracy found Fox asleep on the couch with a spilled beer and asked, in a tone of boredom rather than anger, "Is this what you want?" Fox committed to a 12-step program and got sober. The couple went on to have twins Aquinnah and Schuyler in 1994, and later a fourth child, Esmé, who grew up alongside the Fox Foundation's public advocacy. Fox describes his children as "time machines" who tumble the family forward, while Parkinson's forces such deliberation in every movement that time paradoxically slows down.

After Sam left for college, Fox and Tracy adopted a Great Dane-Lab mix named Gus, filling the void with daily walks through Central Park. Fox also recounts the "second act" of his acting career. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis in 1998 and retired from his sitcom Spin City in 2000, believing his symptoms were career-ending. His movement disorder specialist, Dr. Susan Bressman, overhauled his medication and emphasized fitness, yielding unexpected improvement. A guest arc on Scrubs, offered by Spin City co-creator Bill Lawrence, taught Fox to channel his symptoms into his characters rather than hide them. This led to guest roles on Boston Legal, Rescue Me, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and most substantially The Good Wife, where he played the morally ambiguous lawyer Louis Canning across 26 episodes.

Fox recounts a 2009 trip to Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom, to film a documentary about Gross National Happiness, a government metric prioritizing well-being over economics. His Parkinson's symptoms mysteriously diminished during the trip. On a hike toward Tiger's Nest, a cliffside Buddhist monastery, he fell and jammed his ring finger, which swelled dangerously around his wedding band. At a hospital in Delhi, staff tried numerous methods before cutting the ring off with a wire-flossing technique. Fox also describes taking up golf in his mid-forties, finding camaraderie with friends he calls "the golf uncles," and drawing a parallel between the sport and PD: Both demand hubris and humility.

The memoir's central medical crisis builds during a family vacation to Turks and Caicos over New Year's Eve 2017. Fox was in severe pain and could barely walk. He and Tracy cut the trip short. New magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results revealed that a long-monitored benign tumor in his spinal cord had begun growing and bleeding. Fox and Tracy consulted Dr. Nicholas Theodore at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, who described the procedure: opening the protective membrane around the spinal cord and scraping the tumor away millimeter by millimeter. Success meant halting deterioration, not reversing damage. Fox decided on the spot to proceed.

The surgery went well, but Fox descended into drug-induced psychosis from accumulated anesthetics and opiates, hallucinating a gorilla, straw hands, and babies in hospital windows while accusing the staff of being impostors. Tracy validated his distress. Once lucid, Fox spent weeks in rehabilitation at Johns Hopkins, then months of outpatient therapy at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. His physical therapist, Will, identified severely impaired proprioception, the sense of one's body in space, as a central challenge compounding his Parkinson's. Fox gradually progressed from wheelchair to independent walking.

The narrative returns to the kitchen fall. Fox, alone and feeling confident, lost control turning into the kitchen and shattered his humerus in a spiral fracture requiring a plate and 19 screws. He was consumed by guilt: He felt he had wasted the surgery, the rehabilitation, and his family's love. Dr. Theodore ordered round-the-clock home health aides again. Fox's optimism buckled. He questioned whether he had oversold positivity and wondered if he had reached a point beyond consolation.

Fox sank into emotional withdrawal, bingeing on vintage television. A follow-up MRI confirmed the surgery's success, but fear persisted. A family safari in Tanzania crystallizes three types of fear: the known danger of a visible leopard, analogous to Parkinson's; the dread of an unseen predator when their vehicle got stuck at dusk; and the nightly terror of navigating a dark safari tent where he might harm himself or Tracy. Fox quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment."

The path back runs through gratitude. Fox recalls his father-in-law, Stephen Pollan, who died in early 2018 at 89. Stephen, a financial advisor whose desk plaque read "Professional Fear Remover," left Fox a guiding principle: "With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable." Fox also voices growing fears about cognitive changes that may signal Parkinson's progression toward dementia. Yet in 2019, positive developments accumulated: His neurologist detected signs of spinal healing, he filmed a missed movie cameo, and he returned to golf and hit the best tee shot of his life. Fox accepted a second retirement from acting after struggling to memorize dialogue and got a sea turtle tattoo inspired by a turtle he swam alongside in 1999 while deciding to launch the Fox Foundation. At the Foundation's annual gala, he spotlighted patient-activist Jimmy Choi, whose journey from hiding his diagnosis to competing on American Ninja Warrior moved Fox deeply, and reflected on the Foundation's $1 billion in funded research.

The memoir's final scene places Fox at a Vampire Weekend concert at Madison Square Garden with Tracy and two of their daughters. He arrived in a wheelchair he now views as a tool rather than a symbol of defeat. The band played "Harmony Hall," and its lyric resonated: "I don't wanna live like this . . . but I don't wanna die." Fox recognized that he did not want to live this way but had found a way to accept that he does. In the Epilogue, set during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fox and his family sheltered together on Long Island. His youngest daughter, Esmé, handled the loss of her high school milestones with grace. Fox attended a virtual funeral for Nanci Ryder, his longtime publicist, who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease. Fox returns to Stephen's lesson, now amplified by a world in crisis: With gratitude, optimism becomes sustainable.