Great Robots of History by Tim Major

I would like to thank the author and Black Shuck Books for an advance copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Black Shuck Books

Published – out Now

Price – £11.49 paperback £2.49 ebook via https://blackshuckbooks.co.uk/great-robots-of-history/

Long before the development of AI, humans created automatons in their own image.

These sixteen weird tales explore magical and mechanical representations of humankind drawn from history and myth – from Odin carving humans from wood to Pygmalion’s living statue Galatea, from Julius Caesar’s animated wax effigy to the chess-playing Mechanical Turk, from the first humanoid robot on the International Space Station to online deepfakes.

Includes ‘The Brazen Head of Westinghouse’, winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction, 2024.

The robot is very much a symbol of science fiction. The idea that we humans can create our own intelligent lifeform says a lot about us. An spiration to be gods, have our own workforce and in myriad forms even as today are these forces of good or our own destruction. From the funny to the homicidal there are many robots casting a shiny mirror to us. Now in Tim Major’s excellent collection Great Robots of History we have a themed set of tales exploring the concept of robots and what they mean to us which I loved to read.

Among the many tales I enjoyed were

The Funnel – A journalist visits the mysterious Dippel Foundation known for its large collection of famous automatons. This story explores real versus unreal from shiny historical curios to some much more unsettling creations lying in the heart of the foundation. Our journalist as much as we have to decide what is just programming and what may be something else. Our own feelings about where the story is ending get confirmed just a few sentences ahead of our visitor and should give us pause for thought about the whole story.

Wax Caesar Displaying His 23 Wounds to the Crowd – a inventive humours tale told in the style of an 11th year student’s history project. Roland explains his masterplan and how things definitely didn’t go to plan. Roland’s smartass voice (but perhaps not that smart) pulls the story along with his ego blinding him to what his more inventive partner Nick may be up to. The feel of a classroom is really effective, and things are both funny and perhaps going too far.

The Andraiad – This historical tale is excellent. Martin repairs organs in the village but has found himself a changed man literally after an accident thanks to his daughter helping to have him replaced by a new body. It’s a story to unpeel and explore. The concept of personality, guilt and innocence and becoming someone new is delivered in a fascinating way as we compare the current Martin with what we find of his earlier self. Inventive and the final scenes really carry an emotional punch.

The ichor Ran Out of Him Like Molten Lead and The Horizon – we have two not quite linked tales of one of the earliest robots – Telos of Greek mythology. The first tale is how telos feels about his creator the god Hephaestus. A disquieting tale followed then by Telos on his own wondering on his own fate – can robots outlast their creators?

Echec! I have reviewed this story before in its original chapbook form here and it is an excellent story play combining chess, robot and the line between human and non-human that I thoroughly recommend reading

The Brazen Head of Westinghouse – Another gorgeous tale uses the idea of Elektro from the World Fair an allegedly sentient robot that was actually just very cunning engineering. Here though Major imagines what is Elektro could have actually been sentient and yet trapped by some very rudimentary programming and at the same time allows the talk to link in with other such famous legendary devices including bacon’s famous talking head. A great mix of wonder and also bittersweet loss for what could have been.

Degrees of Freedom – A robot on a space station above Earth is increasingly frustrated by the humans it works with. Our narrator isn’t understood by the humans so we get their internal thoughts, frustration and horror at the idea of being made to resemble a human when legs arrive on the next shuttle. So often we think robots can admire us but here we are the ones labelled monsters so what else can our robot do?

Dear Will - a story within a story as we find a tale being related of the 19th century and a doctor finds a patient that appears not human and yet the whole town around him is grief stricken. Fans of myths should recognise a few signs for this tale of another original artificial life and yet the sense as the story closes that not everything has quite ended.

Four Fabrications of Francine Descartes – This is a fascinating strangely constructed tale of a ship, its captain and the passenger who includes Descartes and his daughter. Reality and history is being played with. A tale of resetting the narrative and philosophy as to how much the human and the robot can intersect. Disquieting, strange and thought-provoking.

The cardboard Voice – moves into a new form of new life the deepfakes. Our tale has an investigator, and his subject tell her of a family history. It plays with identity and truth as we hear the tale of a man who wanted to capture the perfect human voice using film. But is that a truly safe thing to store. Our main character starts to create a digital doppelgänger of himself, and things then gets even weirder and more menacing. Can we get lost in imitation?

A Box of Hope: A Can of Worms – A tale told int hr form of a film article about feuding directors, actresses and a tragedy awaiting in the offing. Major makes the period come alive in the article’s outline of the period and it links the dark side of cinema with human cruelty. Unsettling and yet feels very authentic as if it was all too real.

This is an excellent collection playing with the concept of the robot and his long history in myth and science fiction with a lot to think about as to how they reflect us. Inventive, funny, scary and always intelligent this is a fascinating book to dive into. Highly recommended!