One of the many ironies of this novel is that its human characters, Charlie and his inamorata - Miranda, a 22-year-old doctoral student who lives above him - are interesting mainly in the context of their fraught, shifting relationships with Adam.

(He misses out on the Eves, seven of which land in Riyadh - one of many wry editorial comments embedded in the book.)īook Reviews Delicious Deceit Abounds In McEwan's 'Sweet Tooth'Ĭharlie's impulsive purchase is a 170-pound walking, talking, peeing, and yes, fornicating, 'intellectual sparring partner.' Adam is a technological breakthrough with access to all the wisdom of the internet and a fixed notion of right and wrong. McEwan's narrator, a 32-year-old electronics and robotics buff named Charlie Friend, decides to sink his recent inheritance into one of the Adams. Its streets are crowded with self-driving electric cars, and the first batch of pricy, eerily life-like artificial humans - 12 Adams and 13 Eves - have just been sold to private buyers. It is set in an alternate 1982 London which has already surpassed us technologically. Machines Like Me, like his other novels, is a thought-provoking, well-oiled literary machine. McEwan is not the first to broach these issues, and his dismissal of 'conventional science fiction' in a recent Guardian interview - coupled with a failure to acknowledge his many sci-fi forerunners - has raised hackles among some sci-fi aficionados.īut what McEwan brings to the table is crossover appeal to readers who don't usually gravitate toward sci-fi. His story involves a man 'cuckolded by an artefact,' which leads to a newfangled ménage-à-trois. Now, with his latest, Machines Like Me, he ventures into science fiction and alternate history territory to explore the moral ramifications of AI and the creation of machines that can outsmart humans. His most recent novel, Nutshell (2016), a clever twist on Hamlet narrated by a near-full-term baby still in utero, pushed the borders of possibility.

Over the course of more than 40 years and some dozen and a half books - including Amsterdam, Atonement, and The Children Act - his generally realist, propulsive work reveals an abiding preoccupation with both the repercussions of deceit and how life can change in an instant. There are certain authors I read no matter what they write. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Machines Like Me Author Ian McEwan

Machines like me