The Clock of the Centuries

Robida, Albert. The Clock of the Centuries. French: L'horloge des siècles, 1902. English adaptation, Brian Stableford. "Introduction and Notes by Brian Stableford." "A Black Coat Press Book," imprint of Hollywood Comics. Tarzana, CA: Black Coat Press, 2008. Includes also Yesterday Now (Jadis chez Aujourd'Hui, 1890).[1]

Publisher's blurb calls the Clock story "notable as the first full-length literary account of time in reverse. In it, time starts running backwards, the dead come back to life and human society is thrown into utter chaos."

In a manuscript of a chapter entitled "4. Post-Vernean Victorian SF," John J. Pierce finds that "While there is talk of 'ameliorating' the past, it’s good riddance when railroads and steam power are uninvented and handicrafts replace factory labor"; and that "Rather than a Victorian in the strict sense, Robida may have been a nostalgic pastoralist at heart, verging in later years on medievalist," notably in The Clock of the Centuries, so see for a critique of industrial culture and its effects on humans — including the human body — anticipating not just time reversal but E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops."

RDE, John J. Pierce, 20Ap20