Machines Like Me, by Ian McEwan

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ian McEwan’s new novel is both futuristic and set in the past: the past is 1980’s Britain at the time of the Falklands War, a past replete with details that seem to make sense, such as references to politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Tony Benn, Beatles music, and novels by Hemingway. Yet, the reader quickly realizes that this is an alternative past, a “what if” past: what if the British lost the Falklands War, what if the democratic socialist Tony Benn became Prime Minister, what if the computer genius Alan Turing lived into old age instead of dying in 1954? As McEwan states, “The present is the frailest of improbable constructs. It could have been different. Any part of it, or all of it, could be otherwise” (70). This last alternative fact--the long life of Alan Turing—results in a premature development of artificial intelligence, the internet, and self-driving cars. The narrator, Charlie Friend, profits from these speeded-up innovations by purchasing one of the first humanoid robots, who takes the form of a handsome man appropriately named Adam. When Adam comes to live with Charlie and his girlfriend Miranda, their lives are disrupted in a way that resonates with McEwan’s previous novels. The novel explores the mystery of machine self-consciousness and ability to feel, as Adam claims to have “fallen in love” with Miranda—and in mirror view, the mystery of human consciousness and feelings. Above all, McEwan explores the limits of human morality, skewed by self-interest and the tendency to create convenient explanations. In the process, Adam comes across as more sympathetic than either of the humans. Charlie Friend has rather an empty self, such that on one occasion he is confused as the robot, rather than Adam. All three keep secrets and act without informing the others; and all three pay a price for that. As in his other novels, McEwan lures the reader in with the questions he asks, the dilemmas he poses, and in this case, the disruption of history itself.




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