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.

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'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)

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Praise for Catherine Mayer

'Beautiful, incredibly moving and unexpectedly comforting' Marian Keyes

‘Breathtaking, heartbreaking and also full of love and hope, what a journey this book takes us on – with love, time travel and a toxic tech magnate’ Sandi Toksvig

© 2025 HQ (Audiobook): 9780008768584

Release date

Audiobook: 9 April 2025