This book examines how science fiction’s portrayal of humanity’s desire for robotic companions influences and reflects changes in our actual desires. It begins by taking the reader on a journey that outlines basic human desires—in short, we are storytellers, and we need the objects of our desire to be able to mirror that aspect of our beings. This not only explains the reasons we seek out differences in our mates, but also why we crave sex and romance with robots. In creating a new species of potential companions, science fiction highlights what we already want and how our desires dictate—and are in return recreated— by what is written. But sex with robots is more than a sci-fi pop-culture phenomenon; it’s a driving force in the latest technological advances in cybernetic science. As such, this book looks at both what we imagine and what we can create in terms of the newest iterations of robotic companionship.

Unpacking assumptions about corseting, Rebecca Gibson supplements narratives of corseted women from the 18th and 19th centuries with her seminal work on corset-related skeletal deformation. An undergarment that provided support and shape for centuries, the corset occupies a familiar but exotic space in modern consciousness, created by two sometimes contradictory narrative arcs: the texts that women wrote regarding their own corseting experiences and the recorded opinions of the medical community during the 19th century. Combining these texts with skeletal age data and rib and vertebrae measurements from remains at St. Bride’s parish London dating from 1700 to 1900, the author discusses corseting in terms of health and longevity, situates corseting as an everyday practice that crossed urban socio-economic boundaries, and attests to the practice as part of normal female life during the time period Gibson’s bioarchaeology of binding is is the first large-scalar, multi-site bioethnography of the corseted woman.

 The Matrix (Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski 1999) has permeated our cultural consciousness for two decades, working its way into such common parlance as “a glitch in the Matrix,” and the idea of taking the Red Pill.  With the release of the fourth movie, The Matrix Resurrections (Lana Wachowski 2021), and the confirmation of the franchise being a metaphor for gender transition, this book examines how the entire franchise contributes to the discourse on sex and gender, and how it has been instrumental in propelling the creation of new types of cyborg technology.  This book centers on the main philosophical theme of The Matrix, know thyself, and relate it to the quest for authenticity which creates our identities—be they human, or human “enough”—as we move through the world. 

This book examines how science fiction’s portrayal of humanity’s desire for robotic companions influences and reflects changes in our actual desires. It begins by taking the reader on a journey that outlines basic human desires—in short, we are storytellers, and we need the objects of our desire to be able to mirror that aspect of our beings. This not only explains the reasons we seek out differences in our mates, but also why we crave sex and romance with robots. In creating a new species of potential companions, science fiction highlights what we already want and how our desires dictate—and are in return recreated— by what is written. But sex with robots is more than a sci-fi pop-culture phenomenon; it’s a driving force in the latest technological advances in cybernetic science. As such, this book looks at both what we imagine and what we can create in terms of the newest iterations of robotic companionship.

Unpacking assumptions about corseting, Rebecca Gibson supplements narratives of corseted women from the 18th and 19th centuries with her seminal work on corset-related skeletal deformation. An undergarment that provided support and shape for centuries, the corset occupies a familiar but exotic space in modern consciousness, created by two sometimes contradictory narrative arcs: the texts that women wrote regarding their own corseting experiences and the recorded opinions of the medical community during the 19th century. Combining these texts with skeletal age data and rib and vertebrae measurements from remains at St. Bride’s parish London dating from 1700 to 1900, the author discusses corseting in terms of health and longevity, situates corseting as an everyday practice that crossed urban socio-economic boundaries, and attests to the practice as part of normal female life during the time period Gibson’s bioarchaeology of binding is is the first large-scalar, multi-site bioethnography of the corseted woman.

 The Matrix (Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski 1999) has permeated our cultural consciousness for two decades, working its way into such common parlance as “a glitch in the Matrix,” and the idea of taking the Red Pill.  With the release of the fourth movie, The Matrix Resurrections (Lana Wachowski 2021), and the confirmation of the franchise being a metaphor for gender transition, this book examines how the entire franchise contributes to the discourse on sex and gender, and how it has been instrumental in propelling the creation of new types of cyborg technology.  This book centers on the main philosophical theme of The Matrix, know thyself, and relate it to the quest for authenticity which creates our identities—be they human, or human “enough”—as we move through the world.