John Cohen's 1963 essay, Automata in Myth and Science, tantalisingly introduces some of the beguiling objects and strange stories that appear, just a few years later, in his monograph Human Robots in Myth and Science (1966). In both, Cohen explores humanity's longstanding fascination with the idea of making artificial people, stretching back to the Babylonians and encompassing not only Ancient Greek culture and its heirs, but also ancient Chinese and Indian culture.