Okay, I’m hooked. Even though I’m in the middle of two Tom Cox books I will be ordering another. I had thought that Notebook was the perfect “just before bed” read - take in just as much as you want in short snippets. But if the other stories in Help The Witch are as wonderfully inventive as ROBOT, it will be a perfect way to sluff off the day’s cares and put my brain in an entirely different place.
This story was like walking along a trail in the mountains and seeing what appears to be an interesting path off to the side. You take the diversion and realize happily that you were correct. But after a few steps the steepness downhill speeds you up and before long you are slipping along soft moss into The Twilight Zone.
I love Stick in the Wheel’s version of this, first heard on the record but a couple of times live as well. Nicola’s pause before ‘on a hovercraft’ is comedy gold. Brilliantly unsettling on paper and to hear.
This left me with a wiggly feeling in my tummy. Is it our future to be the deus ex machina? the ghost in the machine? the spirit animating a robot? Is that why the robot came back in time? Warning to all inventors: don't invent rototsocks, or anything that could be renamed rotorsocks.
“A strong gust of wind harassed the tops of the trees” and
“After that all was very silent, silent in a blanker, more bottomless way than even the woods when I walked in them at 3am, searching for something I could not name..”
Also! Your reading of this and your commentary made this even more excellent (is that a thing? "even more excellent"?) Liminal is a fab word that is and has been worked to death, I agree.
Is the narrator now the ghost in the machine? Is he even in the machine? The Future=The Machine=the Void? So many questions. The ending left me feeling as one does after being on one of those spinning county fair rides, that you are spatially detached and proprioception has literally flown off with the piskies. I need to drink my tea, but I think that I cannot. 🤖🫖
"We have that figured out in the future. We have ways of sorting it" are the funniest lines I've read for a long, long time. I've always maintained you are The New Douglas Adams. (Hello Tom)
Okay, I’m hooked. Even though I’m in the middle of two Tom Cox books I will be ordering another. I had thought that Notebook was the perfect “just before bed” read - take in just as much as you want in short snippets. But if the other stories in Help The Witch are as wonderfully inventive as ROBOT, it will be a perfect way to sluff off the day’s cares and put my brain in an entirely different place.
This story was like walking along a trail in the mountains and seeing what appears to be an interesting path off to the side. You take the diversion and realize happily that you were correct. But after a few steps the steepness downhill speeds you up and before long you are slipping along soft moss into The Twilight Zone.
I love Stick in the Wheel’s version of this, first heard on the record but a couple of times live as well. Nicola’s pause before ‘on a hovercraft’ is comedy gold. Brilliantly unsettling on paper and to hear.
This left me with a wiggly feeling in my tummy. Is it our future to be the deus ex machina? the ghost in the machine? the spirit animating a robot? Is that why the robot came back in time? Warning to all inventors: don't invent rototsocks, or anything that could be renamed rotorsocks.
The most surprising element for me was the aunt’s tractor accident. I don’t know why
Enjoyed that! My favourite lines:
“A strong gust of wind harassed the tops of the trees” and
“After that all was very silent, silent in a blanker, more bottomless way than even the woods when I walked in them at 3am, searching for something I could not name..”
Love this story!
Wonderful. Thank you. So well written, I was drawn in too.
Thanks Andrea!
Also! Your reading of this and your commentary made this even more excellent (is that a thing? "even more excellent"?) Liminal is a fab word that is and has been worked to death, I agree.
Thanks Wendy!
Is the narrator now the ghost in the machine? Is he even in the machine? The Future=The Machine=the Void? So many questions. The ending left me feeling as one does after being on one of those spinning county fair rides, that you are spatially detached and proprioception has literally flown off with the piskies. I need to drink my tea, but I think that I cannot. 🤖🫖
I liked this in the book, especially the rotorsocks - I’d like some of them - and the acorn rain.
Cheers Pam. Unsurprisingly, I had experienced some acorn rain just before I wrote it.
"We have that figured out in the future. We have ways of sorting it" are the funniest lines I've read for a long, long time. I've always maintained you are The New Douglas Adams. (Hello Tom)
Such a powerful ending!
And I found this scary. Perhaps the scariest thing is the way the future is so sure of itself.
Thank you.b
Well, that's a bit shivery, isn't it?
(Still probably my favourite of your books. Sorry about that. I am quite easily persuaded by effortlessly funny short stories)
Wonderful story! Great ending.