People who enjoy science fiction love to imagine the future: time travel, spaceships, something wobbly with a green face. But what if those fans really had access to it – the future, I mean – courtesy of something very similar to the internet? This is the possibility Paul B Rainey floats in There’s No Time Like the Present, in which a crowd of misfits from Milton Keynes (once the future itself) are able, if not to visit Mars, then at least to watch episodes of Doctor Who that have not yet been screened.
Mordant and misanthropic in almost equal measure, Rainey’s book has three central characters, each one somewhat stuck, unable fully to escape their childhood. Barry, an obnoxious lazybones, still lives at home with his parents; he makes his living selling bootleg recordings of TV shows he has lifted from the “ultranet”, which provides entry to the future. Cliff, Barry’s friend, and a yoghurt-addicted woman called Kelly live together in her new house, but they’re not a couple; while he secretly pines for her, he’s only her tenant. In the evenings, they watch, with varying degrees of guilt, future episodes of their favourite series (Doctor Who in his case, Emmerdale in hers): tapes pressed on them by the grisly Barry.
All of the pleasure of this book lies in Rainey’s close attention to the quotidian. If a strange figure from the future does at one point visit present-day Milton Keynes, we’re very far indeed from Star Wars here. Kelly only books a session on the office ultranet in desperation, after a particularly depressing work appraisal, and even then all she wants to know is how much longer she’ll be stuck with her awful boss. When Rainey plays with time himself, it’s often in the same way as any traditional novelist would. Time passes. The narrative leaps on. If Kelly ends up having some full-on sci-fi adventures courtesy of the strange and charismatic Ogmyre – he’s the one with the horn – we also get to see a much older Barry at a drop-in centre for pensioners (alas, he’s no more sympathetic).
There’s No Time Like the Present isn’t a new book; it came out originally in 2015. But Rainey’s career has taken an extraordinary turn. In 2020, he won the Observer/Faber graphic short story prize, after many decades of making comics (he’s a regular contributor to Viz, the influence of which is sometimes detectable in his work). In 2023, Drawn & Quarterly published his graphic novel Why Don’t You Love Me?, and soon afterwards it was announced that Jennifer Lawrence was to develop it as a feature film. Now D&Q has stepped in with this beautiful new edition of an old book – which is neat in the context of its subject.
For me, it’s marred slightly by the attitude of some of its male characters towards women; I understand their inadequacy and loneliness, but the misogyny that rises from its early pages is horrible, nevertheless. But it’s worth pressing on. This is a funny, unpredictable, rather wild comic: the unlikely product of a singular imagination.
There’s No Time Like the Present by Paul B Rainey is published by Drawn & Quarterly (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
