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.
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“Edwin Vincent Odle’s ominous, droll, and unforgettable The Clockwork Man is a missing link between Lewis Carroll and John Sladek or Philip K. Dick. Considered with them, it suggests an alternate lineage for SF, springing as much from G. K. Chesterton’s sensibility as from H.G. Wells’.”
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Jonathan Lethem