‘Tea and a Tale’ is my ongoing series where I discover a short story I’ve never read before by reading it out loud to you — armed with a cup of tea of course. Make yourself a beverage, get comfortable, and join me in my London kitchen. Remember that you can speed up the recording by clicking on the 1x. Catch up with other episodes here.
Join me to read one of the earliest 'robot’ stories in the English language!
This month’s Tea and a Tale comes from a collection called ‘Can Such Things Be?’ (great name) by Ambrose Bierce. The copy I read from was published in 1918 but this tale was written in 1899. Bierce was born in 1842 and died in 1914— well we think he did. He in fact disappeared under mysterious circumstances which is fitting for a writer of the uncanny.
Bierce was a big influence on the weird fiction of the twentieth century and has been adapted many times, but before today I hadn’t actually sat down with any of his short stories. ‘Moxon’s Master’ is an early example of the ‘robot’ in fiction, although if you listen to the interview I did with Lucia Deyi last year you’ll know that the concept of dangerous automatons goes back a lot longer than that.
Ancient Automatons: Seductive, Sinful, Strange.
In ancient China a robotic dancer seduces concubines, in renaissance Prague a scholar mingles science with magic to conjure an eerie creature from clay, in nineteenth century Germany a man falls in love with a clockwork woman to the annoyance of his actual girlfriend…
Don’t forget to tell me what you thought of today’s story in the comments below.
