A morally complex and quite disturbing novel by Ian McEwan. It is hard not to be impressed by the author's mastery in crafting a compelling novel, although equally the reviewer in the Financial Times (among others) is right to take note that readers are unlikely to be moved by it. In Machines Like Me, McEwan presents us with a scenario of how humans might interact with intelligent and quasi-sentient robots. If this were not a broad enough remit, McEwan arguably overcomplicates it by setting the novel in an alternative 1980s. He presents readers with a series of counterfactuals: what if Britain had lost the Falklands War, Tony Benn were Prime Minister and so on? Some (such as the state of the Cold War) are curiously ignored. I found the musings of the feckless Charlie - one of the novel’s main characters - on politics a distraction from the main story. McEwan's main point seems to be that the introduction of machines into any society, regardless of whether our own (to which he holds a mirror in some places) or a speculative one, will be complicated. Since humans are unpredictable, irrational, and inconsistent, machines will struggle to learn properly from them. Pragmatism means an adaptability in moral codes, something Adam (Charlie’s robot) cannot grasp. His role throughout the work shifts uncomfortably between that of servant and moral superior. We are left wondering what it is to be human and how we may ultimately find happiness. The path will be complicated and the vision will differ from that of a machine.
By Ian McEwan