The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

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.

This month's read wasn't too long. There were some interesting scenes between the Clockwork Man, the Doctor, Gregg, and Arthur. But the interactions between humans seemed quite old-fashioned and the clockwork inner workings of future humans seemed not so imaginative. I prefer HG Wells' visions of the future, even if they are similarly pessimistic.

I've started it, I like some jokes, like “Of course,” he said, slowly, “you don’t understand. It isn’t to be expected that you would understand. Why, you haven’t even got a clock! That was the first thing I noticed about you.”

Ch. 3 All these clamouring reforms represented to him merely a disinclination to bother about the necessary affairs of life, an evasion of inevitable evils, a refusal to accept life as a school of learning by trial and error. Besides, if women got hold of the idea of efficiency there would be an end to all things. They would make a worse muddle of the “mad dream” than the men. Women made fewer mistakes and they were temperamentally inclined towards the pushing of everything that they undertook to the point of violent and uncomfortable success.

This is a humorous novel and what may seem like a misogynistic claim today is actually the opposite, for if you read original articles about women studying in universities or on women voting (in the US, introduced when this book was published), they usually claimed that women just unable to do these things, while here, the narrator is afraid that they are better than men in those

I finished it, my review https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Here is my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I really enjoyed the introduction by Annalee Newitz in the MIT Press edition.

Thomas wrote: "Here is my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I really enjoyed the introduction by Annalee Newitz in the MIT Press edition."

That intro was great, even if it is better read after and not before. It can be found online here https://www.hilobrow.com/2018/08/02/t...

I read this a while ago. Quite liked it. The old English sensibility always gives me a giggle. As someone who grew up watching cricket and absorbing British mannerisms through TV (mum used to call her mother “the bucket woman” after Hyacinth in Keeping Up Appearances. We still call a friend Delboy after the main character in Only Fools and Horses) so the beginning had me tittering from the start.

It does make me wonder how much is lost without this connection. Old novels always lose something to modern sensibilities but there are layers of cultural understanding too (like all media). As an example, it’s hard to understate the social faux pas of distracting the batter’s line of sight, as the clockwork man did on page 1. This is a sport that introduced sight screens in the ‘60’s to avoid just this kind of thing. I can remember televised games stopping because some idiot stood in front of the screens, much to the derision of the commentary team, who used the same descriptor as myself. It just wasn’t cricket…

Find it interesting that this came out the same year as Karel Capek’s R.U.R.

This was a strange little book until I realized it was a humorous book as well as science fiction. It did take me a while to get into it.
I found the last chapter to be very poignant. Poor clockwork man!

An odd little book, light entertainment but full of ideas. I agree that the Newitz intro (thanks for the pointer! I read a cheap ebook edition) is very good.