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The Clockwork Man
Several thousand years from now, advanced humanoids known as the Makers will implant clockwork devices into our heads. At the cost of a certain amount of agency, these devices will permit us to move unhindered through time and space, and to live complacent, well-regulated lives. However, when one of these devices goes awry, a “clockwork man” appears accidentally in the 1920s, at a cricket match in a small English village. Comical yet mind-blowing hijinks ensue.
(source: http://hilobrow.com/2013/01/21/hilobo...)
(source: http://hilobrow.com/2013/01/21/hilobo...)
149 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1923
12 people are currently reading
553 people want to read
About the author
E.V. Odle
5 books3 followersEdwin Vincent Odle is remarkable both for his obscurity and fame. The Clockwork Man is considered the first appearance of a cyborg in science fiction literature; his only other novel was never published and has been lost. His work has been apocryphally attributed to a pseudonymous Virginia Woolf. He was also the founding editor of Argosy, the English short story magazine.
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February 16, 2023
The original cyborg novel.
The Clockwork Man - written in 1923 by British author E.V. Odle features a man from the distant future who's a combination human and advanced mechanism run by a clock inserted into the back of his head.
The Clockwork Man - combination philosophical speculation and humorous yarn about what happens when The Clockwork Man's mechanism goes haywire and lands him at a 1920s cricket match in a quaint English village.
With the appearance of The Clockwork Man, those proper Brits sipping their tea have new topics of conversation: the way the Clockwork Man flaps his ears, the Clockwork Man's movements, his actions (he can hit a cricket ball three miles), his mode of speech, all so comic, as if his coming into their world was a huge practical joke. Oh, yes, a comic novel, to be sure, but also, as noted above, a novel of ideas - the following among their number:
OVERCOMING TIME AS THE DESTROYER OF ALL THINGS
"Suppose they have found a way of keeping things going, just as they are? Hasn't the aim of man always been the permanence of his institutions? And wouldn't it be characteristic of man, as we know him to-day, that he should hold on to purely utilitarian things, conveniences? In this age we sacrifice everything to utility. That's because we're getting somewhere in a hurry. Modern life is the last lap in man's race against Time." What would you like to remain the same? In the future Clockwork Man world, your wish could be granted instantly, giving expanded meaning to tradition.
CYBORG IN CYBERSPACE
"One gets a sort of glimmer—of an immense speeding up of the entire organism, and the brain of man developing new senses and powers of apprehension. They would have all sorts of second sights and subsidiary senses. They would feel their way about in a larger universe, creep into all sorts of niches and corners unknown to us, because of their different construction." No doubt about it, The Clockwork Man of the future lives in a different universe - cyberspace makes our conventional world look like a suffocating box.
WORLD WITHOUT DESIRE AND SUFFERING
"The clock, perhaps, was the index of a new and enlarged order of things. Man had altered the very shape of the universe in order to be able to pursue his aims without frustration. That was an old dream of Gregg's. Time and Space were the obstacles to man's aspirations, and therefore he had invented this cunning device, which would adjust his faculties to some mightier rhythm of universal forces. It was a logical step forward in the path of material progress." Throughout the novel, both in ways comical and serious, E.V. Odle addresses what it means to be locked into the limitations of time and space coupled with our ongoing, ever present human desires. Yes, yes, as children we had our long list of the things we wanted. And as we progressed through the stages of life, the list changed but there was always a list, a very long list.
MAGNIFICENT MULTIVERSE
Young Gregg tells an older English doctor; "Priests had evoked the gods from that starry depth, poets had sung of the swinging hemispheres, scientists had traced comets and knew the quality of each solar earth; but still that vast arch spanned all the movements of crawling mankind, and closed him in like a basin placed over a colony of ants." Gregg detects the future humans, as represented by The Clockwork Man, have transcended our human limitations.
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION
Again, as young Gregg explains to the older English Doctor: "And yet, a slight alteration in man's perceptive organs and that wide blue shell might shatter and disclose a thousand new forms, like fantastic cities shaped in the clouds at sunset. Physiologists claimed that the addition of a single lobe to the human brain might mean that man would know the future as well as the past." Turns out, this is an ongoing theme of New Wave SF, specifically in The Game-Players of Titan where Philip K. Dick presents some beings who have the ability to see into the future. What an advantage in playing the odds!
THE ONE AND THE MANY
The Clockwork man voices his understanding: "Now, your world has a certain definite shape. That is what puzzles me so. There is one of everything. One sky, and one floor. Everything is fixed and stable. . . . Now, in my world everything is constantly moving, and there is not one of everything, but always there are a great many of each thing. The universe has no definite shape at all. The sky does not look, like yours does, simply a sort of inverted bowl." Oh, our limited human world where we see so little! That's why our human imagination always will trump our modest human understanding.
WE'RE LIVING IN FLATLAND
As the Clockwork Man explains: "Unless you had a clock you couldn't possibly understand. But I hope I have made it clear that my world is a multiform world. It has a thousand manifestations as compared to one of yours." I hear echoes of Flatland, the satirical novella by the English author Edwin Abbott Abbott, where someone describes a three-dimensional world to those living in a mere two-dimensional world.
SURPRISE REVELATION
And yet with all that I mentioned above, E.V. Odle still has a whopping jolt about the book's future world in store for readers at the end. I highly recommend you take the readerly plunge into this Radium Age classic available as an audio book via audible or online as per this link: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/60374/...
August 5, 2021
Transgender Pioneer
God obviously was having a bad day on the creation drawing board when he thought testosterone and its primary effect, the XY chromosome, was a good idea. The substance is a plague on all sexes. Everyone becomes its victim either through its direct compulsive effects or its destructive consequences. What better vision for futuristic fiction than the correction of this fundamental design flaw in the human species? This was Edwin Odle’s mission almost 100 years ago.
Odle knew just how fundamental the transformation of maleness would have to be, and how long it might take. Since it is masculine competitiveness, its barely controllable emotion, the longed-for mate-ship among men, and the aggressive and irrational striving for dominance which forms our global culture, it makes no sense to talk about cultural change without dealing with the source. And since the issue resides in biology itself, the solution must be genetic.
Or, more accurately, the solution, in Odle’s story, is the circumvention of genetics entirely because biological evolution can’t really be trusted to do the job in time. What’s necessary is what has come to be called the Singularity, that point at which man (that is to say the male gender) becomes indistinguishable from machine. It is only through the machine (or what we now call Artificial Intelligence) that the worst excesses of maleness can be mitigated.
Surprisingly, none of the most recent pundits of advanced technology have picked up on Odle’s suggestion that its real function could be the elimination of hormonally-induced insanity. Margaret Atwood’s fiction certainly hints at the need; but even she does not contemplate Odle’s innovative solution to this pressing problem. With leaders like Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and Bolsonaro among so many others, the world is on a knife-edge. There is a glut of fragile chromosomes which threatens global destruction. Odle provides a blueprint for salvation.
God obviously was having a bad day on the creation drawing board when he thought testosterone and its primary effect, the XY chromosome, was a good idea. The substance is a plague on all sexes. Everyone becomes its victim either through its direct compulsive effects or its destructive consequences. What better vision for futuristic fiction than the correction of this fundamental design flaw in the human species? This was Edwin Odle’s mission almost 100 years ago.
Odle knew just how fundamental the transformation of maleness would have to be, and how long it might take. Since it is masculine competitiveness, its barely controllable emotion, the longed-for mate-ship among men, and the aggressive and irrational striving for dominance which forms our global culture, it makes no sense to talk about cultural change without dealing with the source. And since the issue resides in biology itself, the solution must be genetic.
Or, more accurately, the solution, in Odle’s story, is the circumvention of genetics entirely because biological evolution can’t really be trusted to do the job in time. What’s necessary is what has come to be called the Singularity, that point at which man (that is to say the male gender) becomes indistinguishable from machine. It is only through the machine (or what we now call Artificial Intelligence) that the worst excesses of maleness can be mitigated.
Surprisingly, none of the most recent pundits of advanced technology have picked up on Odle’s suggestion that its real function could be the elimination of hormonally-induced insanity. Margaret Atwood’s fiction certainly hints at the need; but even she does not contemplate Odle’s innovative solution to this pressing problem. With leaders like Trump, Putin, Erdogan, and Bolsonaro among so many others, the world is on a knife-edge. There is a glut of fragile chromosomes which threatens global destruction. Odle provides a blueprint for salvation.
January 17, 2017
So after a week or so to ponder this book I think I have figured out why I didn't like it.
Ostensibly this book is about a 'Clockwork Man' who stumbles back through time from the far future and ends up in the middle of a 1920's English village; his appearance is then followed by the requisite shenanigans. That, however, is not what happens. In fact very little happens in the book (shenanigans or otherwise) because this is not really a novel. There is no protagonist or antagonist, there is no rise in tensions as the story progresses culminating in a resolution of plot, the state of the world after the story ends is little different than the state of the world before the story. Simply put there is no there there (or, for those of you who remember 1980's commercials: "Where's the beef?")
This is a book that deals with ideas and notions embodied by characters instead of actual characters. The sharpest contrast between these ideas is represented by a doctor (embodying a conservative outlook on human development) and his young friend (who embodies an idealistic view of progress and the future). The appearance of the Clockwork Man (who, despite being the title of the book, is rarely on page) merely galvanizes a clash between the doctor and his friend.
Of course calling it a clash may be selling it a bit too much. They merely disagree over the fate of mankind (a fate they do not actually have any control over so it is, at best, a philosophical disagreement instead of an operational one) and what the Clockwork Man represents but nothing more than that. There are other characters that embody other ideas but the writing was so unengaging I really didn't care about them. There may also have been some commentary about feminism too but, once again, the writing was of such a poor quality and the framing of the story to tailored towards someone with a 1920's frame of reference it was lost in the rest of the story.
This book was written in the 1920's for a 1920's audience. The writing reflects a lot of conventions of the time and was speaking to a contemporary audience. This is a time where The Great War was still a very fresh memory. Where all the wonders and marvels modern technology afforded mankind were turned towards the arts of war with devastating consequences. Who was to say, at the time, if progress really was so great given the death it left in its wake. The two main characters, I am sure, spoke to the tension in society between the forces of progress and conservatism . However whatever signaling Odle offered to signify these positions and their tenants were lost on me, a 21st century reader. The book itself is much too dated to be relevant to the issues and discourse of our times. Compare that to Animal Farm, which works as both an allegory for the Soviet Union, the danger of totalitarianism ,and is an engaging story to boot. Those are the sorts of political and social commentaries that survive the test. The Clockwork Man, however, falls woefully short of that mark.
Which is a shame because at the very end we get the fascinating story of the Clockwork Man and the strange future he originated from sounded pretty neat. The changes that were made to his body that Odle came up with and the mulitform world of the future were also rather visionary (this was apparently the first book that featured a cyborg). But Odle shunted the Clockwork Man to the side of the narrative and half the time he was on the page he was malfunctioning and not capable of effectively communicating. I think there is a seed of some fantastic speculative fiction somewhere in the book, but Odle never bothered to cultivate it, instead concentrating on using the story as an allegory of the contemporary political scene.
At the end of the day this could have been a fantastic book and a cornerstone of early science fiction if it had concentrated on the more transcendental aspect of the story instead of the provincial political allegory. Instead it is at best a footnote in the history of science fiction (and not a very well written book on top of that).
Ostensibly this book is about a 'Clockwork Man' who stumbles back through time from the far future and ends up in the middle of a 1920's English village; his appearance is then followed by the requisite shenanigans. That, however, is not what happens. In fact very little happens in the book (shenanigans or otherwise) because this is not really a novel. There is no protagonist or antagonist, there is no rise in tensions as the story progresses culminating in a resolution of plot, the state of the world after the story ends is little different than the state of the world before the story. Simply put there is no there there (or, for those of you who remember 1980's commercials: "Where's the beef?")
This is a book that deals with ideas and notions embodied by characters instead of actual characters. The sharpest contrast between these ideas is represented by a doctor (embodying a conservative outlook on human development) and his young friend (who embodies an idealistic view of progress and the future). The appearance of the Clockwork Man (who, despite being the title of the book, is rarely on page) merely galvanizes a clash between the doctor and his friend.
Of course calling it a clash may be selling it a bit too much. They merely disagree over the fate of mankind (a fate they do not actually have any control over so it is, at best, a philosophical disagreement instead of an operational one) and what the Clockwork Man represents but nothing more than that. There are other characters that embody other ideas but the writing was so unengaging I really didn't care about them. There may also have been some commentary about feminism too but, once again, the writing was of such a poor quality and the framing of the story to tailored towards someone with a 1920's frame of reference it was lost in the rest of the story.
This book was written in the 1920's for a 1920's audience. The writing reflects a lot of conventions of the time and was speaking to a contemporary audience. This is a time where The Great War was still a very fresh memory. Where all the wonders and marvels modern technology afforded mankind were turned towards the arts of war with devastating consequences. Who was to say, at the time, if progress really was so great given the death it left in its wake. The two main characters, I am sure, spoke to the tension in society between the forces of progress and conservatism . However whatever signaling Odle offered to signify these positions and their tenants were lost on me, a 21st century reader. The book itself is much too dated to be relevant to the issues and discourse of our times. Compare that to Animal Farm, which works as both an allegory for the Soviet Union, the danger of totalitarianism ,and is an engaging story to boot. Those are the sorts of political and social commentaries that survive the test. The Clockwork Man, however, falls woefully short of that mark.
Which is a shame because at the very end we get the fascinating story of the Clockwork Man and the strange future he originated from sounded pretty neat. The changes that were made to his body that Odle came up with and the mulitform world of the future were also rather visionary (this was apparently the first book that featured a cyborg). But Odle shunted the Clockwork Man to the side of the narrative and half the time he was on the page he was malfunctioning and not capable of effectively communicating. I think there is a seed of some fantastic speculative fiction somewhere in the book, but Odle never bothered to cultivate it, instead concentrating on using the story as an allegory of the contemporary political scene.
At the end of the day this could have been a fantastic book and a cornerstone of early science fiction if it had concentrated on the more transcendental aspect of the story instead of the provincial political allegory. Instead it is at best a footnote in the history of science fiction (and not a very well written book on top of that).
August 1, 2022
This book was originally published in 1923 and apparently it was the first book featuring a technologically enhanced human (cyborg). The nameless man suddenly appears at a cricket game in a small English village. The cyborg’s clockwork mechanism has malfunctioned and zapped him 8000 years into the past. The cyborg was pretty inventive. Even more imaginative was the backstory of why cyborgs were created. Unfortunately, that backstory doesn’t come until the end of the book. Before that, there is some dithering about the implications of scientific advancements and a sprinkling of gender politics. The description of the book made it sound more interesting than it turned out being.
I had a few technical issues with this new edition of the book being issued by MIT Press. First, apparently the publisher doesn’t really want people to be able to read its ARCs. Fortunately I borrowed the audiobook from the library, because the ebook ARC was made unreadable by the publisher’s name covering much of the text. Second, the introduction should really be moved to the end of the book. It gives away the entire book, and in my opinion over analyzes it. It would be better to skip it until you finish reading the book. 3.5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
I had a few technical issues with this new edition of the book being issued by MIT Press. First, apparently the publisher doesn’t really want people to be able to read its ARCs. Fortunately I borrowed the audiobook from the library, because the ebook ARC was made unreadable by the publisher’s name covering much of the text. Second, the introduction should really be moved to the end of the book. It gives away the entire book, and in my opinion over analyzes it. It would be better to skip it until you finish reading the book. 3.5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
December 29, 2021
Wow. Wallaballo. Wum--wum... This book has left me speechless. Let's just say that this is the reason I read Radium-Age science fiction, folks.
The book is too short to go into too much detail, and to expound further on it's attributes is to spoil it. So I am going to do something a little different for this review. I am just going to give you a little advice:
1) Get yourself a copy of this book and read it.
2) Do not read the introduction by Annalee Newitz or ANY other reviews on Goodreads or online until after you've read the whole short novel for yourselves. Then you can read what others thought all you like. But as I said, this book is too easy to spoil and you really must go into it blind.
3) Thank me later.
The book is too short to go into too much detail, and to expound further on it's attributes is to spoil it. So I am going to do something a little different for this review. I am just going to give you a little advice:
1) Get yourself a copy of this book and read it.
2) Do not read the introduction by Annalee Newitz or ANY other reviews on Goodreads or online until after you've read the whole short novel for yourselves. Then you can read what others thought all you like. But as I said, this book is too easy to spoil and you really must go into it blind.
3) Thank me later.
May 20, 2022
A strange early science fiction novel from 1923, the first to feature a cyborg, or mechanically enhanced man. The clockwork man of the title makes his first appearance at a cricket match. His mechanism is malfunctioning and he has hurtled back in time. Obviously this is a fascinating theme for a novel from this time. Where it didn’t work for me is that most of the book reads like a farce. The clockwork man has a comical appearance, his behaviour is bizarre and it reads like a piece of slapstick. It’s not till the end of the story that any idea of what the future that has created the clockwork man is like. I’d have enjoyed more detail about this society. Still a very interesting piece of early sci-fi.
May 27, 2020
Just recently, I had some words to say about an English dystopian novel from 1920, "The People of the Ruins" by Edward Shanks. This book had been brought back into print in 2012 by HiLo Books as part of its wonderful Radium Age Science Fiction Series, the goal of which was to unearth neglected works from the period 1904 - 1933 for the modern generation. Now, I am here to tell you of another novel from this same series that I have just enjoyed. The book in question is "The Clockwork Man," which was the creation of another British author, E.V. (Edwin Vincent) Odle. This novel was originally released as a Doubleday hardcover in 1923 and then, as far as I can tell, languished in out-of-print obscurity for the next 90 years, until HiLo chose to resurrect it in 2013. Its neglect is a puzzlement, as the book does have a claim to some kind of historical fame: It is thought to be the first novel to deal with the subject of the cyborg; that is, a being with both human and mechanical components. Odle, who was 33 at the time of this book's release, had seen his first novel, "The History of Alfred Rudd," published the year before, and would soon embark on a lengthy career as the editor of the British magazine "Argosy." During the course of his 52-year life, he would also work as a critic, playwright and short-story author, and even managed to write another sci-fi novel, "Juggernaut," before passing away in 1942. But it is for "The Clockwork Man" that his abiding reputation rests today, although his name is hardly a household word. A short, funny, occasionally profound and ultimately moving novel, it is one that should surely be of interest to fans of early sci-fi.
Odle's book is a very British sort of affair, and it opens with a setting that is pretty much as English as it gets: a game of cricket that is being played in the small village of Great Wymering. On one of the teams in this game are three men who will figure prominently as events proceed. They are Dr. Allingham, a middle-aged man of conservative bent who is currently having relationship problems with his modern-thinking fiancée Lilian; Gregg, the team's captain and a recent graduate of Cambridge; and Arthur Withers, an impractical, daydreaming sort who is engaged to a woman named Rose. Allingham's turn at bat is ruined when he is forcibly distracted by the advent of a rather unusual-looking figure on the horizon. This figure walks in a pronounced jerky manner, its arms and legs flailing about in all directions, and wears a rather comical-looking wig and bowler; as Arthur thinks to himself, "...there was something singularly forlorn and wretched about this curious individual, a suggestion of inconsequence...he was not in the picture of life, but something blobbed on by accident...."
As it turns out later, this curious personage calls himself a "clockwork man"; a being from somewhere around the year 8000. The mechanism inside his head, which allows him, among other things, to exist in a "multiform" universe and experience a myriad of dimensions, has somehow malfunctioned, landing him in the monoform, three-dimensional world of 1923. Mixed up and thoroughly uncoordinated here as a result, he nevertheless manages to converse with the cricketers and even astound them with his feats of batting prowess. A misunderstanding regarding the rules of play results in an unfortunate and violent tussle, during which the Clockwork Man manages to clobber many of the players with eye-defying speed, and then zip off into the fields just as rapidly. The bulk of Odle's short novel then reveals to us the various characters' reactions to this amazing phenomenon from the far future, as the Clockwork Man stumbles and bumbles about Great Wymering in a state of utter befuddlement....
Anyway, regarding those comedic elements previously alluded to, they are present in some abundance, all pretty much front loaded in the book's opening chapters. With his silly-looking wig and bowler (put there to cover up the clockwork access panel in his noggin), our visiting cyborg does indeed look something like a clown, an aspect only enhanced by his "podgy" facial features and jerky gait. And indeed, the Clockwork Man's very first words, as he reacclimates to speech, are the amusing "Wallabaloo - Wallaballo - Bompadi - Bompadi - Wum Wum Wum - nine and ninepence...." The cricket match that soon follows is surely played for laughs, as is the Clockwork Man's run-in with a street cop (or rather, constable), and a later scene in which the village curate mistakes him for the visiting magician at a children's party, only to suffer a near coronary consequent to the Clockwork Man's antics. In a latter sequence, our visitor from the future grows a beard in a matter of moments, to Allingham's great consternation. And, in what might be the most amusing and yet flabbergasting sequence in Odle's book, the doctor attempts to repair the Clockwork Man's busted mechanism, causing him to turn monstrously obese, and then in turns doglike, gilled, tailed, and, ultimately, into an infant. So yes, our visitor is looked upon with some amusement by the reader...until the final chapter.
It is only here that the Clockwork Man, somewhat newly adapted to life in our monoform world, is able to tell us a bit about his background. Coming upon Arthur and Rose, necking (or rather, snogging) in the moonlight, he begins to let tears drop from his eyes as he tells the couple that in his world of the year 8000, there is no love, and indeed, no women. In the 59th century, a benevolent race of naked people (whether they are aliens or not is never made clear), fed up with man's incessant wars and violence, had installed the clockwork mechanism into all the males, and then men "...didn't have to fight any more, because he could move about in a multiform world where there was plenty of room for everybody...."
Thus, mankind was given the opportunity to move freely through dimensions, time and space, but also sacrificed love, romance, emotions, and the ability to laugh or cry. As our visitor explains, "...When we laugh or cry that means that we have to go and get oiled or adjusted. Something has got out of gear. Because in our life there's no necessity for these things...." Death and decay have been done away with for these Clockwork Men, but at the price of everything that makes life worth living. And so, in the end, this comical figure becomes a tragic one, as Odle gives his readers a warning about the dangers of an increasingly mechanistic society. The visitor's advice for mankind, when Arthur asks for it, is merely "...How should I know? It's all so difficult. But don't make it more difficult than you can help. Keep smiling - laughter - such a jolly little world...." It is a moving finale, indeed, for a book that had been so lighthearted and amusing up until that point.
But the peril of a mechanical society is not the only issue on Odle's mind in this novel. He also uses his three main characters from Great Wymering to show how a cross section of society might react to such a phenomenon as the Clockwork Man, and to touch on the then-hot-button issue of women's rights. (Actually, it's still a hot-button issue to this very day, isn't it?) For Gregg, a modern-thinking college grad, this being from the year 8000 is wholly credible and a source of enormous fascination. For Arthur, he is merely a novel curiosity, while his relationship with Rose demonstrates the possibility of a married couple in which the male is not the primary breadwinner. Allingham's reactions to the Clockwork Man and to his fiancée Lilian are perhaps the most interesting, however. A man whose conservative leanings have only solidified in middle age, Allingham finds it impossible at first to believe in the visitor's claim to being from the far future, and is shocked and aghast when he learns more about him. In his relationship with Lilian, who is very much a modern woman, he ponders that "...he liked a woman to have thoughts; but a thinking woman was a nuisance...." As Annalee Newitz tells us in her scholarly introduction to this HiLo edition, Odle's sister-in-law was Dorothy Richardson, author of the first stream-of-consciousness novel in English, 1915's "Pointed Roofs," and his Bloomsbury neighborhood in London was filled with literate and brilliant women such as Virginia Woolf. So you can easily see how Odle might be inclined to add a dollop of feminist thought to the proceedings here. And yes, Allingham and Lilian do indeed have a good discussion on these matters touching on male/female relations toward the novel's end, although whether the couple will marry, and then live happily ever after, is anybody's guess.
If I would level one complaint against Odle's work here it is that the book feels a little slight (a mere 123 pages in this HiLo edition). The author, had he wished, surely might have expanded his work and had our visitor from the far future travel around the year 1923 more, meeting different sorts while commenting on life here. But that would have been a wholly different book, and besides, there's nothing wrong with brevity and succinctness in a novel; of making your points and getting out. Another thing: American readers such as myself may have a bit of a rough time with that opening cricket match, and in truth, I had to go on YouTube to watch a tutorial on the basic rules of the game; after that, it was easy sailing. A bit of research on the reader's part may also be necessary to ascertain that the three unusual quotes that pop up during the novel's course all hail from Shakespeare. As always, a little homework in these matters always makes for a richer experience. And, oh...one more minor matter. Newitz, in her introduction, tells us that "The Clockwork Man" was released in the same year, 1923, as Karel Capek's famous play "R.U.R.," about a robot revolt. In actuality, however, "R.U.R." had premiered three years earlier, in 1920. But again, these are minor matters. All readers who are interested in reading the world's first cyborg novel, one that is both humorous and touching, as well as literate and thoughtful, will truly find much to enjoy here, thanks to the fine folks at HiLo....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of early sci-fi fare....)
Odle's book is a very British sort of affair, and it opens with a setting that is pretty much as English as it gets: a game of cricket that is being played in the small village of Great Wymering. On one of the teams in this game are three men who will figure prominently as events proceed. They are Dr. Allingham, a middle-aged man of conservative bent who is currently having relationship problems with his modern-thinking fiancée Lilian; Gregg, the team's captain and a recent graduate of Cambridge; and Arthur Withers, an impractical, daydreaming sort who is engaged to a woman named Rose. Allingham's turn at bat is ruined when he is forcibly distracted by the advent of a rather unusual-looking figure on the horizon. This figure walks in a pronounced jerky manner, its arms and legs flailing about in all directions, and wears a rather comical-looking wig and bowler; as Arthur thinks to himself, "...there was something singularly forlorn and wretched about this curious individual, a suggestion of inconsequence...he was not in the picture of life, but something blobbed on by accident...."
As it turns out later, this curious personage calls himself a "clockwork man"; a being from somewhere around the year 8000. The mechanism inside his head, which allows him, among other things, to exist in a "multiform" universe and experience a myriad of dimensions, has somehow malfunctioned, landing him in the monoform, three-dimensional world of 1923. Mixed up and thoroughly uncoordinated here as a result, he nevertheless manages to converse with the cricketers and even astound them with his feats of batting prowess. A misunderstanding regarding the rules of play results in an unfortunate and violent tussle, during which the Clockwork Man manages to clobber many of the players with eye-defying speed, and then zip off into the fields just as rapidly. The bulk of Odle's short novel then reveals to us the various characters' reactions to this amazing phenomenon from the far future, as the Clockwork Man stumbles and bumbles about Great Wymering in a state of utter befuddlement....
Anyway, regarding those comedic elements previously alluded to, they are present in some abundance, all pretty much front loaded in the book's opening chapters. With his silly-looking wig and bowler (put there to cover up the clockwork access panel in his noggin), our visiting cyborg does indeed look something like a clown, an aspect only enhanced by his "podgy" facial features and jerky gait. And indeed, the Clockwork Man's very first words, as he reacclimates to speech, are the amusing "Wallabaloo - Wallaballo - Bompadi - Bompadi - Wum Wum Wum - nine and ninepence...." The cricket match that soon follows is surely played for laughs, as is the Clockwork Man's run-in with a street cop (or rather, constable), and a later scene in which the village curate mistakes him for the visiting magician at a children's party, only to suffer a near coronary consequent to the Clockwork Man's antics. In a latter sequence, our visitor from the future grows a beard in a matter of moments, to Allingham's great consternation. And, in what might be the most amusing and yet flabbergasting sequence in Odle's book, the doctor attempts to repair the Clockwork Man's busted mechanism, causing him to turn monstrously obese, and then in turns doglike, gilled, tailed, and, ultimately, into an infant. So yes, our visitor is looked upon with some amusement by the reader...until the final chapter.
It is only here that the Clockwork Man, somewhat newly adapted to life in our monoform world, is able to tell us a bit about his background. Coming upon Arthur and Rose, necking (or rather, snogging) in the moonlight, he begins to let tears drop from his eyes as he tells the couple that in his world of the year 8000, there is no love, and indeed, no women. In the 59th century, a benevolent race of naked people (whether they are aliens or not is never made clear), fed up with man's incessant wars and violence, had installed the clockwork mechanism into all the males, and then men "...didn't have to fight any more, because he could move about in a multiform world where there was plenty of room for everybody...."
Thus, mankind was given the opportunity to move freely through dimensions, time and space, but also sacrificed love, romance, emotions, and the ability to laugh or cry. As our visitor explains, "...When we laugh or cry that means that we have to go and get oiled or adjusted. Something has got out of gear. Because in our life there's no necessity for these things...." Death and decay have been done away with for these Clockwork Men, but at the price of everything that makes life worth living. And so, in the end, this comical figure becomes a tragic one, as Odle gives his readers a warning about the dangers of an increasingly mechanistic society. The visitor's advice for mankind, when Arthur asks for it, is merely "...How should I know? It's all so difficult. But don't make it more difficult than you can help. Keep smiling - laughter - such a jolly little world...." It is a moving finale, indeed, for a book that had been so lighthearted and amusing up until that point.
But the peril of a mechanical society is not the only issue on Odle's mind in this novel. He also uses his three main characters from Great Wymering to show how a cross section of society might react to such a phenomenon as the Clockwork Man, and to touch on the then-hot-button issue of women's rights. (Actually, it's still a hot-button issue to this very day, isn't it?) For Gregg, a modern-thinking college grad, this being from the year 8000 is wholly credible and a source of enormous fascination. For Arthur, he is merely a novel curiosity, while his relationship with Rose demonstrates the possibility of a married couple in which the male is not the primary breadwinner. Allingham's reactions to the Clockwork Man and to his fiancée Lilian are perhaps the most interesting, however. A man whose conservative leanings have only solidified in middle age, Allingham finds it impossible at first to believe in the visitor's claim to being from the far future, and is shocked and aghast when he learns more about him. In his relationship with Lilian, who is very much a modern woman, he ponders that "...he liked a woman to have thoughts; but a thinking woman was a nuisance...." As Annalee Newitz tells us in her scholarly introduction to this HiLo edition, Odle's sister-in-law was Dorothy Richardson, author of the first stream-of-consciousness novel in English, 1915's "Pointed Roofs," and his Bloomsbury neighborhood in London was filled with literate and brilliant women such as Virginia Woolf. So you can easily see how Odle might be inclined to add a dollop of feminist thought to the proceedings here. And yes, Allingham and Lilian do indeed have a good discussion on these matters touching on male/female relations toward the novel's end, although whether the couple will marry, and then live happily ever after, is anybody's guess.
If I would level one complaint against Odle's work here it is that the book feels a little slight (a mere 123 pages in this HiLo edition). The author, had he wished, surely might have expanded his work and had our visitor from the far future travel around the year 1923 more, meeting different sorts while commenting on life here. But that would have been a wholly different book, and besides, there's nothing wrong with brevity and succinctness in a novel; of making your points and getting out. Another thing: American readers such as myself may have a bit of a rough time with that opening cricket match, and in truth, I had to go on YouTube to watch a tutorial on the basic rules of the game; after that, it was easy sailing. A bit of research on the reader's part may also be necessary to ascertain that the three unusual quotes that pop up during the novel's course all hail from Shakespeare. As always, a little homework in these matters always makes for a richer experience. And, oh...one more minor matter. Newitz, in her introduction, tells us that "The Clockwork Man" was released in the same year, 1923, as Karel Capek's famous play "R.U.R.," about a robot revolt. In actuality, however, "R.U.R." had premiered three years earlier, in 1920. But again, these are minor matters. All readers who are interested in reading the world's first cyborg novel, one that is both humorous and touching, as well as literate and thoughtful, will truly find much to enjoy here, thanks to the fine folks at HiLo....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of early sci-fi fare....)
July 23, 2021
This is the twelfth novel I got to, in my quest to read Radium Age SF throughout the back half of 2021, with an honorary pick being Kallocain, a somewhat Orwellian Swedish novel from 1940. The Clockwork Man is my favourite of the bunch, so far.
A Clockwork man from eight thousand years in the future malfunctions and is trapped in the small English village of Great Wymering. Within moments of shimmering into the 1920s, this strange, twitchy being is participating in a cricket match, with mixed results as observed by his fellow, freaked-out, cricketers. This beginning hints at the randomness, and humour, of events that will follow…like the Clockwork man suddenly being taken for a magician scheduled to entertain some kids at the village church; the confused curate gets a show of tricks that he won’t forget. But despite, or maybe because of, the ragged, stop-and-start plotting of this unique novel, the whole experience is - to my mind - a neglected masterpiece. I felt at times I was reading Wodehouse novel…that slowly came to frighten me in the same way Under the Skin, by Michel Faber, did - another SF must-read from over 75 years later. Wodehouse meets Under the Skin is a heady, maybe deadly, combination.
It’s too quick, and a bit misleading, to call this one of the earliest ‘cyborg’ novels, even though that’s how it seems to be peddled these days. That doesn’t begin to cover it. Just as the last Radium Age SF novel I read - Men Like Gods, by H. G. Wells - seemed to be a ‘parallel worlds’ novel but was all the more brilliant, oddly enough, for merely slipping the concept of multiverses under the door as a quick gimmick for doing yet another socialist utopia tale, The Clockwork Man is a cyborg novel, a seemingly whimsical, just so it can introduce another agenda, that is not for laughs.
If the novel is not directly Feminist, it’s certainly addressing ‘the problem with men’. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a reason that males of the future have become programmable “clockwork men”, while women have come to live in an entirely separate form of Reality - literally another Reality! - from these partly artificial men with clocks in their heads. And the seemingly limitless “anywhere and anywhen” men can live their dreams in perhaps is best perceived as a prison…that can only be escaped by developing a glitch.
Ultimately, the Clockwork man’s ‘cyborg’ nature gets more attention, and is more of a focus in the novel, than was the parallel-worlds ‘plot device’ only occasionally dealt with (though wonderfully, when it was expanded upon), by Wells, in Men Like Gods. So it IS an early cyborg novel, that doesn’t drop its cyborg in favour of the next social utopia selling-job - which, trust me, is a Radium Age staple. But it’s also a multiverse novel, like Men Like Gods, and to top that, it’s really a cyborg-multiverse-feminist SF novel. Just when I thought I couldn’t say “and this book is from the 1920s !!?!” with firmer conviction, I say it again, louder than ever.
The Clockwork Man, by E. V. Odle - a must-read, 5 star novel - a neglected novel from the most neglected era of SF writing. It amused me, like a Wodehouse novel; it disturbed and frightened me like Under the Skin, by Michel Faber. How does one do that? What’s that worth?
A Clockwork man from eight thousand years in the future malfunctions and is trapped in the small English village of Great Wymering. Within moments of shimmering into the 1920s, this strange, twitchy being is participating in a cricket match, with mixed results as observed by his fellow, freaked-out, cricketers. This beginning hints at the randomness, and humour, of events that will follow…like the Clockwork man suddenly being taken for a magician scheduled to entertain some kids at the village church; the confused curate gets a show of tricks that he won’t forget. But despite, or maybe because of, the ragged, stop-and-start plotting of this unique novel, the whole experience is - to my mind - a neglected masterpiece. I felt at times I was reading Wodehouse novel…that slowly came to frighten me in the same way Under the Skin, by Michel Faber, did - another SF must-read from over 75 years later. Wodehouse meets Under the Skin is a heady, maybe deadly, combination.
It’s too quick, and a bit misleading, to call this one of the earliest ‘cyborg’ novels, even though that’s how it seems to be peddled these days. That doesn’t begin to cover it. Just as the last Radium Age SF novel I read - Men Like Gods, by H. G. Wells - seemed to be a ‘parallel worlds’ novel but was all the more brilliant, oddly enough, for merely slipping the concept of multiverses under the door as a quick gimmick for doing yet another socialist utopia tale, The Clockwork Man is a cyborg novel, a seemingly whimsical, just so it can introduce another agenda, that is not for laughs.
If the novel is not directly Feminist, it’s certainly addressing ‘the problem with men’. I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a reason that males of the future have become programmable “clockwork men”, while women have come to live in an entirely separate form of Reality - literally another Reality! - from these partly artificial men with clocks in their heads. And the seemingly limitless “anywhere and anywhen” men can live their dreams in perhaps is best perceived as a prison…that can only be escaped by developing a glitch.
Ultimately, the Clockwork man’s ‘cyborg’ nature gets more attention, and is more of a focus in the novel, than was the parallel-worlds ‘plot device’ only occasionally dealt with (though wonderfully, when it was expanded upon), by Wells, in Men Like Gods. So it IS an early cyborg novel, that doesn’t drop its cyborg in favour of the next social utopia selling-job - which, trust me, is a Radium Age staple. But it’s also a multiverse novel, like Men Like Gods, and to top that, it’s really a cyborg-multiverse-feminist SF novel. Just when I thought I couldn’t say “and this book is from the 1920s !!?!” with firmer conviction, I say it again, louder than ever.
The Clockwork Man, by E. V. Odle - a must-read, 5 star novel - a neglected novel from the most neglected era of SF writing. It amused me, like a Wodehouse novel; it disturbed and frightened me like Under the Skin, by Michel Faber. How does one do that? What’s that worth?
Read
January 15, 2023A lot happens in under 100 pages, most of it fun.
Cricket knowledge desirable but not mandatory.
Cricket knowledge desirable but not mandatory.
November 27, 2023
This is a really interesting concept and some aspects of this were very thought-provoking. However it felt like not much happened and the ending was achieved primarily via luck.
October 21, 2013
Back in the day, I used to - before finding more complete references - rely upon A Reader's Guide To Science Fiction by Baird Searles, Martin Last, et al. One thing I liked about their format was the "If you liked author X, you'll enjoy author Y" recommendations.
So, here goes on The Clockwork Man (about a fellow, when his mechanical parts are functioning properly, is able to navigate the "multiform" universe). If you like the type of humorous tongue-in-cheek science fiction written by, say, Fredric Brown or Henry Kuttner (or earlier Albert Robida), then you most likely will enjoy E.V. Odle's The Clockwork Man.
Of course, everyone's humor is different; Odle's could be classified as lighthearted, subtle and whimsical. A typical passage:
The Clockwork man sighed, a long, whistling sigh. "I wish you would mend me. I'm all wrong, you know. Something has got out of place, I think. My clock won't work properly."
"Your Clock," echoed the doctor.
"It's rather difficult to explain," the Clockwork man continued, "but so far as I remember doctors were people who used to mend human beings before the days of the clock. Now they are called mechanics. But it amounts to the same thing."
"If you will come with me to my surgery," the Doctor suggested, with as much calmness as he could assume, "I'll do my best for you."
The Clockwork man bowed stiffly. "Thank you. Of course, I'm a little better than I was, but my ears still flap occasionally."
The tale does have its poignant, touching moments and elements of every-man philosophical thought. Odle handles the combination deftly and even gives hint of his intentions via one of the characters:
His attempt to persuade the editor of the Wide World Magazine that his version of the affair, put in the shape of a magazine story, was actually founded on fact, ended in grotesque failure. His narrative power was not doubted; but he was advised to work the story up and introduce a little humour before offering it as a contribution to some magazine that did not vouch for the truth of its tall stories.
Wrapping things up... I enjoy Brown. I enjoy Kuttner and Robida. So, Yes, I definitely enjoyed The Clockwork Man. It passes the test of Sturgeon's Law with flying colors.
So, here goes on The Clockwork Man (about a fellow, when his mechanical parts are functioning properly, is able to navigate the "multiform" universe). If you like the type of humorous tongue-in-cheek science fiction written by, say, Fredric Brown or Henry Kuttner (or earlier Albert Robida), then you most likely will enjoy E.V. Odle's The Clockwork Man.
Of course, everyone's humor is different; Odle's could be classified as lighthearted, subtle and whimsical. A typical passage:
The Clockwork man sighed, a long, whistling sigh. "I wish you would mend me. I'm all wrong, you know. Something has got out of place, I think. My clock won't work properly."
"Your Clock," echoed the doctor.
"It's rather difficult to explain," the Clockwork man continued, "but so far as I remember doctors were people who used to mend human beings before the days of the clock. Now they are called mechanics. But it amounts to the same thing."
"If you will come with me to my surgery," the Doctor suggested, with as much calmness as he could assume, "I'll do my best for you."
The Clockwork man bowed stiffly. "Thank you. Of course, I'm a little better than I was, but my ears still flap occasionally."
The tale does have its poignant, touching moments and elements of every-man philosophical thought. Odle handles the combination deftly and even gives hint of his intentions via one of the characters:
His attempt to persuade the editor of the Wide World Magazine that his version of the affair, put in the shape of a magazine story, was actually founded on fact, ended in grotesque failure. His narrative power was not doubted; but he was advised to work the story up and introduce a little humour before offering it as a contribution to some magazine that did not vouch for the truth of its tall stories.
Wrapping things up... I enjoy Brown. I enjoy Kuttner and Robida. So, Yes, I definitely enjoyed The Clockwork Man. It passes the test of Sturgeon's Law with flying colors.
November 25, 2022
A ridiculous story, poorly told. Truly, this is terrible writing.
The vast majority of this book is aimless “navel gazing.” It is intellectually absurd (despite the pretentious surplus of big words) and painfully boring. There is very little action, the characters are cartoonish idiots, and even the dialogue between them is mostly pointless philosophical banter regarding the future state of humanity. This somehow managed to get published in 1923; that M.I.T. found it worthy of republication from the public domain nearly a century later made me hope for a classic. But alas, “old” doesn’t always mean “good.”
The vast majority of this book is aimless “navel gazing.” It is intellectually absurd (despite the pretentious surplus of big words) and painfully boring. There is very little action, the characters are cartoonish idiots, and even the dialogue between them is mostly pointless philosophical banter regarding the future state of humanity. This somehow managed to get published in 1923; that M.I.T. found it worthy of republication from the public domain nearly a century later made me hope for a classic. But alas, “old” doesn’t always mean “good.”
February 28, 2025
*The Clockwork Man* by E. V. Olde is a science fiction novel from 1923 which is not only a contender for the title of "first cyborg novel ever published" but also a quaint piece of English literature that can shed light not just on how we view the future but also on the perils of war, gender roles in English society, and more depending on which lens you choose to read it through. Supposedly Brian M. Stableford (one of the better writers of space opera, in my opinion) said that this book was the work he most wanted to be rediscovered, and after seeing how rich for interpretation it is, I can see why. I didn't love the way it ended (or started, in all honesty), but it was fairly thought-provoking, and I'd recommend it to science fiction readers who want to experience something *more* - not necessarily better or worse - than they're used to. Just a word to the wise: *The Clockwork Man* suffers from some *Invisible Man* syndrome (especially with the new MIT Press version), so I'd recommend that you not read any summaries or reviews of the book until you read it for yourself. Some of the claims made in both Newitz's introduction which is included on the very backs of some versions say things which are not exactly true in the context of the story and yet reveal things not revealed until the end of the book which will change your reading experience; alright, you've been warned. Now, on with the program!
*The Clockwork Man* starts in an unbelievably British way: in the middle of a cricket game. A player named Doctor Allingham notices a strange figure "dumped suddenly on the horizon" and approaches it only to find a lumpy and formless man with ears that flap like the wings of birds; his speech is not much more coherent than his looks until he puts on his silencer (which stops an obnoxious metal noise from springing within him) and joins the cricket game, which he does amazingly well at even though he doesn't understand the rules. Sadly, when someone tries to manhandle him around - it seemed like a necessity since he didn't know the rules - he ends up hurting him and a bunch of other cricketers before running away incredibly fast. Allingham and his friend Gregg (who has a rather more open and accepting mind than the Doctor) help cart them to the hospital and end up having a drink at Allingham's house, where we realize how sedate of a socialite he is despite his engagement to the intellectually provocative Lillian Payne. Gregg wonders if the Clockwork Man is from the future, which seems like hogwash until a couple constables show up with his hat, embroidered with a company around for two millennia... we then meet Arthur, a young man who's in love with Rose Lomas and even puts himself through the horrible rituals of shaving for her. On his way to her he runs across the Clockwork Man, who can't grasp the idea of a place - his only working sensory organ seems to be his clock, which indicates he was sent back in time eight thousand years...
The Clockwork Man (now the "CM" to me) ...
I have some mixed feeling about *The Clockwork Man* because the room for thematic discourse seems almost too wide, but I still think that it's a solidly written book. Odle puts a very quaint spin on his story, which set it in sharp contrast to SF works by other writers of his day like H. G. Wells; it's almost a complete farce thanks to the physical comedy of the Clockwork Man and all the inexplicable things which happen in his wake. The thing is, some people think that the farce is overdone and possibly a bit too sugary for their pallets; I simply thought that it added some flavor which kept this from blending together with other stories of its time. In fact, I even think that this story's farcical nature could've been the crowning jewel in its thematic crown...
Let me start our thematic segment by telling you what I thought this book was about, which is ultimately comparable to an analogy. I expected it to be like that old proverb where you have a gaggle of blind men towards the end partially supports my claims, but certain details of it have led to a lot of other people having their own thoughts on what the book's about. Let me just say that while I'm not particularly drawn to these claims, I'm not trying to say they're wrong; I can't tell you what Odle wrote this book about. But a lot of people say it's about gender. I'm not exactly opposed to that interpretation (I mean, Lillian does say some pretty pointed things in the final chapter), but I think that the synopsis of this book says things which aren't even true in the book (); this is where *Invisible Man* syndrome comes in. If you're this far into the review, it's too late for you, but know that you can interpret this book in many different ways, and that's one of the hallmarks of good science fiction: it's thought-provoking. Read it for yourself, and don't let me or Annalee Newitz try and tell you what's what.
All this room for interpretation does make this one of those rare SF novels which is well suited to academic discourse; I must try and find out how much discussion there's been on this. That being said, that implies this isn't as much for the average reader as your average book. I'd say... and its Goodreads score would support... that it's really not. The writing can be a bit off-putting - Hell, while I liked the absurdity of it all, I must admit that the physical framing of the first quarter-to-third was blocky and put a little layer of disengagement between me and the book - and the plot a little scatter-brained. I do think the plot would've been tighter if it'd ended after nine chapters and not had the epilogue, but other things I've said in this review contradict that sentiment because I've praised how open to interpretation it is, so... I'm not sure how to feel about it. I do admit that the characters also aren't terribly much more than the ideas that they preach, but I do want to recognize that Odle had a couple ideas here which were vastly ahead of their time; for example, towards the end, the Clockwork Man mentions running "dreams" (scrolls) through the gears in his head to experience "other people's stories," which is the only way he ever lives anymore... does that sound like a cyberpunky memory junky to you? It sure does to me. Odle was thinking at a lot of levels, and while they won't all work for everybody, this book is worth rediscovering.
With all that being said... I just can't give this four stars, and it all comes down to that last chapter, which has the best ideas in the whole book but destabilizes one of the best, most meaningful farces I've ever read. Still, it does give more room for debate, which is always appreciated. So let me know where you fall on this thematic spectrum because I think we could have some fascinating discussions about this book. I'll give it a 7.5/10 for now (acknowledging that my thoughts on the last chapter might be caused by all the buildup around this book I read, which is one of the reasons I told first-time readers not to read any opinions of it before forming their own), but that could grow with time. Enjoy this strange and incomplete glimpse into the future when you can, and I'll see you for the next Radium Age review, brought to you by the MIT Press...
*The Clockwork Man* starts in an unbelievably British way: in the middle of a cricket game. A player named Doctor Allingham notices a strange figure "dumped suddenly on the horizon" and approaches it only to find a lumpy and formless man with ears that flap like the wings of birds; his speech is not much more coherent than his looks until he puts on his silencer (which stops an obnoxious metal noise from springing within him) and joins the cricket game, which he does amazingly well at even though he doesn't understand the rules. Sadly, when someone tries to manhandle him around - it seemed like a necessity since he didn't know the rules - he ends up hurting him and a bunch of other cricketers before running away incredibly fast. Allingham and his friend Gregg (who has a rather more open and accepting mind than the Doctor) help cart them to the hospital and end up having a drink at Allingham's house, where we realize how sedate of a socialite he is despite his engagement to the intellectually provocative Lillian Payne. Gregg wonders if the Clockwork Man is from the future, which seems like hogwash until a couple constables show up with his hat, embroidered with a company around for two millennia... we then meet Arthur, a young man who's in love with Rose Lomas and even puts himself through the horrible rituals of shaving for her. On his way to her he runs across the Clockwork Man, who can't grasp the idea of a place - his only working sensory organ seems to be his clock, which indicates he was sent back in time eight thousand years...
The Clockwork Man (now the "CM" to me) ...
I have some mixed feeling about *The Clockwork Man* because the room for thematic discourse seems almost too wide, but I still think that it's a solidly written book. Odle puts a very quaint spin on his story, which set it in sharp contrast to SF works by other writers of his day like H. G. Wells; it's almost a complete farce thanks to the physical comedy of the Clockwork Man and all the inexplicable things which happen in his wake. The thing is, some people think that the farce is overdone and possibly a bit too sugary for their pallets; I simply thought that it added some flavor which kept this from blending together with other stories of its time. In fact, I even think that this story's farcical nature could've been the crowning jewel in its thematic crown...
Let me start our thematic segment by telling you what I thought this book was about, which is ultimately comparable to an analogy. I expected it to be like that old proverb where you have a gaggle of blind men towards the end partially supports my claims, but certain details of it have led to a lot of other people having their own thoughts on what the book's about. Let me just say that while I'm not particularly drawn to these claims, I'm not trying to say they're wrong; I can't tell you what Odle wrote this book about. But a lot of people say it's about gender. I'm not exactly opposed to that interpretation (I mean, Lillian does say some pretty pointed things in the final chapter), but I think that the synopsis of this book says things which aren't even true in the book (); this is where *Invisible Man* syndrome comes in. If you're this far into the review, it's too late for you, but know that you can interpret this book in many different ways, and that's one of the hallmarks of good science fiction: it's thought-provoking. Read it for yourself, and don't let me or Annalee Newitz try and tell you what's what.
All this room for interpretation does make this one of those rare SF novels which is well suited to academic discourse; I must try and find out how much discussion there's been on this. That being said, that implies this isn't as much for the average reader as your average book. I'd say... and its Goodreads score would support... that it's really not. The writing can be a bit off-putting - Hell, while I liked the absurdity of it all, I must admit that the physical framing of the first quarter-to-third was blocky and put a little layer of disengagement between me and the book - and the plot a little scatter-brained. I do think the plot would've been tighter if it'd ended after nine chapters and not had the epilogue, but other things I've said in this review contradict that sentiment because I've praised how open to interpretation it is, so... I'm not sure how to feel about it. I do admit that the characters also aren't terribly much more than the ideas that they preach, but I do want to recognize that Odle had a couple ideas here which were vastly ahead of their time; for example, towards the end, the Clockwork Man mentions running "dreams" (scrolls) through the gears in his head to experience "other people's stories," which is the only way he ever lives anymore... does that sound like a cyberpunky memory junky to you? It sure does to me. Odle was thinking at a lot of levels, and while they won't all work for everybody, this book is worth rediscovering.
With all that being said... I just can't give this four stars, and it all comes down to that last chapter, which has the best ideas in the whole book but destabilizes one of the best, most meaningful farces I've ever read. Still, it does give more room for debate, which is always appreciated. So let me know where you fall on this thematic spectrum because I think we could have some fascinating discussions about this book. I'll give it a 7.5/10 for now (acknowledging that my thoughts on the last chapter might be caused by all the buildup around this book I read, which is one of the reasons I told first-time readers not to read any opinions of it before forming their own), but that could grow with time. Enjoy this strange and incomplete glimpse into the future when you can, and I'll see you for the next Radium Age review, brought to you by the MIT Press...
September 5, 2015
Brilliant and unjustly neglected novel from the mostly forgotten "radium age" between the scientific romance period of HG Wells and Jules Verne, and the golden age of science fiction starting in the 1930s. The writing style reminds me much more of Wells than golden age sci-fi and is much more socially conscious than science fiction in the decades that followed, which often abandoned social critique (in response to McCarthyism and the Red Scare) in favor of hard science and adventure.
This book functions on many levels: as satire of scientific rationalism and the myth of progress, as feminist parable, as almost Sherlockian mystery as the characters struggle to uncover the mystery of the Clockwork Man, as character study--and manages to be an entertaining read, to boot.
The story follows three characters as they encounter, and try to make sense of, the sudden appearance of a strange "Clockwork Man" who appears in the middle of a game of cricket. Two of the characters are also negotiating relationships with modern women who are not content to accept socially prescribed gender roles; the older man resists this new dynamic, while the younger accepts and even embraces it. I've read a lot of fiction from this time period, and while perhaps not exceptional compared to many current titles (although it's also discouraging how much sexist attitudes still pervade literature), and not without problem, this is one of the most progressive titles on gender I've read in genre fiction from this time period.
The satire on progress is comparable to Carel Kapek's R.U.R., but more nuanced in that, upon finishing the story, I felt the author deliberately left open the question of whether there is hope--whether man's (gendered noun deliberate) destructive embrace of "progress" is an inevitable, doomed pursuit--as R.U.R. seemed to suggest--or whether it is possible to diverge from this path.
This book functions on many levels: as satire of scientific rationalism and the myth of progress, as feminist parable, as almost Sherlockian mystery as the characters struggle to uncover the mystery of the Clockwork Man, as character study--and manages to be an entertaining read, to boot.
The story follows three characters as they encounter, and try to make sense of, the sudden appearance of a strange "Clockwork Man" who appears in the middle of a game of cricket. Two of the characters are also negotiating relationships with modern women who are not content to accept socially prescribed gender roles; the older man resists this new dynamic, while the younger accepts and even embraces it. I've read a lot of fiction from this time period, and while perhaps not exceptional compared to many current titles (although it's also discouraging how much sexist attitudes still pervade literature), and not without problem, this is one of the most progressive titles on gender I've read in genre fiction from this time period.
The satire on progress is comparable to Carel Kapek's R.U.R., but more nuanced in that, upon finishing the story, I felt the author deliberately left open the question of whether there is hope--whether man's (gendered noun deliberate) destructive embrace of "progress" is an inevitable, doomed pursuit--as R.U.R. seemed to suggest--or whether it is possible to diverge from this path.
March 2, 2020
Excellent little throw-back novel for anyone of the steampunk bent, expertly read by Mark Nelson.
By the way, this audiobook will meet the 2020 Popsugar prompt for a book with a robot or cyborg, despite its original publish date of 1923.
By the way, this audiobook will meet the 2020 Popsugar prompt for a book with a robot or cyborg, despite its original publish date of 1923.
September 19, 2014
The Clockwork Man is quite a remarkable little novel: steampunk before steampunk was cool; one of the first appearances of a cyborg in science fiction literature; and a delicate commentary on modern humanity and its great enemy, time.
The novel opens with the farcical setup of the Clockwork Man's abrupt appearance at an early-twentieth-century afternoon cricket match in the countryside, which he ultimately joins and wrecks. The novel soon changes tone, however, and views the threat and promise of the Clockwork Man from several perspectives, including that of a middle-aged doctor who has grown settled in his opinions and middling life and shame at his own lack of originality, and a young man who strains against convention and the predicament of his youth.
Along the way, the story challenges modern assumptions about efficiency, the tyranny of fast-paced life (and small-town opinion), and the value of free will.
E.V. Odle was the editor who founded Argosy, and some have claimed Odle was a pseudonym used by Virginia Woolf. This was his first and only published novel, and it is a gem of early science fiction.
The novel opens with the farcical setup of the Clockwork Man's abrupt appearance at an early-twentieth-century afternoon cricket match in the countryside, which he ultimately joins and wrecks. The novel soon changes tone, however, and views the threat and promise of the Clockwork Man from several perspectives, including that of a middle-aged doctor who has grown settled in his opinions and middling life and shame at his own lack of originality, and a young man who strains against convention and the predicament of his youth.
Along the way, the story challenges modern assumptions about efficiency, the tyranny of fast-paced life (and small-town opinion), and the value of free will.
E.V. Odle was the editor who founded Argosy, and some have claimed Odle was a pseudonym used by Virginia Woolf. This was his first and only published novel, and it is a gem of early science fiction.
March 7, 2023
I have listened to this book twice, and the beginning portion takes place during a cricket match? Game? I had a bartender try to explain the rules of cricket to me once, and I think I wasn't drunk enough to understand. American football rules? No problem. All I'm saying is that this reread didn't help my brain sort out the rules of cricket. Nor was that its purpose. It is a pretty good book, with some big ideas, the biggest of which is that men (males) can't really be trusted and at some point in the distant future, that problem is addressed in a very weird way.
The interactions between the Clockwork Man (future man) and the residents of a town in England in the early 20th century are sometimes charming, sometimes alarming.
This book was written almost one hundred years ago, and the language and mores of the time are evident. But, that did not bother me so much. I just wanted a character or two that I could really get behind, and I found that aspect lacking. For a quick, weird read, it is worth the time.
The interactions between the Clockwork Man (future man) and the residents of a town in England in the early 20th century are sometimes charming, sometimes alarming.
This book was written almost one hundred years ago, and the language and mores of the time are evident. But, that did not bother me so much. I just wanted a character or two that I could really get behind, and I found that aspect lacking. For a quick, weird read, it is worth the time.
March 27, 2016
I had never heard of this or even Odle, which is surprising considering it is probably the first android story you would have thought it would famous.
The story in itself is rather a fun story. This strange clockwork man arrives in the middle of a cricket match and then goes on to make up the numbers for one team where he is exceptional. Now at this point in the story a knowledge of cricket is useful otherwise some of the story might be missed. The story then goes on to describe how this strange fellow causes trouble in an English village.
If there was one negative it would be that it gets a bit "speachy" in places.
Overall this is definitely a lost classic.
The story in itself is rather a fun story. This strange clockwork man arrives in the middle of a cricket match and then goes on to make up the numbers for one team where he is exceptional. Now at this point in the story a knowledge of cricket is useful otherwise some of the story might be missed. The story then goes on to describe how this strange fellow causes trouble in an English village.
If there was one negative it would be that it gets a bit "speachy" in places.
Overall this is definitely a lost classic.
February 14, 2015
This book seems like gimmicky speculative fiction (I tend to like non-gimmick speculative fiction, by the way), which in some ways was a bit interesting toward the end. But as a whole, it essentially suggests that individuality despite excessive conflict is better than automaton multi-dimensional maleness. As if these are our only options as a species.
March 15, 2014
Nice read. 1923 science fiction, considered the first cyborg story. Humorous at times, interesting if you consider the path of sci-fi thereafter.
May 1, 2022
I was granted complimentary eARC access to the 2022 edition of The Clockwork Man by E. V. Odle by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the access approval! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.
I requested this book to review because I read an excerpt from it in robotics class back in high school and I thought it was high time that I read the whole book! The Clockwork Man is a brilliantly imaginative piece of early steampunk science fiction that was undoubtedly revolutionary in its time. I did read some of the other reviews before requesting it and I've seen the criticisms that this novella doesn't have a plot. It does. It's just not as high stakes and face-paced as we're used to now. Remember, this book is fast approaching its 100th birthday! The social speculation and futuristic ideas in this book would have been even more fascinating a century ago when these were new ideas.
I've seen this book called "the first transgender story" and I was questioning that for most of the book up until the point where the clockwork man's body is closely examined and the human characters consider what has been changed and removed in this man's anatomy compared to what they expected to see. The Clockwork man does discuss what it's like to live in a future where certain anatomical parts and activities and social experiences have become obsolete in a society of immortal mechanical people. I can see using this character as a vehicle to discuss the non-binary identity umbrella and agender in particular, but he doesn't feel like a representation of transgender identities to me in the typical use "gender and sex at birth are opposite" sense of the word transgender. The clockwork man in this book, and his contemporaries in his time, haven't transitioned in a sense of outwardly matching their true gender identity, they've been desexed.
What I was thinking while reading this book instead of the first transgender story thing was that this feels like the inspiration and predecessor for scifi icons Data from Star Trek, and I wonder if Roddenberry and his team had read this book.
As for the introduction and essays included in this edition, I think they're interesting from an academic standpoint as someone who has formally studied both literature and history, but I do feel like it spoils the experience of the book to read all of that first if you're reading The Clockwork Man for the first time. It explains and spoils everything, and it takes up a hefty 11% of the text before the story itself even begins (and then some after it ends.) I think I would prefer to see a brief intro, read the original story, then read 10+% more text in essays about the story.
I requested this book to review because I read an excerpt from it in robotics class back in high school and I thought it was high time that I read the whole book! The Clockwork Man is a brilliantly imaginative piece of early steampunk science fiction that was undoubtedly revolutionary in its time. I did read some of the other reviews before requesting it and I've seen the criticisms that this novella doesn't have a plot. It does. It's just not as high stakes and face-paced as we're used to now. Remember, this book is fast approaching its 100th birthday! The social speculation and futuristic ideas in this book would have been even more fascinating a century ago when these were new ideas.
I've seen this book called "the first transgender story" and I was questioning that for most of the book up until the point where the clockwork man's body is closely examined and the human characters consider what has been changed and removed in this man's anatomy compared to what they expected to see. The Clockwork man does discuss what it's like to live in a future where certain anatomical parts and activities and social experiences have become obsolete in a society of immortal mechanical people. I can see using this character as a vehicle to discuss the non-binary identity umbrella and agender in particular, but he doesn't feel like a representation of transgender identities to me in the typical use "gender and sex at birth are opposite" sense of the word transgender. The clockwork man in this book, and his contemporaries in his time, haven't transitioned in a sense of outwardly matching their true gender identity, they've been desexed.
What I was thinking while reading this book instead of the first transgender story thing was that this feels like the inspiration and predecessor for scifi icons Data from Star Trek, and I wonder if Roddenberry and his team had read this book.
As for the introduction and essays included in this edition, I think they're interesting from an academic standpoint as someone who has formally studied both literature and history, but I do feel like it spoils the experience of the book to read all of that first if you're reading The Clockwork Man for the first time. It explains and spoils everything, and it takes up a hefty 11% of the text before the story itself even begins (and then some after it ends.) I think I would prefer to see a brief intro, read the original story, then read 10+% more text in essays about the story.
July 20, 2022
The Clockwork Man is a book that was way ahead of its time. It’ll get your cogs turning as it masterfully spins the gears of speculation, humour, and invention.
Originally published in 1923, this novel is the first example of a cyborg in fiction. It’s one of the classics of proto-SF that The MIT Press have included in their Radium Age collection. And it’s a cracking little time-travel novel.
There’s a gentleness about the book that’s really pleasant to imagine — a quintessential Englishness that meets the arrival of a time traveller from 8,000 years in the future. The clockwork man appears in a stereotypical 1920s country village (camouflaged in a hat and wig) and engages in a game of cricket before being considered an oddity. That tells you everything you need to know about this story. It’s one of those rare gems that delivers a complicated time-bending multiverse-spinning narrative with charm and style. It’s the literary equivalent of a dandy gentleman doffing his hat and giving you a bow. There’s an etiquette and sense of wonder about the way it’s written which taps into the comfort of nostalgia and milks it for all its worth.
There’s so much character to this book. The plot is told across multiple perspectives, all surrounding the strange man with a clock in his head who can seemingly manipulate reality. In many ways, the ideas on display have never been more prescient. What is our relationship with technology? What is humanity and where is it going? Who are we, and who should we be?
There are so many layers to the story, and yet, it never feels dense. For example, a number of brilliant moments show characters reacting to the clockwork man in different ways that could either be seen as simple contradictions between two people, or a commentary on the influence of prejudice on society, the lack of acceptance to anything which challenges our preconceptions, and humanity’s resistance to change. This book goes as deep as you want it to. And in many ways, that makes it even more enjoyable. Like a spinning clock, it can either tell you the time, or it can show you the inner workings of what makes us tick, and have you pondering the question of why the seconds persist at all.
And it’s funny. There’s a comical touch which keeps things fresh, and it never takes itself too seriously. A polite absurdity touches every page. But what’s impressive about this is that the tone doesn’t jar. The light-heartedness never feels gimmicky or misplaced. It’s simply a delight.
An analysis of the book by Annalee Newitz in the introductory section provides a brilliant insight into the story. It reveals the flaws in the book. But it also celebrates its strengths. And I enjoyed the candid way that it introduces all that follows.
In short, this is a charming tale with hidden depths that’ll make you think, laugh, and feel. As a character, the clockwork man is a triumph of the future. As a book, The Clockwork Man is a triumph of the past, preserved in this beautiful edition that is definitely worth taking a trip to rediscover.
Originally published in 1923, this novel is the first example of a cyborg in fiction. It’s one of the classics of proto-SF that The MIT Press have included in their Radium Age collection. And it’s a cracking little time-travel novel.
There’s a gentleness about the book that’s really pleasant to imagine — a quintessential Englishness that meets the arrival of a time traveller from 8,000 years in the future. The clockwork man appears in a stereotypical 1920s country village (camouflaged in a hat and wig) and engages in a game of cricket before being considered an oddity. That tells you everything you need to know about this story. It’s one of those rare gems that delivers a complicated time-bending multiverse-spinning narrative with charm and style. It’s the literary equivalent of a dandy gentleman doffing his hat and giving you a bow. There’s an etiquette and sense of wonder about the way it’s written which taps into the comfort of nostalgia and milks it for all its worth.
There’s so much character to this book. The plot is told across multiple perspectives, all surrounding the strange man with a clock in his head who can seemingly manipulate reality. In many ways, the ideas on display have never been more prescient. What is our relationship with technology? What is humanity and where is it going? Who are we, and who should we be?
There are so many layers to the story, and yet, it never feels dense. For example, a number of brilliant moments show characters reacting to the clockwork man in different ways that could either be seen as simple contradictions between two people, or a commentary on the influence of prejudice on society, the lack of acceptance to anything which challenges our preconceptions, and humanity’s resistance to change. This book goes as deep as you want it to. And in many ways, that makes it even more enjoyable. Like a spinning clock, it can either tell you the time, or it can show you the inner workings of what makes us tick, and have you pondering the question of why the seconds persist at all.
And it’s funny. There’s a comical touch which keeps things fresh, and it never takes itself too seriously. A polite absurdity touches every page. But what’s impressive about this is that the tone doesn’t jar. The light-heartedness never feels gimmicky or misplaced. It’s simply a delight.
An analysis of the book by Annalee Newitz in the introductory section provides a brilliant insight into the story. It reveals the flaws in the book. But it also celebrates its strengths. And I enjoyed the candid way that it introduces all that follows.
In short, this is a charming tale with hidden depths that’ll make you think, laugh, and feel. As a character, the clockwork man is a triumph of the future. As a book, The Clockwork Man is a triumph of the past, preserved in this beautiful edition that is definitely worth taking a trip to rediscover.
May 24, 2023
This is a classic Science Fiction novel, A strange novel at that. 1923, the first to feature a cyborg, or a mechanically enhanced man. The clockwork man makes his way to a cricket match. His mechanisms are malfunctioning and he is hurdling back in time.
I found this book very slow to read. Yet fascinating enough to keep me reading and guessing what is to happen next. This book gets a 3.5 stars from me.
I found this book very slow to read. Yet fascinating enough to keep me reading and guessing what is to happen next. This book gets a 3.5 stars from me.
January 14, 2020
A creatively unique, short sci-fi classic about a man partially constructed of clocks who arrives in a town much to the puzzlement of its residents. Interesting themes surrounding scientific life extension.
Want to read
December 4, 2019Recommended by Glenn: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...?
November 26, 2021
3.5'tan 3 mü 4 mü çok zor karar verdim, bazı kısımlarda sıkılsam da genel olarak, özellikle yazıldığı tarihe göre iyiydi.
August 24, 2023
Science fiction from the Roaring Twenties is a wild ride. I loved this thought provoking look into how humans respond to the unexplainable, and the uncanny. It's also the first book I've come across to explore a gender based apocalypse.
The premise is that a malfunctioning Clockwork man falls through time and lands in the 1920's. You follow two couples with differing backgrounds and see how the men respond to the Cyborg. Withers, the kind dreamer who loves a simple country girl, just sees the entity as a man who needs help, and listens to his story. Dr. Allingham, a sarcastic man of science, fears the Cyborg but never heard it tell its story. He was caught up in his own horror and a need to explain away the Cyborg. He's engaged to an intellectual woman who he wishes was a simple and traditional girl. He never hears about the gender apocalypse, and one gets the impression that if the doctor can't stop feeling threatened by an intelligent fiance, well, the future the doctor wishes to avoid where men are cyborgs may not be avoided. Young Withers offers hope that such a future may be avoided.
There's a lot to think about in this book. I loved reading it and didn't want to put it down. Its also the sort of book that is probably best read in a book club or class room setting where debate and discussion can help shape and add to one's thoughts and analysis. I enjoyed the melancholic and ambiguous ending.
The premise is that a malfunctioning Clockwork man falls through time and lands in the 1920's. You follow two couples with differing backgrounds and see how the men respond to the Cyborg. Withers, the kind dreamer who loves a simple country girl, just sees the entity as a man who needs help, and listens to his story. Dr. Allingham, a sarcastic man of science, fears the Cyborg but never heard it tell its story. He was caught up in his own horror and a need to explain away the Cyborg. He's engaged to an intellectual woman who he wishes was a simple and traditional girl. He never hears about the gender apocalypse, and one gets the impression that if the doctor can't stop feeling threatened by an intelligent fiance, well, the future the doctor wishes to avoid where men are cyborgs may not be avoided. Young Withers offers hope that such a future may be avoided.
There's a lot to think about in this book. I loved reading it and didn't want to put it down. Its also the sort of book that is probably best read in a book club or class room setting where debate and discussion can help shape and add to one's thoughts and analysis. I enjoyed the melancholic and ambiguous ending.
October 21, 2015
I only recently discovered HiLo Books’ “Radium Age of Science Fiction” series: 10 books from years 1904 – 1933 reissued by the press in 2013. I’ve managed to find three of them in bookstores, and this is the first of those that I’ve read.
The premise (cyborg-type future man comes back to the present, wreaks havoc) now is a trope, but the publishers date this as the first cyborg novel. Taken in that light, the reader can see just how inventive Odle is in realizing and describing his “clockwork man.” He talks about being unsettled in time and space, living in a world where everything is possible and where every possibility is real: stuff science fiction authors are still wrangling with today. In addition to the technological advances and intimation of life from other planets affecting the course of future history here on Earth, the book raises interesting questions about free will, including the possibility that a removal of free will is about the only thing that will stop men from destroying our planet. (Coincidentally, I recently read A Clockwork Orange, which deals with similar issues regarding the removal of a person’s ability to decide between good and evil.) Odle also shines a light on the then-changing views of women. One of the main characters, Doctor Allingham, is pretty much an avowed misogynist while younger characters represent the change Odle knew was building across the country at that time.
Where the book falls short for me is in the characterizations. The concepts introduced are cool, the Big Questions caused me to think – but the human characters are too one-dimensional to really connect with: Allingham the skeptic and keeper of the status quo; Gregg the curious burgeoning scientist; Arthur the excitable romantic. And the female characters are not much better drawn: one a manipulative prospective fiancée for Allingham, the other Arthur’s equally romantic and flightly love interest. Neither of the women have much effect on the plot, but then again neither do the lead men: they are acted up by the comings and goings of the clockwork man, but don’t accomplish much of their own accord.
The premise (cyborg-type future man comes back to the present, wreaks havoc) now is a trope, but the publishers date this as the first cyborg novel. Taken in that light, the reader can see just how inventive Odle is in realizing and describing his “clockwork man.” He talks about being unsettled in time and space, living in a world where everything is possible and where every possibility is real: stuff science fiction authors are still wrangling with today. In addition to the technological advances and intimation of life from other planets affecting the course of future history here on Earth, the book raises interesting questions about free will, including the possibility that a removal of free will is about the only thing that will stop men from destroying our planet. (Coincidentally, I recently read A Clockwork Orange, which deals with similar issues regarding the removal of a person’s ability to decide between good and evil.) Odle also shines a light on the then-changing views of women. One of the main characters, Doctor Allingham, is pretty much an avowed misogynist while younger characters represent the change Odle knew was building across the country at that time.
Where the book falls short for me is in the characterizations. The concepts introduced are cool, the Big Questions caused me to think – but the human characters are too one-dimensional to really connect with: Allingham the skeptic and keeper of the status quo; Gregg the curious burgeoning scientist; Arthur the excitable romantic. And the female characters are not much better drawn: one a manipulative prospective fiancée for Allingham, the other Arthur’s equally romantic and flightly love interest. Neither of the women have much effect on the plot, but then again neither do the lead men: they are acted up by the comings and goings of the clockwork man, but don’t accomplish much of their own accord.
October 9, 2023
“It was extraordinary how, as one grew older, it became less possible to restrain, primitive and savage impulses. When things went wrong, you wanted to do something violent and unforgivable, something you would regret afterwards, but which you would be quite willing to do for the sake of immediate satisfaction.” P.20
“But then he was only twenty-four. You could be like that then, so full of life and high spirits that generosity flowed from you in perceptibly and without effort. At forty you began to shrivel up. Atrophy of the finer feelings. You began to be deliberately and consistently mean and narrow. You took a savage delight in making other people pay for your disappointments.” P.21
“So much of existence was spent in actions that were obligatory only because other people expected you to do the same as themselves. It wasn’t so much a waste of time as a waste of life.” P.57
“You went into the shop feeling agreeably familiar with yourself, conscious of intense personality: and you came out a nonentity, smelling of bay-rum. The barber succeeded in transforming you from an individual brimming over with original reflections and impulses into a stranger without a distinctive notion in your head. The barber, in fact, was a Delilah in trousers; he ravished the locks from your head and bewitched you into the bargain.” P.57
“You were always up against time. Generally, when you had to do some thing or get somewhere, there was a sense of breathless hurry, and a disconcerting, feeling that the world ended abruptly at the conclusion of every hour, and then begin again quite differently. The clock, in fact, was another tyrant, robbing you of that sensation of being able to go on forever without changing.” P.59
“Perhaps by looking hard enough, it would be possible to become aware of these things. It would be like watching a bud unfold. Slow change wasn’t impenetrable mystery, for actually, things seemed to happen too quickly for you to notice them. Or rather, you were too busy to notice them. Spring was like that. Every year you made up your mind, noticed the first blossoming, the initial tinge of green; but always it happened that you were woken morning and found that some vast change it taken place, so that it really seemed like a miracle.” P.61
“The clock, you see, made man independent of Time and Space. It solved everything.”
“But what happens,” Arthur wanted to know, “when the clock works properly?”
“Everything happens,” said the other, “exactly as you want it to happen.”
“Awfully convenient,” Arthur murmured.
“Exceedingly.” The Clockwork man’s head nodded up and down with a regular rhythm. “The whole aim of man is convenience.” P.64
“That is how we read books now. We wear them inside the clock, in the form of spools that unwind. What you have said, brings it all back to me. It suddenly occurs to me that I am indeed, a conjurer, and that all my actions in this backward world must be regarded in the light of magic.” P.75
“A rudimentary race, he’s solioquished, with his finger, nose-wards, “half blind, and painfully restricted in their movements. Evidently they have only a few senses- five at most.” He passed out into the street, carefully avoiding the body. “They have a certain freedom, he continue, still, nursing, his nose, “within narrow limits. They soon grow limp. And when they fall down, or lose balance, they have no choice, but to embrace the earth.” P.76
“You seem to want to go out of your way to prove me in the wrong. I may add, that once a man has ceased to believe in the impossible he is damned.” P.79
“And then you have objects placed about in certain positions, trees, houses, lamp-posts, – and they never alter their positions. It reminds me of the scenery they used in the old theaters. Now, in my world, everything is constantly moving, and there is not one of everything, but always there are a great many of each thing. The universe has no definite shape at all. This guy does not look, like yours does, simply a sort of inverted bowl. It is a shape with avoid. How much strikes me some forcibly about your world is that everything appears to be leading somewhere, do you expect always to come to the end of things. But in my world everything goes on for ever.” P.101
“Streets are of course, unnecessary, since the only object of a street is to lead from one place to another, and we do that sort of thing and other ways. Again, our houses are not place together in the absurd fashion of yours. They are anywhere and everywhere, and nowhere and nowhen. For instance, I live in the day before yesterday, and my friend and the day after tomorrow.” P.101
“The whole of man’s past shrieks out against this monstrous incubus of the future.” P.124
“In the books, I’ve read,” Arthur resumed, “there’s generally a chap home you might regard is being not much good at anything in yet pretty decent.
“Heroes,” suggested Rose, who’s knowledge of literature was not very wide.
“Sometimes. Chaps people don’t understand. That’s because they like beauty more than anything else, and not many people really care about beauty. They only think of it when they see a sunset or look at pictures. If you can forget beauty, then you’re all right. Nobody thinks you’re strange. You don’t have any difficulties.” P.131
“It’s as I said just now. I like my friends to be humorous; but my lover must be serious.”
“But I can’t help it,” pleaded the Doctor. “Take away my humor, and I’m frightened at what’s left of myself. There’s nothing but an appalling chaos.
“Because you were afraid of life,” said Lillian. “Men have laughed their way through the ages; women have wept and lived. I can’t share your world of assumptions and rule of thumb laws. To me, love is a chaos, a dear confusion – a Devine muddle. Its creation itself, an indefinite proceeding beginning with God.” P.132-133
“Ignoramus,” laughed the Doctor. “A woman’s first child is always her husband.” P.135
“We can only improve ourselves very slowly, but we shall never quite escape the body of this death. We’ve only ourselves to blame. The makers gave us our chance. They are beings of infinite patience and forbearance. But they saw that we were determined to go on as we were, and so they devised this means of giving us our wish. You see, life was a Vale of Tears, and men grew tired of the long journey. The maker said that if we preserved we should come to the end no joys, earth has not seen. But we could not wait, and we lost faith. It seemed to us that if we could do away with death and disease, with change in decay, then all our troubles would be over. So they did that for us, and we stopped the same as we were, except that time and space no longer hinder us.” P.139
“But then he was only twenty-four. You could be like that then, so full of life and high spirits that generosity flowed from you in perceptibly and without effort. At forty you began to shrivel up. Atrophy of the finer feelings. You began to be deliberately and consistently mean and narrow. You took a savage delight in making other people pay for your disappointments.” P.21
“So much of existence was spent in actions that were obligatory only because other people expected you to do the same as themselves. It wasn’t so much a waste of time as a waste of life.” P.57
“You went into the shop feeling agreeably familiar with yourself, conscious of intense personality: and you came out a nonentity, smelling of bay-rum. The barber succeeded in transforming you from an individual brimming over with original reflections and impulses into a stranger without a distinctive notion in your head. The barber, in fact, was a Delilah in trousers; he ravished the locks from your head and bewitched you into the bargain.” P.57
“You were always up against time. Generally, when you had to do some thing or get somewhere, there was a sense of breathless hurry, and a disconcerting, feeling that the world ended abruptly at the conclusion of every hour, and then begin again quite differently. The clock, in fact, was another tyrant, robbing you of that sensation of being able to go on forever without changing.” P.59
“Perhaps by looking hard enough, it would be possible to become aware of these things. It would be like watching a bud unfold. Slow change wasn’t impenetrable mystery, for actually, things seemed to happen too quickly for you to notice them. Or rather, you were too busy to notice them. Spring was like that. Every year you made up your mind, noticed the first blossoming, the initial tinge of green; but always it happened that you were woken morning and found that some vast change it taken place, so that it really seemed like a miracle.” P.61
“The clock, you see, made man independent of Time and Space. It solved everything.”
“But what happens,” Arthur wanted to know, “when the clock works properly?”
“Everything happens,” said the other, “exactly as you want it to happen.”
“Awfully convenient,” Arthur murmured.
“Exceedingly.” The Clockwork man’s head nodded up and down with a regular rhythm. “The whole aim of man is convenience.” P.64
“That is how we read books now. We wear them inside the clock, in the form of spools that unwind. What you have said, brings it all back to me. It suddenly occurs to me that I am indeed, a conjurer, and that all my actions in this backward world must be regarded in the light of magic.” P.75
“A rudimentary race, he’s solioquished, with his finger, nose-wards, “half blind, and painfully restricted in their movements. Evidently they have only a few senses- five at most.” He passed out into the street, carefully avoiding the body. “They have a certain freedom, he continue, still, nursing, his nose, “within narrow limits. They soon grow limp. And when they fall down, or lose balance, they have no choice, but to embrace the earth.” P.76
“You seem to want to go out of your way to prove me in the wrong. I may add, that once a man has ceased to believe in the impossible he is damned.” P.79
“And then you have objects placed about in certain positions, trees, houses, lamp-posts, – and they never alter their positions. It reminds me of the scenery they used in the old theaters. Now, in my world, everything is constantly moving, and there is not one of everything, but always there are a great many of each thing. The universe has no definite shape at all. This guy does not look, like yours does, simply a sort of inverted bowl. It is a shape with avoid. How much strikes me some forcibly about your world is that everything appears to be leading somewhere, do you expect always to come to the end of things. But in my world everything goes on for ever.” P.101
“Streets are of course, unnecessary, since the only object of a street is to lead from one place to another, and we do that sort of thing and other ways. Again, our houses are not place together in the absurd fashion of yours. They are anywhere and everywhere, and nowhere and nowhen. For instance, I live in the day before yesterday, and my friend and the day after tomorrow.” P.101
“The whole of man’s past shrieks out against this monstrous incubus of the future.” P.124
“In the books, I’ve read,” Arthur resumed, “there’s generally a chap home you might regard is being not much good at anything in yet pretty decent.
“Heroes,” suggested Rose, who’s knowledge of literature was not very wide.
“Sometimes. Chaps people don’t understand. That’s because they like beauty more than anything else, and not many people really care about beauty. They only think of it when they see a sunset or look at pictures. If you can forget beauty, then you’re all right. Nobody thinks you’re strange. You don’t have any difficulties.” P.131
“It’s as I said just now. I like my friends to be humorous; but my lover must be serious.”
“But I can’t help it,” pleaded the Doctor. “Take away my humor, and I’m frightened at what’s left of myself. There’s nothing but an appalling chaos.
“Because you were afraid of life,” said Lillian. “Men have laughed their way through the ages; women have wept and lived. I can’t share your world of assumptions and rule of thumb laws. To me, love is a chaos, a dear confusion – a Devine muddle. Its creation itself, an indefinite proceeding beginning with God.” P.132-133
“Ignoramus,” laughed the Doctor. “A woman’s first child is always her husband.” P.135
“We can only improve ourselves very slowly, but we shall never quite escape the body of this death. We’ve only ourselves to blame. The makers gave us our chance. They are beings of infinite patience and forbearance. But they saw that we were determined to go on as we were, and so they devised this means of giving us our wish. You see, life was a Vale of Tears, and men grew tired of the long journey. The maker said that if we preserved we should come to the end no joys, earth has not seen. But we could not wait, and we lost faith. It seemed to us that if we could do away with death and disease, with change in decay, then all our troubles would be over. So they did that for us, and we stopped the same as we were, except that time and space no longer hinder us.” P.139
June 19, 2014
This is a real oddity from the 1920's. A time traveling clockwork man visits 1920's England in the middle of a Cricket match. His antics appear to be inspired by slapstick movies of the early 20th century such as Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Harold Lloyd, and perhaps more obscure movies about automatons running amok.
The back story about how his mysterious "Makers" came to the Earth and abducted all the women and turned all of the men into clockwork beings was one of the more interesting aspects of the story, and raises it above being just a silly short novel. It also makes one think that there should be a sequel to elaborate on the back story, but unfortunately there isn't. Who where The Makers, aliens, humans from an even more distant future?
We will never know.
Anyone who wants to write steam-punk novels should include this on their reading list.
I wonder if Ray Bradbury had read this. It does touch on the theme of keeping everything you like in this world going on forever and getting rid of all the bad stuff in life, which is popular in his stories.
The back story about how his mysterious "Makers" came to the Earth and abducted all the women and turned all of the men into clockwork beings was one of the more interesting aspects of the story, and raises it above being just a silly short novel. It also makes one think that there should be a sequel to elaborate on the back story, but unfortunately there isn't. Who where The Makers, aliens, humans from an even more distant future?
We will never know.
Anyone who wants to write steam-punk novels should include this on their reading list.
I wonder if Ray Bradbury had read this. It does touch on the theme of keeping everything you like in this world going on forever and getting rid of all the bad stuff in life, which is popular in his stories.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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