Book excerpt: People have long dreamed of creating machines that can carry out the same tasks as people. These dreams have led to the creation of many sci-fi books, movies, and shows that attempt to depict how people would live with robots, cyborgs, and androids. This compelling book traces the history of robotics as a science, while describing in vivid detail some of the most influential works in all of science fiction, including those by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Fritz Lang, Eando Binder, and Isaac Asimov. Readers will ponder intriguing questions about the ethics of how robots, cyborgs, and androids are used and treated.