Insert name here's Reviews > The Clockwork Man

Brilliant and unjustly neglected novel from the mostly forgotten "radium age" between the scientific romance period of HG Wells and Jules Verne, and the golden age of science fiction starting in the 1930s. The writing style reminds me much more of Wells than golden age sci-fi and is much more socially conscious than science fiction in the decades that followed, which often abandoned social critique (in response to McCarthyism and the Red Scare) in favor of hard science and adventure.

This book functions on many levels: as satire of scientific rationalism and the myth of progress, as feminist parable, as almost Sherlockian mystery as the characters struggle to uncover the mystery of the Clockwork Man, as character study--and manages to be an entertaining read, to boot.

The story follows three characters as they encounter, and try to make sense of, the sudden appearance of a strange "Clockwork Man" who appears in the middle of a game of cricket. Two of the characters are also negotiating relationships with modern women who are not content to accept socially prescribed gender roles; the older man resists this new dynamic, while the younger accepts and even embraces it. I've read a lot of fiction from this time period, and while perhaps not exceptional compared to many current titles (although it's also discouraging how much sexist attitudes still pervade literature), and not without problem, this is one of the most progressive titles on gender I've read in genre fiction from this time period.

The satire on progress is comparable to Carel Kapek's R.U.R., but more nuanced in that, upon finishing the story, I felt the author deliberately left open the question of whether there is hope--whether man's (gendered noun deliberate) destructive embrace of "progress" is an inevitable, doomed pursuit--as R.U.R. seemed to suggest--or whether it is possible to diverge from this path.