The Clockwork Man (The Radium Age Science Fiction Series)

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.

Considered the first cyborg novel, The Clockwork Man was first published in 1923 — the same year as Karel Capek's pioneering android play, R.U.R.

Edwin Vincent Odle (1890–1942) was founding editor of the British short-story magazine Argosy, and a member of avant-garde author Dorothy Richardson's circle. Odle's only other science fiction novel was never published, and is now lost.

Annalee Newitz is editor-in-chief of the science fiction and science blog io9. She's the author of Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction (2013) and Pretend We're Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (2006).