Art and science were not always pitted against each other: they were once perceived as two sides of the same great and terrible coin. Spiritus Ex Machina, the debut collection from author LC von Hessen, explores this duality of creation in 14 stories, following an introduction by Michael Cisco (The Divinity Student, Antisocieties, Weird Fiction: A Genre Study).

Within this collection, painters, photographers, dancers, doctors, scholars, engineers, occultists, bureaucrats, plutocrats, restaurateurs, pro-dommes, mad scientists, and various hapless folk all become embroiled in the Unknowable. From 18th-century French salon to contemporary Brooklyn apartment, from traveling carnival to libertine nightclub to body-horror laboratory, explore the dark side of the creative urge among phantasmic machines, dubiously ethical biomedical experiments, unsettling art installations, and a discomforting array of Uncanny Valley denizens. Become a human worm, traverse the dreams of an automaton, perform necromancy through antique film reels, join a secret society in the bowels of a Gilded Age factory-and remember to never, ever trust a face.