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Our foremost storyteller returns with an audacious novel, Machines Like Me.
Britain has lost the Falklands war, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence. In a world not quite like this one, two lovers will be tested beyond their understanding.
Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma.
Ian McEwan’s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.
Machines Like Me is published in hardback by Jonathan Cape in the UK and by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in the US. The novel is available in paperback from Vintage.
Select Interviews about MACHINES LIKE ME
Charlie Lovett. "Ian McEwan: Episode #36." Inside the Writer's Studio, 1 May 2019. Conversation with Ian McEwan about ethics, morality, justice, artificial intelligence, and his latest novel Machines Like Me.
Eric Volmers. "Ian McEwan talks new book Machines Like Me." Canada.com, 29 April 2019.
Jill Lawless. "I Robot? Ian McEwan Tells Android Tale in Machines Like Me." The Telegraph, 23 April 2019.
"Inside a mannequin workshop: Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me." Vintage Books, 18 April 2019.
"Machines Like Me." YouTube.com, 16 April 2019.
Jon Snow (presenter). "Writer Ian McEwan: ‘AI already penetrating our lives in all kinds of ways’." Channel 4, 15 April 2019.