Mechanical Animals

A speculative fiction safari that riffs on the traditional ideals of automata to explore our strange and competitive relationship with the natural world. Biomimicry is no stranger to literature, with canonical authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hans Christian Anderson, and Jules Verne setting the tone for a trope that has expounded and expanded upon what exactly separates humans from the animal kingdom as well as the boundary between machines and living beings. Featuring 15 original stories by today’s top science fiction and fantasy authors and contextual mecha-fauna essays by artist and Insect Lab Studio maker, Mike Libby, and SF encyclopedist and author Jess Nevins, Mechanical Animals presents a biomimicry menagerie of animalistic machines that will blur the lines between what is and isn’t nature’s design.

Edited by Selena Chambers and Jason Heller

Featuring:

Mike Libby

Jess Nevins

Tessa Kum

Delia Sherman

Maurice Broaddus

Sarah Hans

Lauren Beukes

Jesse Bullington

An Owomoyela

Stephen Graham Jones

Hans Christian Andersen

Molly Tanzer

Aliette de Bodard

Nick Mamatas

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Kat Howard

Michael Cisco

Adrian Van Young

Robert T. Toombs

Joseph S. Pulver, Jr.

Alistair Rennie

Jules Verne

Caroline Yoachim

Carrie Vaughn