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Living Dolls: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life [Hardcover]

Gaby Wood (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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Book Description

Publication Date: 4 Mar 2002

The remarkable story of humanity's age-old obsession with moving dolls and speaking robots, intelligent machines and bionic men.

For centuries, inventors and magicians have tried to simulate life mechanically. Each attempt to build an android is a fundamental challenge to our sense of what makes us human: could an 18th-century mechanical duck really digest and excrete its food? Was the 'Automatic Turk', a celebrated chess-playing machine that toured around Europe, a fake? Why did the great inventor Thomas Edison go to so much effort to mass produce a speaking mechanical child? What happened to the family of midgets who pretended to be dolls? And how can a twenty-first century robot express human emotions?

Taking up a theme long familiar from the realms of fairytale and science fiction, Gaby Wood unearths the hidden pre-history of a modern idea. This is the true story of ingenious inventors and their fantastical creations - of men who wanted to play God.

Product details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; First American Edition edition (4 Mar 2002)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0571178790
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571178797
  • Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 326,186 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Gaby Wood
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Product Description

Amazon Review

Gaby Woods' Living Dolls is a playful exploration of the history of artificial creatures and their inventors, which starts in 17th-century France and ends in the robotics laboratories of Tokyo and Massachusetts. Ultimately the book is concerned to provide a Freudian account of "what troubles us when we are faced with certain versions of ourselves--bionic men, speaking robots, intelligent machines or even just a doll that moves". The dolls, robots and androids that Woods explores all create anxieties that offer "a fundamental challenge to our perception of what makes us human".

Woods' fascination with artificial intelligence begins in the 17th century, with Descartes' formulation of man as a machine, and Jacques de Vaucanson's flute-playing android, accompanied by an artificial duck that digested its own food, first exhibited to popular amazement in Paris in 1738. The book then tells the bizarre stories of other examples of artificial bodies, including Wolfgang von Kempelen's Automaton Chess Player, attired in the manner of a Turk, Edison's Talking Doll and John Nevill Maskelyne's 19th-century automaton, Psycho. Living Dolls is an amusing and well written story of the "uncanny" nature of artificial life, although some readers might feel that it is higher on entertainment than serious philosophical reflection, in dealing with a subject that many postmodern scholars have explored in greater depth. --Jerry Brotton

Review

A haunting account of the wilder fringes of mechanical ingenuity and human self-absorption. -- Evening Standard, 25 February 2002

A masterly, elegant and thoughtful cultural history of the life-imitating machine. -- Sunday Times, 24 February 2002

A rigorously researched and grippingly narrated weaving of tales of the quest for mechanical life. . . A captivating read. -- Financial Times, 23 February 2002

A splendid history of mechanical magic which kept me enthralled with its original research and marvellous story-telling quality. -- Roy Porter

Wood seems peculiarly sensitive to the fantastic flirtatiousness which envelops dolls, miniature machines, seemingly living constructs. -- Observer, 24 February 2002
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Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars FIVE STARS!!! 16 April 2002
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This is a wonderfully eloquent series of stories around the whole idea of artificial life - or rather I should say 'mechanical' life, as what most interests Wood is the weird and uncanny things that happen when robots or androids take on the appearance of humankind. There are great tales of mad inventors and their brilliant inventions, like the 18th century excreting duck or Edison's doomed attempt to construct a talking doll, and there's a fascinating interview with one of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. The connections made are both persuasive and unexpected, so for example the link with the early days of the cinema came as a pleasing surprise to me. It's the kind of book that helps explain our obsessions of the present moment (Japan, Blade Runner, Terminator), and at the same time makes the past seem stranger than one has ever imagined. I'd adored Gaby Wood's last book, THE SMALLEST OF ALL PERSONS MENTIONED IN THE RECORDS OF LITTLENESS, but it seems to me that this is even more suggestive, and even more beautifully crafted. I'm not surprised that the press reviews have been so positive.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Some good stories - but a bit of a cheat 22 May 2003
By Mr. Paul J. Bradshaw
Format:Paperback
Ostensibly about automata, Living Dolls tells a number of fascinating stories about mechanical ducks, chess-playing Turks and flute-playing statues. But as the book goes on, the focus shifts to more tenuously linked stories.

The stuff about Vaucanson is excellent, making some excellent points about how the search for machine-men turned men into machines. The second chapter is a little less interesting, as the chess-playing Turk turns out to be something of a fraud. And from then onwards it's downhill. Edison's dolls (chap3), for instance, were never intended to 'imitate life' in the same way as automata; and people on film (chap4) are not 'robots repeating the same action'; finally, the Doll Family (chap5) were human - the link to robots is non-existent.

That said, these are great stories. Just don't approach this book expecting more than one chapter on its stated subject, or you'll end up disappointed.

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11 of 20 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars VERY DISAPPOINTING 15 Mar 2002
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
After reading some good reviews of this title in the London newspapers, I bought a copy with high expectations. The initial impression was positive, as the book is nicely produced and attractively priced. Some of the stories, like that of the mechanical duck, are amusing although somewhat shopworn, and Wood adds very little to them. In fact, the research is so shallow and derivative, and the writing so turgid and 'wooden', that it is hard to believe the author is a professional writer. As for the silly generalizations about 18th century automata and modern cybertechnology, they seem better suited to a school project. Avoid at all costs.
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