An orphan and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy train station. He desperately believes a broken automaton will make his dreams come true. But when his world collides with an eccentric girl and a bitter old man, Hugo's undercover life are put in jeopardy. Turn the pages, follow the illustrations and enter an unforgettable new world!

From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton—better known today as the robot—has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of humanity. Historian Minsoo Kang argues that to properly understand the human-as-machine and the human-as-fundamentally-different-from-machine, we must trace the origins of these ideas and examine how they were transformed by intellectual, cultural, and artistic appearances of the automaton throughout the history of the West. Kang tracks the first appearance of the automaton in ancient myths through the medieval and Renaissance periods, marks the proliferation of the automaton as a central intellectual concept in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent backlash during the Enlightenment, and details appearances in Romantic literature and the introduction of the living machine in the Industrial Age. He concludes with a reflection on the destructive confrontation between humanity and machinery in the modern era and the reverberations of the humanity-machinery theme today. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is an ambitious historical exploration and, at heart, an attempt to fully elucidate the rich and varied ways we have utilized our most uncanny creations to explore essential questions about ourselves.

Based on a story told to Ventura as a child. It centres on a Jewish watchmaker living in the Venice ghetto in 1943, one of the darkest periods of Nazi occupation. He decides to build an a robot to keep him company while he awaits the arrival of the police to deport the last Jews. Ventura, internationally known for his complex creative process, created the narrative script then built elaborate models and miniatures into film sets. The final artworks are the photographs of these tableaux. The Automaton is a photographic narrative from beginning to end.

The Automaton in English Renaissance Literature features original essays exploring the automaton-from animated statue to anthropomorphized machine-in the poetry, prose, and drama of England in the 16th and 17th centuries. Addressing the history and significance of the living machine in early modern literature, the collection places literary automata of the period within their larger aesthetic, historical, philosophical, and scientific contexts. While no single theory or perspective conscribes the volume, taken as a whole the collection helps correct an assumption that frequently emerges from a post-Enlightenment perspective: that these animated beings are by definition exemplars of the new science, or that they point necessarily to man's triumphant relationship to technology. On the contrary, automata in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem only partly and sporadically to function as embodiments of an emerging mechanistic or materialist worldview. Renaissance automata were just as likely not to confirm for viewers a hypothesis about the man-machine. Instead, these essays show, automata were often a source of wonder, suggestive of magic, proof of the uncannily animating effect of poetry-indeed, just as likely to unsettle the divide between man and divinity as that between man and matter.

America has fallen. Her states divided into haves and have nots. The East, now a shell of its former glory, ravaged by a terrorist attack that has left them in darkness and now lead by Deluge Worldwide, the largest corporation on Earth. The West, a functioning society built on progressive values and looking to export their ideals back East. Michael Connors is a Recruiter for Deluge's army. A former soldier and guinea pig for a government experiment gone wrong, Michael is uniquely adept at his job. One day, he is approached with a mission, even he may not be able to complete. Assassinate a scientist on the other side of the country. Michael must survive the months long journey across the US, partnered with the brutal and psychopathic Donahue, who's devil may care attitude makes life difficult for those in his way and those left behind in his wake. He has a whole world to contend with, but the most dangerous enemy may just be the one from within his own soul.

The Empress of Prussia is quite beside herself … When Lady Georgia Brunel and her Aunt Millie are summoned before the Empress of Prussia, the brilliant young woman does not seem herself. They soon discover the reason—she has been replaced by one of her own inventions, an automaton so lifelike that it seems even the Cabinet has not detected the switch. If the news gets out, there will be chaos in the Empire, and the heir to the throne will be only too happy to put off his next hunting trip to accept the crown. If ever Georgia needed the help of her friend Dustin Seacombe, it is now. But he has gone back to the Fifteen Colonies, leaving her with nothing but memories … and unanswered questions. So it is up to her and Millie to quietly sift truth from lies in an effort to find the Empress—and bring the villains behind the plot to light. When they hear whispers of an underground group of rogue inventors, Georgia wonders whether the Empress has actually abdicated of her own free will … or if her life is about to end in the destruction of an empire. The Automaton Empress is the second novel in the Lady Georgia Brunel Mysteries series set in the Magnificent Devices steampunk world. Though the books can be read as standalones, there are threads of love and family running through them all. No strong language, just a very proper kiss or two and a satisfying solution. If you like books by C.M. Gleason, Emma Jane Holloway, or Lindsay Buroker, you're in the right place. Enjoy!

Marjani has been exiled from Jokja and forced to leave her lady love, so her life feels as though it can’t get much worse. And then her ship is ransacked by pirates... It is only with the aid of Safin, a rather unusual ally, that Marjani finds the courage within herself to carry on living.

"An Attempt to Analyse the Automaton Chess Player of Mr. De Kempelen" by Robert Willis is part technical manual, part pop-culture, and, seemingly, part science fiction. The automaton chess player wowed audiences from the moment it first debuted. While many were happy to simply sit back and enjoy watching the seeming magic of one of the first "robots", others aimed to delve deeper. Robert Willis was one such man. In fact, men like Willis are to thank for discovering that, as convincing as it was, the Automaton Chess Player wasn't all that it seemed to be...

This volume features original essays exploring the automaton - from animated statue to anthropomorphized machine - in the poetry, prose, and drama of England in the 16th and 17th centuries.