“Loving the Machine”
A book review by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff.
Loving the Machine is Canadian science/technology writer Timothy Hornyak?s admiring look into the widespread, and deep, Japanese affection for robots. Hornyak also writes an entertaining blog of the same name.
The book (published by Kodansha International, ISBN 4770030126, available now in Japan but not until September in the U.S.) is filled with beautiful photos of robots and their kith and kin. A 12-image progression spread across pages 102 and 103 shows a twenty-year progression of one series of machines from a two-legs-and-a-crotch metallic walking machine to its lissome fullbodied plastic-clad descendant. The book begins with a quick look at early Japanese puppetry, hops, skips and jumps to a most impressive tea-serving automaton in 1796 (and much later, in 2002, to a kit version of same), and so on. Most of the book celebrates the age of industrial robots, toys, and much-hyped robo-animals and companion and therapeutic robots.
The book concentrates on the lure, lore and excitement of Japanese robotophilia. It dips generously into the relationship between robotics, fantasy comics, and style; and delves very lightly into the engineering behind and within the critters.