Description: 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. Considered the original cyborg novel, and perhaps the original singularity novel, too.
Review Quotes: "An excellent example of the promise of the Radium Age series, giving deserved attention to a hilarious and prescient work of science fiction that has almost been forgotten."
--Shelf Awareness
--The Los Angeles Review of Books About the Radium Age Series: "Joshua Glenn's admirable Radium Age series [is] devoted to early- 20th-century science fiction and fantasy."
-- The Washington Post "Long live the Radium Age."
-- The Los Angeles Times "It's an attractive crusade. [...] Glenn's project is well suited to providing an organizing principle for an SF reprint line, to the point where I'm a little surprised that I can't think of other similarly high-profile examples of reprint-as-critical-advocacy. "
--The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Neglected classics of early 20th-century sci-fi in spiffily designed paperback editions."
--The Financial Times "New editions of a host of under-discussed classics of the genre."
--Tor.com "Shows that 'proto-sf' was being published much more widely, alongside other kinds of fiction, in a world before it emerged as a genre and became ghettoised."
--BSFA Review
"A huge effort to help define a new era of science fiction."
--Transfer Orbit "An excellent start at showcasing the strange wonders offered by the Radium Age."
--Maximum Shelf