Human machine interfacing can be as simple as pressing a button or as complex and entangled (also entangling) as inserting a brain chip into the skull. science fiction. Humans with implants, prosthetic and hybrid humans with electronic and mechanical extensions are yet another level are no longer science fiction.  Yet, human-machine interfacing has started long before the invention of these technologies. Machines did communicate with us and tell us about themselves even before chatbots were invented. The clanking of a hammer on the anvil tells us that it is old and dull. The whistle of a microwave tells us that dinner is ready. The process of interfacing is not a one-way process. Through it, humans also communicate with the machine. They express themselves in different ways to the machine and through it.   With the current advances in Robotics and AI, questions of gender and sexuality arise as these inventions enter the private space and private lives of teenagers and young adults in ways that may affect their conception of their own bodies and their sexuality. "Attraction to objects" is now more culturally and morally problematic than it used to be before the invention of highly eroticized humanoid robots, game characters and virtual AI performers' avatars. The question of how the human interacts with the machine and communicate with it is very timely. As machine user interfaces start to become less complex and user friendly, our understanding of their internal operation becomes less immediate. The better the user interface is the less we know about the technology and the more it becomes a black box that we cannot crack open when our survival and prosperity depend on it. But, as they become more and more intelligent, this kind of knowledge becomes more urgent. Is the question "how does it work?" becoming increasingly less intuitive than "what does it do"?Intimacy with the machine is now taking a more dramatic turn as questions of trust and coexistence gradually replace utility and control. This collection seeks to understand how humans have conceived their relationship and role within the machine world whether as inventors, operators, partners or victims. his collection specifically traces the ways in which different cultures conceived interfacing with the machine. We seek contributions about the following topics and related topics: 

• - Human-machine interfacing
• - Brain computer interfaces
• - Eroticizing Humanoids, robots, dolls,  virtual avatars and synthetic voices
• - driving, repairing and interacting with Cars and other vehicles in literature and films
• - Machines and masculinity
• -  Sensing (with) the machine (example, seeing through pinnacles, microscopes and telescopes)
• - Prosthetics, augmentations and transhuman identity
• - wielding weapons in literature, cinema and media 
• - Technological literacy
• - Human in the loop dynamics
• - The role of technology in the reception experience in literature and creative media (camera, virtual reality, carved stones, papyrus, printing press, etc. whether as mode of representation or (even better) as represented)

It is interested in the following genres and historical periods and cultures:

• -Science fiction
• -comic books
• -Manga and anime
• -films and TV
• -Computer games
• -ancient literature culture
• -Medieval and Renaissance literature and culture

We have particular interests in these works and writers:

• Robota by Karel Čapek
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Renaissance drama
• Medieval literature especially Sagas and Arthurian legends (You may benefit from the article of professor Classan about Medieval Robots in our previous which will be available soon ( project https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003787051-19/rob...)
• The Fall of Icarus (the myth, the adaptation and the artistic representations)
• The works of Isaac Azimov
• Dennis Feltham Jones
• Forbidden Planet (1956)
• Stanisław Lem
• Romances of Alxander (depiction of mechanical birds and automated cities in medieval romances focus should be on human experience of them)

and these popular culture works:

• Star Trek
• Foundations
• Dune
• Warhammer 40K (the Priesthood of Mars)
• Inception
• Colossus: The Forbin Project
• Prometheus (2012)
• Tetsujin 28-go by Mitsuteru Yokoyama
• Mazinger Z by Go Nagai
• Beast King GoLion (1981) AKA Voltron
• Dispatch (video game)
• Iron Man (comics and adaptations)

Some mechanical and electronic devices (real and fictional are of particular interest to this collection):

• Intricate Weapons, torture devices, etc. (especially in medieval times, fantasies and science fiction(especially in medieval times or fantasies and science fiction - with focus on the human interaction with it (especially the experience of the wielder and the victim)
  )
• medical devices 
• Screens, keyboards and interfaces
• pleasure or pain enhancing devices
• Brain chips 

This collection is essentially interested in literature, culture, media and art but it appreciates interdisciplinary approaches that involve disciplines such as human-computer interfacing and history of technology. We also welcome works coauthored by researchers from the humanities and from scientific and technological disciplines and areas of research. This step is a discovery step. We will not move forward unless we have a solid pool of interesting contributions. We have received interesting proposals about gender and sexuality but we do not wish this collection to drift into a single area of the broader interest of our collection. Therefore, we would appreciate looking into the other topics of this call as well. Please send your queries and abstracts (with a short one sentence bio note) only to the following email: nizarzouidinizar@outlook.com.About the editor:

Nizar Zouidi is assistant professor of English language and literature at the University of Gafsa, Tunisia and Sattam Ben Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. His publications include articles such as " Dreams and the Non-human in A Song for Lya and Mass Effect" published in Hypercultura in 2023 and book chapters such as "The real Age of the Fox: A Study in the Representation of Youth and Old Age in Volpone by Ben Jonson" which he contributed to Autumnal Faces: Old Age in British and Irish Dramatic Narratives that was edited by Katarzina Bronk and published by Peter Lang Oxford in 2017. Nizar has recently contributed to the Routledge Companion to Humanism and Literature (edited by Michael Bryson and published with Routledge)and Woke Shakespeare: Rethinking Shakespeare for a New Era (Edited by Ian McCormick and Saptarshi Mallick and published by Quibble Academic). He also published two edited collections. The first is entitled Performativity of Villainy and Evil in Anglophone Literature and published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021 and the second is entitled The Monarch and the (Non)Human in Literature and Cinema: Western and Global Perspectives and published by Routledge in 2023. His third edited collection entitled Thinking Monstrosity in Western and Global Literature and Media is in press with Routledge.