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The Automata (German: Die Automate) is a short story written by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Originally published in 1814 in German language literary-culture journal Zeitung für die elegante Welt (Newspaper for the Elegant World), the full story was first published in his book Die Serapionsbrüder (The Serapion Brethren) in 1819. [1] [2]
The plot of The Automata [3] follows a series of interconnected stories shared during an evening gathering of men exploring supernatural and philosophical themes.
The narrator arrives late to a gathering, finding the group mesmerized by a swinging gold ring, which sparks debate over whether it moves by their collective will. To substantiate the supernatural, Cyprian recounts a story about a colonel’s family and his haunted daughter Adelgunda, who experiences nightly visions of a terrifying figure despite manipulated clocks. Her strange abilities (such as levitating a plate) lead to tragedy for the family.
The conversation then shifts as Theodore narrates the story of the "Talking Turk," a mechanical automaton known for its human-like appearance and cryptic but accurate answers. College friends Lewis and Ferdinand visit the Turk and Ferdinand receives a mysterious prophecy about a singer he once admired. Their investigations into the Turk’s creator, Professor X———, reveal more artificial marvels but no definitive explanation for the Turk's uncanny powers. Later, Ferdinand writes to Lewis about encountering the singer again, now connected to Professor X———, raising questions about fate and psychic bonds.
Theodore concludes his story ambiguously, leaving the group to debate its meaning and fragmentary nature, emphasizing mystery over resolution.
Some scholars argue that The Automata and Hoffmann's other stories have been to some extent overlooked in the study of early science fiction. Martin Willis explains that each part of the frame narrative (the gathering with the ring, the ghost story of Adelgunda, and the story of the Talking Turk) each explore different aspects of the inter-relatedness between scientific and supernatural ways of knowing in the early 19th century, and not necessarily in mutually exclusive ways. [4]
Other critics note The Automata's early literary connection between the mechanical world of automation and the aesthetic world of music. Katherine Hirt draws on Hoffmann's musical training to explain the way in which the story critiques the mechanical production of sound, using the characters to support the limitations of human performance. [2] Werner Keil points out how Ferdinand elevates the comparatively simple but human performance by the unnamed woman singer. [5]
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist. His stories form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, in which Hoffmann appears as the hero. He is also the author of the novella The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, on which Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is based. The ballet Coppélia is based on two other stories that Hoffmann wrote, while Schumann's Kreisleriana is based on Hoffmann's character Johannes Kreisler.
Gothic fiction, sometimes called Gothic horror, is a loose literary aesthetic of fear and haunting. The name refers to Gothic architecture of the European Middle Ages, which was characteristic of the settings of early Gothic novels.
An automaton is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power or will, like a mechanical robot. The term has long been commonly associated with automated puppets that resemble moving humans or animals, built to impress and/or to entertain people.
The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automaton Chess Player, or simply The Turk, was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. For 84 years, it was exhibited on tours by various owners as an automaton. The machine survived and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when a fire swept through the museum where it was kept, destroying the machine. Afterwards, articles were published by a son of the machine's owner revealing its secrets to the public: that it was an elaborate hoax, suspected by some, but never proven in public while it still existed.
The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole. First published in 1764, it is generally regarded as the first gothic novel. In the second edition, Walpole applied the word 'Gothic' to the novel in the subtitle – A Gothic Story. Set in a haunted castle, the novel merged medievalism and terror in a style that has endured ever since. The aesthetic of the book has shaped modern-day gothic books, films, art, music, and the goth subculture.
Fantastique is a French term for a literary and cinematic genre and mode that is characterized by the intrusion of supernatural elements into the realistic framework of a story, accompanied by uncertainty about their existence. The concept comes from the French literary and critical tradition, and is distinguished from the word "fantastic", which is associated with the broader term of fantasy in the English literary tradition. According to the literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, the fantastique is distinguished from the marvellous by the hesitation it produces between the supernatural and the natural, the possible and the impossible, and sometimes between the logical and the illogical. The marvellous, on the other hand, appeals to the supernatural in which, once the presuppositions of a magical world have been accepted, things happen in an almost normal and familiar way. The genre emerged in the 18th century and knew a golden age in 19th century Europe, particularly in France and Germany.
To Say Nothing of the Dog: or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last is a 1997 comic science fiction novel by Connie Willis. It uses the same setting, including time-traveling historians, which Willis explored in Fire Watch (1982),Doomsday Book (1992), and Blackout/All Clear (2010).
Isobel Violet Hunt was a British author and literary hostess. She wrote feminist novels. She founded the Women Writers' Suffrage League in 1908 and participated in the founding of International PEN.
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a legendary figure of Cyprus. He is most familiar from Ovid's narrative poem Metamorphoses, in which Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.
"The Sandman" is a short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was the first in an 1817 book of stories titled Die Nachtstücke.
"The Cares of a Family Man" is a short story by Franz Kafka, originally written in German, between 1914 and 1917 about a creature called Odradek.
The history of robots has its origins in the ancient world. During the Industrial Revolution, humans developed the structural engineering capability to control electricity so that machines could be powered with small motors. In the early 20th century, the notion of a humanoid machine was developed.
Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron, or simply The Bloody Red Baron, is a 1995 alternate history/horror novel by British author Kim Newman. It is the second book in the Anno Dracula series and takes place during the Great War, 30 years after the first novel.
Lester Tremayne was a British actor.
The Serapion Brethren is the name of a literary and social circle, formed in Berlin in 1818 by the German romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann and several of his friends. The Serapion Brethren also is the title of a four-volume collection of Hoffmann's novellas and fairytales that appeared in 1819, 1820, and 1821.
The Automation is an indie, mythpunk novel by an anonymous author using the dual pen names B.L.A. and G.B. Gabbler, about the god Vulcan's Automata which function off their human Master's souls. Gabbler is known as the "Editor" and annotates the story, as if it was just a work of literature, through footnotes. B.L.A. is the "Narrator" and tells the fantastical story as if it were true. The Automation is the first volume in a series called the Circo del Herrero Series.
Norman Eugene Lowrey is a composer, mask-maker, performance/sound/video artist, and music educator. He studied composition privately with Samuel Jones in 1964–65, earned a Bachelor of Music from Texas Christian University in 1967, and completed his formal music education at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester New York. He received an M.M. in theory (1970), and a PhD in composition in 1974. Lowrey is also well known as an associate of the American composer Pauline Oliveros.
Little Zaches Called Cinnabar is a 1819 satirical fairytale fantasy novella by E. T. A. Hoffmann.
"Holiday" is a short story by Katherine Anne Porter which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in December 1960. The work is included in The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter (1965). The story received the O. Henry Memorial Award in 1962.
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