The Clockwork Man

by E. V. Odle, Annalee Newitz (Introduction)

Overview

In the first-ever novel about a cyborg, a machine-enhanced man from a multiverse of the far future visits 1920s England.

In 1920s England, a strange being crashes a village cricket game. After some glitchy, jerky attempts to communicate, this creature reveals that he is a machine-enhanced human from a multiverse thousands of years in the future. The mechanism implanted in his skull has malfunctioned, sending him tumbling through time onto the green grass of the cricket field. Apparently in the future, at the behest of fed-up women, all men will be controlled by an embedded “clockwork,” camouflaged with hats and wigs. Published in 1923, The Clockwork Man—the first cyborg novel—tells the story of this odd time traveler’s visit.

Spending time with two village couples about to embark upon married life, the Clockwork Man warns that because men of the twentieth century are so violent, sexist, and selfish, in the not-too-distant future they will be banned from physical reality. They will inhabit instead a virtual world—what we’d now call the Singularity—in which their every need is met, but love is absent. Will the Clockwork Man’s tale lead his new friends to reconsider technology, gender roles, sex, and free will?

Overshadowed in its own time by Karel Čapek’s sensational 1923 play R.U.R., about a robot uprising, The Clockwork Man is overdue for rediscovery.

Annalee Newitz is the author of Four Lost Cities (2021), the novels The Future of Another Timeline (2019) andAutonomous (2017), which won the Lambda Award, and the novel The Terraformers (forthcoming). As a science journalist, they are a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and have a column in New Scientist. They are also the co-host of the Hugo Award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. Previously, they were the founder of io9, and served as the editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262543439
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Series:	MIT Press / Radium Age
Pages:	202
Sales rank:	1,083,229
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

E. V. Odle (1890–1942) was a Bloomsbury-adjacent magazine editor in London.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword vii
Introduction: The Radical Future of The Clockwork Man xiii
Analee Newitz

1 The Coming of the Clockwork Man 1
2 The Wonderful Cricketer 19
3 The Mystery of the Clockwork Man 33
4 Arthur Withers Thinks Things Out 51
5 The Clockwork Man Investigates Matters 69
6 "It was not so, it is not so, and, indeed, God forbid it should be so." 87
7 The Clockwork Man Explains Himself 109
8 The Clock 125
9 Gregg 139
10 Last Appearance of the Clockwork Man 159

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Edwin Vincent Odle’s ominous, droll, and unforgettable The Clockwork Man is a missing link between Lewis Carroll and John Sladek or Philip K. Dick.” 
—Jonathan Lethem, author of The Arrest
 
“It is a striking and original book, and there is a notable sermon in it for those who can dissociate sermons from long faces.”
—The Bookman (1923)

Editorial Reviews

"An excellent example of the promise of the Radium Age series, giving deserved attention to a hilarious and prescient work of science fiction that has almost been forgotten."
—Shelf Awareness

“Fluidity versus fixedness as markers of peace versus conflict is a strikingly resonant argument to find in a novel that’s just under a century old, and it more than justifies time spent in the company of The Clockwork Man.”
—The Los Angeles Review of Books

About the Radium Age Series:

“Joshua Glenn’s admirable Radium Age series [is] devoted to early- 20th-century science fiction and fantasy.” 
— The Washington Post

“Long live the Radium Age.”
— The Los Angeles Times

 “It’s an attractive crusade. […] Glenn’s project is well suited to providing an organizing principle for an SF reprint line, to the point where I’m a little surprised that I can’t think of other similarly high-profile examples of reprint-as-critical-advocacy. ”
—The Los Angeles Review of Books

“Neglected classics of early 20th-century sci-fi in spiffily designed paperback editions.”
—The Financial Times

“New editions of a host of under-discussed classics of the genre.”
—Tor.com

“Shows that ‘proto-sf’ was being published much more widely, alongside other kinds of fiction, in a world before it emerged as a genre and became ghettoised.”
—BSFA Review

“A huge effort to help define a new era of science fiction.”
—Transfer Orbit

“An excellent start at showcasing the strange wonders offered by the Radium Age.”
—Maximum Shelf

From the Publisher

05/01/2022

Odle's 1923 proto-cyborg novel starts off like a P. G. Wodehouse story gone bonkers. A cricket match at the village of Great Wymering devolves into mayhem owing to the sudden appearance on the pitch of a weirdly herky-jerky fellow, stammering and clicking and wagging his ears. This odd individual turns out to be a castaway from mankind's multidimensional future, concealing under a red wig and bowler hat whirring dials whose malfunction has stranded him in our decidedly provincial three dimensions. The satiric misadventures that ensue often reflect two unsettling preoccupations of the era: Einsteinian relativity and women's rights. Some are horrified by the Clockwork Man's shocking metamorphic powers, while others excitedly anticipate the marriage of man and machine that we now term the Singularity. Readers ultimately discover a sobering aspect of life in the 59th century—and learn who winds up all those clocks—in a poignant finale that anticipates the technological anxieties at the heart of much speculative fiction to this day. VERDICT Odd but no mere curiosity, this whimsical yet haunting novella reads like a missing link between Victorian and Golden Age science fiction, as befits the aim of MIT Press's new "Radium Age" series to recover neglected classics of early 20th-century science fiction.

Library Journal

Being a stranger in a strange land is never a comforting experience. Narrator Ralph Lister's animated performance captures all the bewilderment associated with that circumstance in this curious tale about a half-man/half-machine from thousands of years in the future who suddenly appears in 1920s England. Lister’s voice moves from the stuffy accents of the British aristocracy to the high-pitched squeak of the Clockwork Man's machinery as it starts malfunctioning, along with associated beeps, buzzes, and, on one occasion, growling. Lister goes after it all with gusto and conveys the deadpan humor with skill. Despite the silliness, the story leaves listeners thinking about how much humanity must be sacrificed to create the ultimate being. E.E. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile