The Artist of the Beautiful

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Artist of the Beautiful." The United States Magazine and Democratic Review June 1844. Collected Mosses from and Old Manse 1846. Rpt. Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century: An Anthology. H. Bruce Franklin, ed. UK: Oxford UP, 1966. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1995.[1] Looking Ahead: The Vision of Science Fiction. Dick Allen and Lori Allen, eds. New York: Harcourt College Publications, 1975.

Early science fiction in the US, possibly "the first robotic insect short story," featuring watchmaking and a small butterfly, so artfully made it is difficult to tell "if it is real or a machine"; a child who "has inherited his father's strength and his grandfather's skepticism" crushes what we will call the clockwork butterfly (quoting the Wikipedia entry).[2]