Electric Dreams: How Science Fiction Invented the Future of Artificial Intelligence

Anthony Miller

Jul 2026 · Anthony Miller

Ebook

214

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About this ebook

Electric Dreams is a detailed, practical guide to The History of Artificial Intelligence in Science Fiction for readers who want a clear path from understanding the topic to using it confidently in real situations. The book is designed as a structured learning companion rather than a shallow overview: it introduces the core ideas, explains why they matter, then develops them through realistic examples, guided practice, scenario-based explanations, and common mistakes to avoid. Readers are taken step by step from foundational concepts into everyday applications, with each chapter building on the previous one so the material feels progressive, usable, and easy to revisit. The main areas of focus include The First Dreamers, The Modern Prometheus, Tin Men and Clockwork Minds, The Three Laws Factory, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, Open the Pod Bay Doors, HAL, Gender, Race, and the Machine, Do Androids Dream of Empathy?, The Cyberpunk Override, Gods, Servants, and Mind Slaves, giving the book a concrete learning arc that moves from orientation and confidence-building to applied communication, problem solving, and independent practice. The writing style is direct, supportive, and accessible, making the book suitable for self-study, classroom reinforcement, professional development, or personal improvement. It emphasizes practical understanding over abstract theory, so readers can immediately connect the lessons to conversations, decisions, habits, and challenges they are likely to face outside the page. By the end of the book, readers should have not only a stronger grasp of the subject, but also a collection of repeatable strategies, useful language patterns, mental models, and practical routines they can continue applying after they finish reading.

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About the author

Anthony Miller is a writer, critic, and independent scholar whose work examines the intersection of speculative fiction and emerging technology. He is the author of *Electric Dreams: How Science Fiction Invented the Future of Artificial Intelligence* and a forthcoming companion volume on biotechnology and science fiction. His essays have appeared in *The American Scholar*, *Aeon*, *Los Angeles Review of Books*, and *MIT Technology Review*, where he contributes a regular column on narrative and technology.

Miller holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, where his doctoral research examined the role of narrative thought experiments in the history of artificial intelligence. He has held visiting positions at the Santa Fe Institute and the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University. From 2018 to 2022, he served as a research fellow at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University, where he led workshops bringing together science fiction writers and AI researchers to explore the ethical implications of emerging technologies.

His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust. He has spoken at venues including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. He also serves on the advisory board of the AI Ethics Lab and is a co-founder of the Narrative Futures Network, an international research collective studying how stories shape technological development.

Anthony Miller lives in Portland, Oregon, with his partner and two cats. He can be reached through his website at anthonymillerwrites.com.

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