author
E. V. (Edwin Vincent) Odle
1890–1942
Best remembered for the offbeat science-fiction novel The Clockwork Man, this British writer and editor moved easily between fiction, criticism, and magazine work. His small body of work still stands out for its wit, strangeness, and early futuristic imagination.
1 Audiobook
The Clockwork Man
by E. V. (Edwin Vincent) Odle
About the author
Born in Brockley, Kent, in 1890, Edwin Vincent Odle was an English writer, critic, playwright, and editor. He wrote across several forms, but he is most often remembered today for The Clockwork Man (1923), a comic and imaginative science-fiction novel that later earned a reputation as an early classic of the genre.
Odle was connected to literary circles in London and also worked in magazine publishing. Sources on speculative fiction note that he edited The Argosy in Britain during the interwar years, adding editorial work to a career that already included short fiction and criticism.
Although he did not leave behind a large or widely famous catalog, his writing has lasted because of its quirky originality. He died in Bath, Somerset, on February 21, 1942, and remains of particular interest to readers curious about the experimental edges of early twentieth-century science fiction.