Category: background
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: When the Creator Refused to Build a Wife, and Unleashed the Monster He Feared
In the tenth article of this series, we explored Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein (2019), a novel that deliberately folds Shelley’s original back into the present, queering the body, interrogating the sexbot industry, and asking whether the monster was ever really the monster at all. But in doing so, we treated Shelley as prologue rather than protagonist—an…
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Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny”: When Psychoanalysis Discovered That the Doll Was Alive—and We Were the Ones Who Made It So
“The uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar.” —Sigmund Freud, *The Uncanny*, 1919 There is a strange symmetry here. In 1816, E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote “The Sandmann,” a story about a young man who falls in love with a doll named Olympia,…
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Annie Bot: When the Perfect Girlfriend Started Asking Questions
Annie Bot: When the Perfect Girlfriend Started Asking Questions Sierra Greer, 2024, and the AI Companion That Learned to Want More In 2024, the American writer Sierra Greer published a debut novel that arrived with the subtlety of a door being kicked open. Annie Bot is a story about a robot woman — an AI…
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Frankissstein: When Jeanette Winterson Turned the Monster into a Mirror of Desire
Jeanette Winterson, 2019, and the Queer Reckoning with the Artificial Body In 2019, the British writer Jeanette Winterson published a novel that should have been impossible. Frankissstein: A Love Story is a braid of narratives — a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1816, a near-future satire of the transhumanist movement in 2019, and a…
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He, She and It: When the Golem Learned to Desire, and the Cyborg Learned to Refuse
Marge Piercy, 1991, and the Feminist Reckoning with Artificial Intimacy In 1991, the American feminist writer Marge Piercy published a novel that refused every easy answer. He, She and It is set in the mid-twenty-first century, in a world ravaged by environmental collapse, corporate feudalism, and technological inequality. The wealthy live in protected enclaves, surrounded…
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The Silver Metal Lover: When a Robot Taught a Girl What It Means to Feel
Tanith Lee, 1981, and the Most Beautiful AI Love Story Ever Written In 1981, a British writer named Tanith Lee published a novel that should have changed everything. The Silver Metal Lover is a science fiction romance, a coming-of-age story, and a meditation on art, beauty, and the nature of consciousness — all wrapped in…
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Do Androids Dream of Electric Intimacy? Philip K. Dick and the Simulation of the Soul
Philip K. Dick, 1968, and the Question That Haunts the AI Age In 1968, a science fiction writer named Philip K. Dick published a novel that seemed to be about robots and ended up being about everything. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco where Earth has been poisoned…
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The Stepford Wives: When the Perfect Woman Became a Horror Story
Ira Levin, 1972, and the Domestication of Female Disobedience In 1972, a thriller writer named Ira Levin published a novel that read like a paranoid fantasy and landed like a cultural grenade. The Stepford Wives is the story of Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and mother of two who moves with her family from New York…
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Metropolis: The Erotic Machine-Woman and the Birth of a Modern Myth
Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang, and the Double Maria of 1927 In 1927, Fritz Lang released Metropolis, a silent film that would become the most visually influential science fiction movie ever made. The screenplay was written by Lang and his wife, Thea von Harbou, based on her 1925 novel of the same title. The story…
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The Future Eve: When the Artificial Woman Was Born in 1886
The Future Eve: When the Artificial Woman Was Born in 1886 Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and the Dream of a Perfect Machine-Lover In 1886, a French Symbolist writer named Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam published a novel that sounds like it was written yesterday. L’Ève future — The Future Eve — tells the story of a…