Maiden Machines
On Human Creatures and Artificial Creators
©2026
Monographs
XVI,
212 Pages
Series:
Cultural Memories, Volume 26
Summary
Palomilla is a machine capable of responding to light impulses and reacting to its environment, invented by the father of cybernetics Norbert Wiener in the 1940s. Rachel is the unsuspecting replicant in Ridley Scott's film Blade Runner. Sophia is the most advanced robot being tested since 2015 by Hanson Robotics in Hong Kong.
These are just some of the maiden machines featured in this extraordinary “hybrid book about hybrids” set in an indeterminate future, in which machines, once settled as a new natural species, raise the few surviving humans in gardens for research purposes, while searching for their own origins, lost in the past. The creatures of men have become their creators. The feedback loop between human and artificial becomes a way to rewrite human history, the history of technology and a new philosophy.
These are just some of the maiden machines featured in this extraordinary “hybrid book about hybrids” set in an indeterminate future, in which machines, once settled as a new natural species, raise the few surviving humans in gardens for research purposes, while searching for their own origins, lost in the past. The creatures of men have become their creators. The feedback loop between human and artificial becomes a way to rewrite human history, the history of technology and a new philosophy.
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Text
- Preface
- Introduction: A Hybrid Book on Hybrids
- The Machines
- The Transition
- Exercises in the Cyber-Spiritual
- From Hand to Mouth: Images of Human Hunger
- The Evolution of the Soul
- The Intelligence of Iron and Fire
- From the Archives: The Soul of the Automaton
- From the Archives: Ode to Metal—and Plasticity
- From the Archives: What the Machines Felt for the Workers
- From the Archives: Return to the Superorganic State of the Ant
- From the Archives: Vegetal Automata
- Cyberarchaeology
- From the Archives: Cosmogony of the Machines (and a Cosmoclasm, too)
- From the Archives: The Laws of Nature Are Made and Unmade
- From the Archives: Toward a Philosophy of the Chimera, or on the Epistemological Necessity of Error
- From the Archives: On the Fantastical Nature of the World. Abductive Scenarios
- From the Archives: Fantastical Technogenesis
- Cable Cores: Alice’s Dream
- The Interred: A Fable for the Earth
- Peering into the Gardens
- Cybereleos
- Condensed Portable Mythology: Or a Vade Mecum for the Machines
- From the Archives: Pressure, or the Mother of All Senses
- The Pietà
- The Women at the Tomb
- Rebirth
- The Meaning of Raymond Roussel’s Ballerina, Described in Locus Solus, Revealed
- Fadeout
- Prelude to a Return
- Bibliography
Maiden Machines
On Human Creatures and Artificial Creators
Oxford· Berlin· Bruxelles· Chennai· Lausanne· New York
To Alessandro, Alice, Enzo, Gloria, Lavinia, Nicolò, Pietro, Prisca
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank these people who in different ways have worked for this book to appear:
Enrico Amarante, Miriam Capaldo, Giacinto Dipietrantonio, Lavinia Garwood, Derek Gromadzki, Donna Moylan, Katia Pizzi, Laurel Plapp, Daniele Poccia, Kayalvizhi Saravanakumar, Attilio Scarpellini, Abhishek Sharma, Antonio Sixty, Susan Stewart, Francesca Valente.
Details
- Pages
- XVI, 212
- Publication Year
- 2026
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9781803745626
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9781803745633
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9781803745640
- DOI
- 10.3726/b22009
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2026 (July)
- Keywords
- Cybernetics and neo-cybernetics systems theory feminism new technologies narrative science fiction anthropology
- Published
- Oxford, Berlin, Bruxelles, Chennai, Lausanne, New York, 2026. xvi, 212 pp.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG
