Mike's Reviews > The Clockwork Man

So after a week or so to ponder this book I think I have figured out why I didn't like it.

Ostensibly this book is about a 'Clockwork Man' who stumbles back through time from the far future and ends up in the middle of a 1920's English village; his appearance is then followed by the requisite shenanigans. That, however, is not what happens. In fact very little happens in the book (shenanigans or otherwise) because this is not really a novel. There is no protagonist or antagonist, there is no rise in tensions as the story progresses culminating in a resolution of plot, the state of the world after the story ends is little different than the state of the world before the story. Simply put there is no there there (or, for those of you who remember 1980's commercials: "Where's the beef?")

This is a book that deals with ideas and notions embodied by characters instead of actual characters. The sharpest contrast between these ideas is represented by a doctor (embodying a conservative outlook on human development) and his young friend (who embodies an idealistic view of progress and the future). The appearance of the Clockwork Man (who, despite being the title of the book, is rarely on page) merely galvanizes a clash between the doctor and his friend.

Of course calling it a clash may be selling it a bit too much. They merely disagree over the fate of mankind (a fate they do not actually have any control over so it is, at best, a philosophical disagreement instead of an operational one) and what the Clockwork Man represents but nothing more than that. There are other characters that embody other ideas but the writing was so unengaging I really didn't care about them. There may also have been some commentary about feminism too but, once again, the writing was of such a poor quality and the framing of the story to tailored towards someone with a 1920's frame of reference it was lost in the rest of the story.

This book was written in the 1920's for a 1920's audience. The writing reflects a lot of conventions of the time and was speaking to a contemporary audience. This is a time where The Great War was still a very fresh memory. Where all the wonders and marvels modern technology afforded mankind were turned towards the arts of war with devastating consequences. Who was to say, at the time, if progress really was so great given the death it left in its wake. The two main characters, I am sure, spoke to the tension in society between the forces of progress and conservatism . However whatever signaling Odle offered to signify these positions and their tenants were lost on me, a 21st century reader. The book itself is much too dated to be relevant to the issues and discourse of our times. Compare that to Animal Farm, which works as both an allegory for the Soviet Union, the danger of totalitarianism ,and is an engaging story to boot. Those are the sorts of political and social commentaries that survive the test. The Clockwork Man, however, falls woefully short of that mark.

Which is a shame because at the very end we get the fascinating story of the Clockwork Man and the strange future he originated from sounded pretty neat. The changes that were made to his body that Odle came up with and the mulitform world of the future were also rather visionary (this was apparently the first book that featured a cyborg). But Odle shunted the Clockwork Man to the side of the narrative and half the time he was on the page he was malfunctioning and not capable of effectively communicating. I think there is a seed of some fantastic speculative fiction somewhere in the book, but Odle never bothered to cultivate it, instead concentrating on using the story as an allegory of the contemporary political scene.

At the end of the day this could have been a fantastic book and a cornerstone of early science fiction if it had concentrated on the more transcendental aspect of the story instead of the provincial political allegory. Instead it is at best a footnote in the history of science fiction (and not a very well written book on top of that).