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Stranded in the Future
Not yet published
Expected 7 Jul 26
Hitchcock’s second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output
"British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock’s music to find this enchanting." —Publishers Weekly, on 1967
"Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock’s ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it." —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue, on 1967
STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It’s about obsession, and obsessive behavior. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett (though it doesn’t name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock’s teenage girlfriend (she isn’t named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met.
On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There’s a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock’s beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
"British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock’s music to find this enchanting." —Publishers Weekly, on 1967
"Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock’s ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it." —Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue, on 1967
STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It’s about obsession, and obsessive behavior. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett (though it doesn’t name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock’s teenage girlfriend (she isn’t named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met.
On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There’s a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock’s beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.
200 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication July 7, 2026
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February 25, 2026I don't think Robyn Hitchcock would mind if I said I didn't love his new memoir the way I did his first, 1967. After all, that book's subtitle was How I Got There And Why I Never Left, its thesis that his whole life was defined by one magical year and everything since just a process of working through its revelations. And this book's title...well. Which works on multiple levels, Hitchcock occasionally interjecting in italics from now, which is to say the recent past, as he details his erratic progress through the decade or so following the first book. Still, as he says, there's only so long left to get it all down, and "Each day hauls me further from the matrix of 1967, where things made a kind of sense. But it's either that or drop dead."
Inevitably, this all makes for a very different reading experience. The first book was an attempt to recreate a moment, a holographic gem in prose form, which I dipped into over the course of a week or two. This one is a little more like a conventional story, and I raced through it in 24 hours without really trying. An elliptical story, to be sure; this is Robyn Hitchcock we're talking about, and during the period where he's first starting to write songs about crustaceans, at that. Perhaps still scarred by an incident recounted here, where he got in trouble for using the real name of a disapproving neighbour on an early single, he massages and rearranges some of the facts, disguises some of the names. Not all; as Hitchcock starts operating on the edges of punk, with mixed results, the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello appear under their own names, but I searched Discogs in vain for the Kreem 'Orns and Hengist Fuddle. Foremost among the pseudonymous are Syd Barrett, who would be easy enough to identify even if the publicity material didn't give the game away, but in the book proper is always Mr B, except when he's Mr A (very much not the one who inspired Rorschach). The other obsession, running in parallel, being a doomed, destructive on-off relationship with a less easily identified Ms C. Where, if I'm honest, I never altogether got what kept her and Hitchcock disastrously orbiting each other for so long – possibly because, at this distance, it's a mystery to him too, and quite likely to her as well. Still, there's some beautiful writing about the various other romances snaking around that one, especially when it comes to his first time: "In years to come I will recall what happened, but never be able to remember more than a few atoms of how it felt." And some scattering of those atoms are preserved and shared here. If you want to know how the Soft Boys started, you'll find bits of that in this book, but it works much better as a series of snapshots of the inside of Robyn Hitchcock's head, or the outside world as seen from in there. Which, frankly, is what I always thought being a fan of him was really about anyway.
(Edelweiss ARC)
Inevitably, this all makes for a very different reading experience. The first book was an attempt to recreate a moment, a holographic gem in prose form, which I dipped into over the course of a week or two. This one is a little more like a conventional story, and I raced through it in 24 hours without really trying. An elliptical story, to be sure; this is Robyn Hitchcock we're talking about, and during the period where he's first starting to write songs about crustaceans, at that. Perhaps still scarred by an incident recounted here, where he got in trouble for using the real name of a disapproving neighbour on an early single, he massages and rearranges some of the facts, disguises some of the names. Not all; as Hitchcock starts operating on the edges of punk, with mixed results, the Sex Pistols and Elvis Costello appear under their own names, but I searched Discogs in vain for the Kreem 'Orns and Hengist Fuddle. Foremost among the pseudonymous are Syd Barrett, who would be easy enough to identify even if the publicity material didn't give the game away, but in the book proper is always Mr B, except when he's Mr A (very much not the one who inspired Rorschach). The other obsession, running in parallel, being a doomed, destructive on-off relationship with a less easily identified Ms C. Where, if I'm honest, I never altogether got what kept her and Hitchcock disastrously orbiting each other for so long – possibly because, at this distance, it's a mystery to him too, and quite likely to her as well. Still, there's some beautiful writing about the various other romances snaking around that one, especially when it comes to his first time: "In years to come I will recall what happened, but never be able to remember more than a few atoms of how it felt." And some scattering of those atoms are preserved and shared here. If you want to know how the Soft Boys started, you'll find bits of that in this book, but it works much better as a series of snapshots of the inside of Robyn Hitchcock's head, or the outside world as seen from in there. Which, frankly, is what I always thought being a fan of him was really about anyway.
(Edelweiss ARC)
Displaying 1 of 1 review