Review by Ian Keogh
Carol Lay is known for wildly inventive comedies, often with high whimsical content, and while she can’t entirely discard the latter, My Time Machine is a meditation on the end of the world, not another comedy.
It begins with the time traveller’s craft spinning out of control and eventually coming to a stop in 30,002,020. The landscape is barren, the air outside isn’t breathable and the time machine isn’t working. Not a good situation to be in, then. A flashback to 2016 follows as the time traveller inherits the plans for a time machine from her Uncle Clint, who won them in a poker game. She has an ex-partner who’s an engineering genius, and three years later Rob has created the time machine. By the time she decides to travel, she’s 67.
The beauty of My Time Machine is the focus on the mundane details rather than the big adventure the title suggests. In fact at every point Lay repels the possibilities of altering history, deluging them in practicalities avoided by fiction. How does one go to toilet in a small enclosed space? A bunch of movers entirely without curiosity shift the machine from a truck to the back yard. George Pal’s 1960 filmed adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine is considered a documentary proving whatever era the time machine travels to, it will occupy the equivalent space it began from. Time travel philosophy 101 about going back in time to kill Hitler is also addressed.
Lay has been a phenomenal artist for decades, always with a clean and attractive style, and the precision and impeccable storytelling works just as well when there’s a point to be made.
Debates and theories occupy the first half of My Time Machine, after which the tone changes to actual exploration. The time traveller extrapolates her jumps to the future from 2020 as at the end of time she hopes the machine will generate enough power to facilitate her return. Published prior to the 2024 American election, Lay’s view of the future is grim, and from her point of view nothing we’re doing now indicates any sense of avoiding the calamity knowledgeable voices are predicting is heading toward us well before the end of the 21st century. Given how that election went and what’s happened since, some prescience is unsettling.
The time traveller is never named, but given her age and the biographical details supplied, it can be safely presumed Lay is presenting herself as the protagonist and many of the mentioned experiences are her own. They provide a grounding to events, especially the use of Buddy the cat as an emotional contrast to much logical theorising and speculation.
This isn’t a cheery graphic novel, despite ending on a hopeful note. We already know some solutions to coming dangers and that not enough influential people are taking them on board, so are we destined for a future where everything is screwed up and the mega-rich and the military emerge from their secure bunkers at some stage to assess the catastrophe? Lay is certainly thoughtful and informative, and at the end of the day making a few more people consider what’s happening is the best most of us can do.
