Machines Like Me

Machines Like Me
By Ian McEwan

Robots aren’t taking over, panic not. They surely are what we humans create. We input, we download and we compute. We make them like us, or more like us. Is it possible they’ll become us?

We have not taught machines to lie, take revenge or get angry. We are still safe.

I read this book with a certain amount of dread and only McEwan can do that to me when there really is no ‘dread’.

“I was reluctant to touch him. I put my hand on his shoulders…My plan was to topple him towards me then ease him out of the cupboard onto the stretcher. I cupped my free hand round his neck, which seemed warm to the touch, and pulled him over on to his side. Before he hit the cupboard floor, I caught him in an awkward embrace. This was a dead weight. The fabric of the suit jacket became bunched up against my face as I lowered him. I got my hands into his armpits and, with immense difficulty and much grunting, twisted him onto his back while dragging him from his confinement. Not easy. The jacket was tight and silky, my grip was poor. The legs remained bent. A form of rigor mortis,…”

Suspend belief. Suspend history. A novel to be read with an open mind.

We have a love triangle. Charlie Friend purchases a handsome male replicant, Adam, for 86,000 pounds. He would have preferred an Eve, but all 13 Eves had already been snapped up, leaving behind 12 Adams . When Charlie gets home he plugs Adam in to charge, he clothes his new naked friend. From a manual he downloads to create Adam’s character, adds to the default programme.

Charlie is in love with the girl upstairs, Miranda, a university student. He gives her part choice of adding to Adam’s character. Soon Adam reaches a point when he too is in love with Miranda. He says to Charlie, “We are in love with the same woman. We can talk about it in a civilized manner.”

Adam breathes. He is intelligent. He has emotions, can love and he can be sad. He is a thinker, he composes Haikus. He surfs the net and he has a keen ethical standard. He works with the currency market and is highly successful at making money. Adam feels. Like this Adam the other Adams and Eves from his batch too, they feel enough to know when life becomes unbearable, they can and do commit suicide.

It is 1982. Besides human like robots we have self-driving electric cars, AI, Allan Turing, Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War. Much of pre-1982 history becomes the present and is turned inside out. An alternate past and an alternate present. The story digresses at times. I had to go back and reread parts. An alternate British history running parallel to Charlie acquiring Adam. And there is also Miranda’s back story that could land her in prison or get her killed. There is the little boy, Mark, and his story. McEwan writes ‘children’ well from The Cement Garden, The Child in Time, The Children Act, to a baby in the womb as in Nutshell.

I enjoyed the book enough to have given five stars had it not been for the fact that at times back-story, unnecessary detail and “telling” back story breaks up the flow which is somewhat disruptive and confusing.