The Prayer Machine

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

First U.S. edition bound in black cloth. A Fine copy in a fine dj.

Genres: Science Fiction

205 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Christopher Hodder-Williams was an English writer, mainly of science fiction, but he wrote novels about aviation and espionage as well. Before his career in writing, Hodder-Williams joined the army in 1944, and served in the Middle East and lived in Kenya and New York, later settling in the UK. Many of his books are early examples of what would later be called techno-thrillers. He also worked as a composer and lyricist, and wrote numerous plays for television.

Reviews

[Zippergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A blast from the past, this gem from the 1970s is stripped down, straight to the heart future shock brain candy. No more, or less, confounding than The Time Travellers Wife, it's a nervous breakdown turned inside out. Or is it? How can other patients suffering from schizophrenia share your vision of a dystopic future a hundred years hence when GMOs will bond plastics and organisms in a fatal chimera? When the PUTER "is only obeying the masses; but paradoxically the masses have produced a situation where they have to obey the Puter." "It's non-ethical to upset the death rate."

Sigmund Freud, Roger Zelazny and H.G. Wells all play nicely together, though at times you might wonder if you, yourself, have missed your meds. The abundant dialog is staccato, running for pages, with stunningly beautiful passages, "Sometimes he saw her face, vignetted in stray light from the trail of iridescent comets which latticed the universe; then there would be a rushing sensation, a plummeting through space, a narrow tunnel through uncertainty and overlapping strips of time . . . events were superimposed on one another layer by layer, rather as one photographic transparency can be decked on another, and that on another, and so on, until none of them remains distinct. . . . Suppose you found you could move at will from one picture to another?" But, no worries, Hodder-Williams knows when to stop, no navel-gazing for five pages at a time, a la Zelazny.

I enjoyed the dry humor, the oblique commentary, "He was, after all, only obeying orders," and the future-speak where monitors are still televisions but thought is egologic and nano means now. Travel back to the past, your past perhaps if you remember Nixon and Fortran, and take a ride through a black hole to a future that may already be here.

[MR CHRISTOPHER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readable fantasy

Christopher Hodder-Williams returns to the land of fantasy with this book. Although well written, and to a certain extent enjoyable as a novel, it doesn't compare to his aviation books.

[Venture Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is published by Venture Press.