The Clockwork Man

The Clockwork Man is an early 20th century speculative fiction novel by E.V. Odle. Originally published in 1923, this reformat and re-release with extra commentary as part of the Radium Age Series was released 3rd May 2022 from the MIT Press. It's 202 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. 

This early classic is less well known and often pushed aside in classroom use by showier examples of the time and genre, including R.U.R., Metropolis, and Automata. They make valid points about humanity (or the lack thereof), but this one by Odle throws hardwired testosterone fueled violence into the mix with an examination of gender and actions. 

There are moments of true humor, including some grousing dialogue when the Clockwork Man shows up from the distant future in a village cricket match (Ok, he's not really human, I'll give you that, but he sure can play cricket, let's not be hasty throwing him out just yet). There are insights which, despite being almost 100 years old, still resonate this minute. This book first showed up on my literary radar in a classroom setting alongside Margaret Atwood and Asimov.

Readers expecting a story arc with identifiable beginning, middle, climax, denouement, and resolution are going to be disappointed. It reads more like a thought exercise and there are no solid protagonists or antagonists. Some of the language was (to me) rather overblown and convoluted. That being said, however, there's a fair bit of profundity here and it's a worthwhile read on the whole. 

The book is accompanied by a foreword which takes up about 10% of the total page count. It contains an erudite and cogent introduction to the work in context to the time in which it was written. It also contains spoilers for the actual read, so I *strongly* recommend that readers who are new to the work refrain from reading the introduction before finishing the work.

Four stars. This is an important early work of science/speculative fiction. It's nice to see this series reprinting and updating important early works of SF/F. 

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.