One hundred years ago Freud’s definition of the uncanny was ‘not the strange, but the familiar become strange’. In this anthology of new work from a range of writers and academics, the uncanny is a place where you feel at home – until home turns against you. It’s a city where the streets can’t join up. The uncanny alienates your own body from you through medical advances, such as prosthetic limbs or cardiac defibrillators. The ‘uncanny valley’ is a landscape where robots try to imitate you.

This anthology gets beneath the skin and into the depths of what it means to be human in an age of machines and genes. 

Featuring papers and stories from Pippa Goldschmidt, Gill Haddow, Fadhila Mazanderani, Jane Alexander, Ruth Aylett, Christine De Luca, Vassilis Galanos, Jules Horne, Donna McCormack, Aoife S. McKenna, Jane McKie, nicky melville, Dilys Rose, Naomi Salman, Helen Sedgwick, Sarah Stewart, Alice Tarbuck, Clare Uytman, Sara Wasson, Neil Williamson and Eris Young.

Introduction - Pippa Goldschmidt, Gill Haddow and Fadhila Mazanderani

familiars - nicky melville

Section One - Pain, Illness and Healing

Half Here, Half Where - Dilys Rose

Forgetting - Alice Tarbuck

Pain’s Uncanny - Sara Wasson

The Stane Bairn - An Uncanny Play - Jules Horne

Response to ‘The Stane Bairn: An Uncanny Play’ by Jules Horne - Aoife S. McKenna

Bunting - Neil Williamson

Skin Sisters - Bridget Bradley

The Treatment - Helen Sedgwick

What I Haven’t Told You - Sarah Stewart

Unbecoming Animal - Ritti Soncco

Uncanny Healing - Ed Cohen

Section Two - Situating bodies: the uncanny in the city and the forest 

Revenant Visits Her Old Bedroom - Sarah Stewart

The Dark Forest - Sarah Stewart

Seeing the trees for the forest: Learning to listen to all of the
voices in ‘The Dark Forest’ - Emily F. Porth

The Haunted House, or the Other in the Self - Donna McCormack

A Bed of My Own - Christine De Luca

Where the Edinburgh All-night Bakery Used to Be - Jane McKie

Three-stage No Colour Day - Jane McKie

East Coast Gothic - Jane McKie

Baby - Jane McKie

Ma - Pippa Goldschmidt

Uncan - Shona Kerr

Rodd widenin i da Hulmalees - Christine De Luca

In Pursuit - Christine De Luca

Little Cat from the Bronx - Eris Young

Section Three - Transforming bodies into Other 

Alexa - Alice Tarbuck

Feeling Machines: Emotion Recognition in Personal Assistants - Benedetta Catanzariti

The Lag - Jane Alexander

Amputation, Prosthesis Use and The Uncanny - Dr Clare Uytman

sur la comète - Naomi Salman

sur la comète; A story of everyday cyborgs in love - Gill Haddow

A woman meets a robot in a dream - Ruth Aylett

Humanoid Robot - Ruth Aylett

Robophobia - Ruth Aylett

The robot researcher’s lament - Ruth Aylett

Towards a Chronological Cartography of the Uncanny Valley
and its Uncanny Coincidences - Vassilis Galanos