- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Published: 7/7/26
- IBSN: 9781636142999
- e-IBSN: 9781636143002
- Genre: Art/Music/Pop Culture
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Stranded in the Future
Hitchcock’s second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output.
Now available for preorder. All preorders will ship on or before July 7, 2026.
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Forthcoming: 7/7/26
Description
STRANDED IN THE FUTURE is a kind of dystopian self-portrait. It’s about obsession, and obsessive behavior. 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.
- Subjects: Forthcoming, Music/Popular Culture/Art, Nonfiction
- Tags: Robyn Hitchcock, Stranded in the Future
Book Details
Author
ROBYN HITCHCOCK is a rock ’n’ roll surrealist. Born in London in 1953, he describes his songs as “pictures you can listen to.” As much a child of Dalí, de Chirico, and J.G. Ballard as of his 1960s musical heroes, he is a master of the absurd, reveling in the beauty of the unexpected. His first publicly visible band, the Soft Boys (1976–81), has remained an influential art-rock touchstone for generations of musicians. Hitchcock has floated at a tangent to the mainstream for nearly five decades, and his songs have been performed by R.E.M., the Replacements, Neko Case, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Lou Barlow, Grant-Lee Phillips, Sparklehorse, and Suzanne Vega with the Grateful Dead, among others. He came of age in the 1960s while he attended Winchester College, an eccentric boarding school in the south of England. This is the subject of 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left, which is both a popular memoir and an album. Hitchcock splits his time between London and Nashville, TN, with his wife Emma Swift and two cats, Ringo and Tubby.