‘Science Fiction Gets to Truths Journalism Misses … Because It Tracks Political and Social Trends to Their Inevitably Dystopian Conclusions’

Catherine Mayer introduces a prescient extract from her book Time/Life, recently published in paperback

Truth is stranger than fiction – but in our post-truth environment, fiction delivers truth more reliably than journalism.

In 2019, that thought prompted me to embark on my first novel after decades as a journalist and non-fiction author. Time/Life, a reworking of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, envisages how Silicon Valley might exploit that particular technology. It is also a story about love and loss and, of course, time.

By the start of 2020, events I had conjured from thin air started coming horrifically to pass.

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