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Time/Life
'Intriguing, enchanting, soulful … A book of timeless beauty' Elif Shafak
Includes an 'In Conversation' with the author and Sandi Toksvig.
Onstage at a Las Vegas convention, Elo Ó hAllmhuráin, a worldfamous tech magnate, demonstrates a time machine, catapulting himself and journalist Dory Silver into the distant future. Stranded and desperate to get home to her dying partner, Dory is forced to re-examine the past.
Time/Life is a love letter to science fiction rooted in a very real present of rising populism and the unintended consequences of technology. Above all, it is a powerful meditation on the nature of love itself.
* * * *
'Multiplexly brilliant, intricately fascinating, harrowingly emotional fiction, sprung from this century’s first and possibly final quarter' William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
'Mayer’s reimagining of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine is a profoundly moving exploration of loss and love. Time/Life delivers a wild blend of unreality with chilling elements that are all too real' Bee Rowlatt, author of In Search of Mary and One Woman Crime Wave
'Mayer’s genre-bending riff on H.G. Wells is as clever as it is poignant. A dark and sharply contemporary pleasure' Luke Jennings, author of the Villanelle series (the basis for Killing Eve )
'Catherine Mayer’s unique and prescient Time/Life playfully repurposes H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine for the post-truth generation, creating and recreating worlds like a computer game. Yet it is also a devastating meditation on grief and the ephemeral quality of time. It might make you cry but it will also make you laugh' Elizabeth Fremantle, bestselling author of Queen’s Gambit (made into the movie Firebrand )
Includes an 'In Conversation' with the author and Sandi Toksvig.
Onstage at a Las Vegas convention, Elo Ó hAllmhuráin, a worldfamous tech magnate, demonstrates a time machine, catapulting himself and journalist Dory Silver into the distant future. Stranded and desperate to get home to her dying partner, Dory is forced to re-examine the past.
Time/Life is a love letter to science fiction rooted in a very real present of rising populism and the unintended consequences of technology. Above all, it is a powerful meditation on the nature of love itself.
* * * *
'Multiplexly brilliant, intricately fascinating, harrowingly emotional fiction, sprung from this century’s first and possibly final quarter' William Gibson, author of Neuromancer
'Mayer’s reimagining of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine is a profoundly moving exploration of loss and love. Time/Life delivers a wild blend of unreality with chilling elements that are all too real' Bee Rowlatt, author of In Search of Mary and One Woman Crime Wave
'Mayer’s genre-bending riff on H.G. Wells is as clever as it is poignant. A dark and sharply contemporary pleasure' Luke Jennings, author of the Villanelle series (the basis for Killing Eve )
'Catherine Mayer’s unique and prescient Time/Life playfully repurposes H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine for the post-truth generation, creating and recreating worlds like a computer game. Yet it is also a devastating meditation on grief and the ephemeral quality of time. It might make you cry but it will also make you laugh' Elizabeth Fremantle, bestselling author of Queen’s Gambit (made into the movie Firebrand )
Audible Audio
Published April 9, 2025
2 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Mayer
7 books19 followersCatherine Mayer is an author, journalist, activist and speaker. Her novel TIME/LIFE was published in hardback by Renard Press and as an audiobook by HarperCollins on 9 April 2025, with the paperback and ebook launching on 14 May 2025. Her next nonfiction title, Send Them Victorious: Royal Women, Their Battles and Why We Should Care, is scheduled for publication by HarperCollins in March 2026.
Her books include the best-selling biography of King Charles III, Charles: The Heart of King (first published 2015, new edition 2022): and Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly (2011), Attack of the Fifty Foot Women: How Gender Equality Can Save the World! (March 2017, paperback Feb 2018) and, with her mother Anne Mayer Bird, Good Grief: Embracing Life at a Time of Death (Dec 2020, paperback Feb 2022). She also contributed to Dear NHS (2020) and Poems that Make Grown Women Cry (2016).
She co-founded the Women’s Equality Party in 2015 and served as its president until December 2024. She is also a co-founder of Primadonna Festival.
She started her career in journalism at The Economist, went on to hold deputy editorships at Business Traveller and International Management magazines and contributed regularly to the German edition of Forbes. For 11 years she worked as a London-based correspondent for the German news weekly, FOCUS. In 2004, she joined TIME as a senior editor, and later became London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and, finally, Editor at Large.
She ran a data and technology think tank, has written and performed one-woman shows, a two-hander with Grayson Perry, and a theatrical piece for the Globe Theatre, stood as a candidate in the 2019 European elections, has served as President of the Foreign Press Association in London and as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and co-curated the 2020 Festival of Death. She is on the founding committee of WOW-the Women of the World Festival. She has won awards for her journalism and her activism.
Since the death of her husband, the musician Andy Gill, she has released two EPs by his band Gang of Four, executive-produced the tribute album, The Problem of Leisure: A celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, and manages his music estate.
Her books include the best-selling biography of King Charles III, Charles: The Heart of King (first published 2015, new edition 2022): and Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly (2011), Attack of the Fifty Foot Women: How Gender Equality Can Save the World! (March 2017, paperback Feb 2018) and, with her mother Anne Mayer Bird, Good Grief: Embracing Life at a Time of Death (Dec 2020, paperback Feb 2022). She also contributed to Dear NHS (2020) and Poems that Make Grown Women Cry (2016).
She co-founded the Women’s Equality Party in 2015 and served as its president until December 2024. She is also a co-founder of Primadonna Festival.
She started her career in journalism at The Economist, went on to hold deputy editorships at Business Traveller and International Management magazines and contributed regularly to the German edition of Forbes. For 11 years she worked as a London-based correspondent for the German news weekly, FOCUS. In 2004, she joined TIME as a senior editor, and later became London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and, finally, Editor at Large.
She ran a data and technology think tank, has written and performed one-woman shows, a two-hander with Grayson Perry, and a theatrical piece for the Globe Theatre, stood as a candidate in the 2019 European elections, has served as President of the Foreign Press Association in London and as a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and co-curated the 2020 Festival of Death. She is on the founding committee of WOW-the Women of the World Festival. She has won awards for her journalism and her activism.
Since the death of her husband, the musician Andy Gill, she has released two EPs by his band Gang of Four, executive-produced the tribute album, The Problem of Leisure: A celebration of Andy Gill and Gang of Four, and manages his music estate.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 6, 2025
Dory Silver is a journalist who is requested by tech magnate Elo Ó hAllmhuráin to moderate his demonstration of a time machine at a Las Vegas convention. Dory has been a skeptic about the possibility of time travel, but she and Elo get transported and must find their way back. Dory is particularly anxious to return since she is separated from her life partner, who has a serious illness. The book alternates between past and future, weaving together clever plot twists with an emotional story of love and loss. This book pays homage to H.G. Wells’s Time Machine and includes many other literary allusions. The author herself makes a couple of brief appearances to pay tribute to her late husband, musician Andy Gill, who died of COVID in the early days of the pandemic. It addresses currently relevant themes of lying and deceit, populism, and misuse of technology. Do not miss the Afterword, which contains the backstory of the writing of this novel. I very much enjoyed this combination of science fiction, love story, and social commentary. Recommended!
November 16, 2025
3.5 stars
thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
"i didn't plan any of that, it ambushed me"
i strongly recommend listening to the interview with sandi toskvig at the end, as it gave me a lot of context to the novel which helped me to appreciate it more. knowing that the author started writing this book in early 2019 made me realise that just because it was on the nose (eg elo and fleet) didn't mean she was apeing real life but actually predicted it, that she is actually the real life "widow of andy gill" mentioned in the book (along with how she worked as a journalist at time magazine) emphasises how deeply personal this work is for her, and that the music throughout was taken from a song written by the friends of her husband.
unfortunately though, whilst reading, i felt that the (quite simple) message of the time machine by hg wells is sadly lost within this retelling. i appreciate that its core message was replaced with many others, more complex and woven together smartly. but until i knew (after reading) just how personal those themes were to the author, to be honest they weren't really connecting with me. i thought, until i was a decent way in to the book, that it was "just" about a pandemic and a tech giant. (specifically, it seems to be about covid 19 and elon musk, even if that is by coincidence.) by the end the audience know that there's much more going on, but the fact that it was concepted that way does unintentionally come through sometimes.
i think the other main issue was that this novel often felt scattered. time and perspective jumps around without warning, and whilst i can appreciate that the intent is to give a "timey wimey" sort of effect, it just didn't come across that way, it felt random and uncollected. some of the events that are included are simply confusing or, to be honest, boring which is not something that should happen in a c.250 page book. for example, all the sections with joao didn't lend much meaning or balance; they seemed to detract from the overall political and personal themes rather than adding to them or even contrasting with them.
finally, i also didn't love the voice actor for the audiobook, which may have unduly influenced my experience. when i saw how many audiobooks she has narrated, i was shocked, because the reading was very flat at times and the accents were often quite bad.
onto what i did enjoy, even before hearing the interview at the end, because there was still plenty to like about this book.
-the theme of special, lucky, cherished love was really nice to read. just two people that weather the storms together no matter what; they have a somewhat 'ordinary' but incredibly lasting love. these are my favourite types of romances to read, where you see the realistic and everyday parts of a long term relationship play out on the page.
-i also enjoyed that morgan is a gender neutral character, or rather that their gender is cleverly never specified, leaving any reader to experience morgan's love for dory in a way that is closer to how they themselves might experience it. the ideas briefly explored around gender with biphron gave further depth to this theme. obviously, hg wells' original work firmly cements the traditional gender roles of the time so it was refreshing to see them challenged within this retelling.
-the meta-framing of dory's memoir within the book was clever gave additional layers of stability to the story. it also felt like it may have been paying homage to the intertextuality used by hg wells, which gives a good balance to the "remixing" of his ideas mentioned above.
-the challenging of the death penalty, even for someone as reprehensible as elo, was done very well - even if a bit caricature during the events of the trial. it added some interesting philosophising to the end section.
-i loved the final ending and post script as well. dory deserves a happy ending and to be allowed to take control of her and morgan's future (without it being saccharine, as the events are still somewhat open ended).
overall i think this is a highly personal book which makes a solid fiction-debut for this author. don't skip the interview with sandi toskvig afterwards.
thanks to netgalley, the publisher and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
"i didn't plan any of that, it ambushed me"
i strongly recommend listening to the interview with sandi toskvig at the end, as it gave me a lot of context to the novel which helped me to appreciate it more. knowing that the author started writing this book in early 2019 made me realise that just because it was on the nose (eg elo and fleet) didn't mean she was apeing real life but actually predicted it, that she is actually the real life "widow of andy gill" mentioned in the book (along with how she worked as a journalist at time magazine) emphasises how deeply personal this work is for her, and that the music throughout was taken from a song written by the friends of her husband.
unfortunately though, whilst reading, i felt that the (quite simple) message of the time machine by hg wells is sadly lost within this retelling. i appreciate that its core message was replaced with many others, more complex and woven together smartly. but until i knew (after reading) just how personal those themes were to the author, to be honest they weren't really connecting with me. i thought, until i was a decent way in to the book, that it was "just" about a pandemic and a tech giant. (specifically, it seems to be about covid 19 and elon musk, even if that is by coincidence.) by the end the audience know that there's much more going on, but the fact that it was concepted that way does unintentionally come through sometimes.
i think the other main issue was that this novel often felt scattered. time and perspective jumps around without warning, and whilst i can appreciate that the intent is to give a "timey wimey" sort of effect, it just didn't come across that way, it felt random and uncollected. some of the events that are included are simply confusing or, to be honest, boring which is not something that should happen in a c.250 page book. for example, all the sections with joao didn't lend much meaning or balance; they seemed to detract from the overall political and personal themes rather than adding to them or even contrasting with them.
finally, i also didn't love the voice actor for the audiobook, which may have unduly influenced my experience. when i saw how many audiobooks she has narrated, i was shocked, because the reading was very flat at times and the accents were often quite bad.
onto what i did enjoy, even before hearing the interview at the end, because there was still plenty to like about this book.
-the theme of special, lucky, cherished love was really nice to read. just two people that weather the storms together no matter what; they have a somewhat 'ordinary' but incredibly lasting love. these are my favourite types of romances to read, where you see the realistic and everyday parts of a long term relationship play out on the page.
-i also enjoyed that morgan is a gender neutral character, or rather that their gender is cleverly never specified, leaving any reader to experience morgan's love for dory in a way that is closer to how they themselves might experience it. the ideas briefly explored around gender with biphron gave further depth to this theme. obviously, hg wells' original work firmly cements the traditional gender roles of the time so it was refreshing to see them challenged within this retelling.
-the meta-framing of dory's memoir within the book was clever gave additional layers of stability to the story. it also felt like it may have been paying homage to the intertextuality used by hg wells, which gives a good balance to the "remixing" of his ideas mentioned above.
-the challenging of the death penalty, even for someone as reprehensible as elo, was done very well - even if a bit caricature during the events of the trial. it added some interesting philosophising to the end section.
-i loved the final ending and post script as well. dory deserves a happy ending and to be allowed to take control of her and morgan's future (without it being saccharine, as the events are still somewhat open ended).
overall i think this is a highly personal book which makes a solid fiction-debut for this author. don't skip the interview with sandi toskvig afterwards.
June 8, 2025
Time/Life is a deeply personal sci-fi centred around a journalist's journey into the future and her subsequent reflections on the past. I found the story to be a good mix of sci-fi with more human feeling literary fiction elements. I particularly liked how Catherine Mayer's own personal experiences were skillfully interwoven throughout the book, making the protagonist's journey feel believable.
This may be due to listening to the audiobook version, but I found the changes in time to be slightly confusing for the first 50%. There were no clear indicators of when this was happening within chapters. However, the narration by Annie Aldington was fantastic, and I felt that the tone was captured well. I also loved the inclusion of a song that was co-written by the author that linked to both her own life and the story within the book. This was a lovely and personal touch.
Overall, I enjoyed Time/Life and its use of time travel as a starting point for a moving story of love and loss. Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins UK Audio | HQ for providing this audiobook for an honest review.
This may be due to listening to the audiobook version, but I found the changes in time to be slightly confusing for the first 50%. There were no clear indicators of when this was happening within chapters. However, the narration by Annie Aldington was fantastic, and I felt that the tone was captured well. I also loved the inclusion of a song that was co-written by the author that linked to both her own life and the story within the book. This was a lovely and personal touch.
Overall, I enjoyed Time/Life and its use of time travel as a starting point for a moving story of love and loss. Thank you NetGalley and HarperCollins UK Audio | HQ for providing this audiobook for an honest review.
June 8, 2025
I really wanted to enjoy this but abandoned for one reason, the font used in parts of the story is so hard to read that it's not a pleasure to read at all. I never normally struggle with different fonts, but the thin, small italics just blur into each other. The story premis was really good, and what I did read I enjoyed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews