Stranded In The Future

De: Robyn Hitchcock

Narrado por: Robyn Hitchcock

Hitchcock's second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fuelled his early creative output

'British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility . . . Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock's music to find this enchanting.' ―Publishers Weekly, on 1967

'Memoirists rarely begin their work with a stroke of genuine inspiration, and Robyn Hitchcock's ingenious idea to limit his account of his life to the titular year gives this sharp, funny, finely written book an unusually keen, wistful intensity without sacrificing its sense of the breathtaking sweep of time. I absolutely adored every line of 1967 and every moment I spent reading it.' ―Michael Chabon, author of Telegraph Avenue, on 1967

STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It's about obsession, and obsessive behaviour. Spanning from 1968 to 1978, it takes in the mythology surrounding Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (though it doesn't name him) and hinges on Robyn Hitchcock's teenage girlfriend (she isn't named either). The book explores the way that Hitchcock, in his own head, linked these two figures to each other, although they never actually met.

On the way, the story mines the incremental hangover of the 1970s as Hitchcock begins to play live, teaches himself to write songs, and eventually forms the Soft Boys. There's a side order of trolleybuses too! Hitchcock's beautiful prose will resonate far beyond the fans of his music, and build on the literary following he established with his first book, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left.©2026 Robyn Hitchcock (P)2026 Little, Brown Book Group Limited

Reseñas de la Crítica

Incredibly enough, when decades ago I first swooned for the Soft Boys and their shambolic leader, I said to myself and anyone who'd listen, "This is the sole psychedelic musician I can imagine writing not one, but actually two witty, self-effacing, phantasmagorical autofictional memoirs in quick succession as he rounds into late middle age." Even more incredibly, I have been completely vindicated in this left-field speculation, and we are all the better for it, as Stranded in the Future has capitalized on the opportunities opened by 1967's close focus on that single year of boyish self-invention and vaulted us into the next act, in which mannish boy becomes boyish man. Now our correspondent only has to repeat this astonishing trick ten more times to complete his imperishable twelve-volume epic A Dance to the Music of Hitchcock (Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel)

Hitchcock is a master storyteller

Robyn Hitchcock is one of the singular artistic voices in the last 50 years. Uniquely and utterly (he might say hopelessly) himself, he has written over 30 albums worth of material and there's not a bad song in the bunch, only songs that are more user-friendly than others. Those of us who have been longtime fans have been waiting for a book for a long time and while he ultimately chose structure over something more resembling Burroughs or Dylan's "Tarantula", there is still enough surrealism within the structure to keep it pure Hitchcock. Hearing him read his literary work in his own voice makes one wish that he would read other books out loud to us too. It's a voice that's a perfect blend of the sinister, the macabre, the whimsical, and the spiritual. Hopefully another memoir comes out. It's not a direct history; in fact he says upfront that a bunch of the book is made up, but personally I think a lot more of it is true than he's letting on. While his live shows have gone from thrilling spontaneity to homogenous recycling of his "hits", his pen and signature wit have not slowed down at all with the books. Keep em coming!