Automated Alice

Jeff Noon

Automated Alice

"Think Borges crossed with Philip Larkin on acid and you've got some idea of the power of its very English enchantment." -- Arena

In the last years of his life, the fantasist Lewis Carroll wrote a third Alice book. This mysterious work was never published or even shown to anybody.

It has only recently been discovered. Now, at last, the world can read of Automated Alice and her fabulous adventures in the future.

That's not quite true. Automated Alice was in reality written by Zenith O'Clock, the writer of wrongs. In the book he sends Alice through time, tumbling from the Victorian age to land in 1998, in Manchester, a small town in the North of England.

Oh dear, that's not at all right. This trequel to Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass was actually written by Jeff Noon. Zenith O'Clock is only a character invented by Jeff Noon and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely accidental. What Alice encounters in the automated future is mostly accidental too... a series of misadventures, even weirder than your dreams.

"Captures Carroll's style effortlessly... a weird Alice with a contemporary edge." -- Mail on Sunday

"A wild, psychedelic vision... I doubt that there will be a more joyously inventive book published in Britain this year." -- Manchester Evening News

Now in my trembling days I seek

All comfort to be found

In contemplation of the past;

When we rowed aground

At Godstow on the Thames' bank,

With my sweet Alice bound.

And there beneath a spreading elm

I told a tale of joy

To a child who smiled to hear

This older man's employ.

But now that girl is married to

Some fine and dashing boy.

And I am near my maker's house,

There to sup the chalice,

With one last tale to tell as time

Works my shape with malice;

Of how a child will become my

Automated Alice.

Now in these final days I seek

To find a future clime;

In which my Alice can escape

The radishes of time.

Faster, faster ticks the clock that

Turns to end this rhyme.

Through the Clock's Workings

Alice was begi

The thought of that made Alice shiver so much that she clutched at her doll ever so tightly! Her Great Aunt was a very strict old lady and she had given Alice this doll as a present with the words, "Alice, the doll looks just like you when you're in a tantrum." Alice thought that the doll looked nothing like her at all, despite the fact that her Great Aunt had sewn it an exact (if rather smaller) replica of Alice's favourite pinafore; the splendidly warm and red one she was currently wearing. Alice called the doll Celia, not really knowing the reason for her choice. Alice would often do things without knowing why, and this made her Great Aunt very angry indeed: "Alice, my dear," she would pronounce, "can't you make sense for once?"

Alice now hugged the Celia Doll even closer to her chest, where she wrapped it in the folds of her pinafore: this was all because of the lightning that was flashing madly outside the window, and the November rain that was falling onto the glass, sounding very much like the pattering of a thousand horses' hooves. Her Great Aunt's house was directly opposite a large, sprawling cemetery, which Alice thought a horrible place to live.

But the very worst thing about Manchester was the fact that it was -- oh dear! -- always raining. "Oh Celia!" Alice sighed to her doll, "if only Great Uncle Mortimer was here to play with us!" Great Uncle Mortimer was a fu

These idle thoughts only made Alice realize how dreadfully bored she was. Great Aunt Ermintrude had three daughters of her own (triplets in fact) but they were all much older than Alice (and Alice always had trouble telling them apart), so they weren't much fun at all! There was nothing to do in Manchester. The only sounds she could hear were the pitter-pattering of the rain against the window and the tick-tocking, tick-tocking of the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. The housemaid had dusted the clock this very morning and the door of it was still open. Alice could see the brass pendulum swinging back and forth, back and forth. It made her feel quite, quite sleepy, but at the same time quite, quite restless. It was at this very moment that she noticed a solitary white ant marching across the breakfast table towards a sticky dollop of Ecklethorpe's Radish Jam; the maid had neglected to remove this in her cleaning. Alice had tried a spoonful of the radish jam (it was Uncle Mortimer's favourite preserve) on a piece of toast that very morning but had found the taste of it too sickly sour. The ant was now ru

The white ant, of course, did not bother to make an answer.

Instead it was Whippoorwill who spoke to Alice. "Who is it that smiles at ten to two," he squawked, "and frowns at twenty past seven, every single day?" Whippoorwill was a green-and-yellow-plumed parrot with a bright orange beak who lived in a brass cage. He was a very talkative parrot and this pleased Alice -- at least she had somebody to converse with. The trouble was, Whippoorwill could only speak in riddles.

"I don't know," answered Alice, grateful for the diversion. "Who does smile at ten to two, and frowns at twenty past seven, every single day?"