Written by Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam

Published in 1886.

One of the first stories about an artificial woman, L'Ève future features Thomas Edison as the inventor of a beautiful android named Hadaly for a lovesick British aristocrat. Hadaly is an exact replica of a human woman, Alicia Clary, who is striking, but selfish and heartless. Hadaly’s creator combines science and some undefined mysticism to bring the android to life. Hadaly is just as beautiful as the real thing, but programmed with a better personality. In fact, Hadaly is the perfect woman, in that she is able to fulfill the aristocrat’s fantasies as no real woman could. The author was intensely anti-science and meant to portray that even a perfect artificial was inferior to reality and nature.