Egaeus Press have just announced publication of a new anthology, Insidious Mechanisms, Tales of Cursed Clockwork and Cyclical Anomalies, “presenting fifteen previously unpublished short stories, set against the ticks and whirs of unfathomable devices, synchronised, in apparent mockery of the true cycles of nature and human desire.” Contributors include Charles Wilkinson, D.P. Watt, R. Ostermeier, John Gale and Colin Insole.
My own story, ‘Seven Clocks and a Music Box’ was inspired by a music box I bought in a curio shop in Holt, Norfolk, whose proprietor said he could not identify the tune, though it seemed familiar. I like the idea of just such an elusive melody. Then, in the back streets of a Westmorland town, I chanced upon a closed clock museum, and in a nearby antiques shop, what looked like some of its discarded books. These things began to mesh, and I then recalled I had used a clock-worker character before, in two Connoisseur stories, who could make a return. She and the narrator encounter a gallery of strange and singular clocks and discover the secret of the music box.
(Mark Valentine)
I've been haunted by clocks since as a small child I saw an episode of the original Outer Limits TV show in which actor David McCallum appeared as a time traveler who shared an Old Dark House with Sir Cedric Hardwicke. There is a great line of dialogue I've never forgotten. In reference to McCallum's character, Hardwicke says, "Mr Hobart tinkers with time, even as time has tinkered with Mr Hobart." Upstairs in the ODH there is a room full of ticking clocks that you can hear in the background all through the episode. Many years ago while wandering through rural Georgia (US) I came upon a small town that had an enormous free-standing clock in the town square. I noticed that it was stuck on 11:30. It was a lively town, no Stephen King vampires there, so I asked a couple people at the local diner about the clock and why it was broken. They just shrugged. Even now I like to think of that little town, stuck in time, and wonder what gateway would be opened if that click were ever to be fixed!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Stephen, those are two resonant memories of encounters with clocks. There is something a bit uncanny about stopped public clocks. Mark
DeleteMy grandfather was the neighborhood handyman with a specialty in clock repair. As a child he would let me play in his workshop and he taught me the fascinating mechanics of how the correct ratio of gears could measure the passage of time. Which of course eventually led me to question how fast was time actually going by and why does it slow down as we approach the speed of light. Learning about clockwork mechanics also led to an interest in automatons and their life span, which was directly related to their internal clockwork mechanism and the time that passed once they were brought to life. Perhaps if they moved fast enough they could slow down time enough to live forever. Just some timeless questions for a Sunday morning.
ReplyDeleteThere once was a girl named bright
Who could travel faster than light
She left one day in a relative way
And returned home the previous night.
Thank you, Gary, for that interesting recollection and insight - and for the splendid rhyme!
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