Machines Like Me

which is a superficial puff piece more suited to a jacket rave intended to sell a mediocre \”best seller.\” The characters are hardly developed, including the \”robot.\” Too much of the redundant prose is taken up by the author\’s penchant for self satisfied display of a layman\’s sketchy knowledge of AI and \”alternative history.\” Definitely not worth even the half price e-book price.

what in the name of the good lord happened Ian?? i have read all your books from sublime to bizarre[think of the narrator of nutshell] couldn\’t wait for this one …..i started ..i continued…..thinking this is not Ian….disjointed confusing please please, Ian settle down pick a topic,…its about artificial intelligence in the future no its about thatcher and the Falklands..no..its about the stock market no.. its about child abuse and adoption.. no… its about the IRA blowing up a a PM …no….its about the guy who broke the German code ….no…..its about obtuse poetry ….no its about rape and the middle-eastern familial view …….no its about the least empathetic narrator character ever created … the loser of the present and i guess future….please Ian whatever this was all about don\’t do it again…..

This is the report of a burnt child. I first encountered Mr. McEwan in “Nutshell” and was completely charmed. I was expecting a lot when I opened “Machines”, and the spell didn’t wear off until I finished it, late the next night. I gave it five stars, flipped shut my Kindle, and switched off the light. By the next day, however, I was beginning to have doubts. Why the many-chaptered change of history, starting with the wholly fictional defeat in the Falklands War? Why the elevation of Tony Benn to be Prime Minister, when it never happened? Closer to home, why did Adam, the robot, hold as Original Equipment the court records of a rape trial in a provincial English town? I’m afraid that it meant that Mr. McEwan had bitten off more than he could chew, and was frantically avoiding the elephant in the room – a discussion of the moral questions raised in forming a personality from scratch, as Charlie and Miranda, our living protagonists, were faced with doing. Adam was a marvelous machine – he could even enjoy sex – but as delivered he was an ethical blank slate. So, Mr. McEwan has punted. The book is a mishmash of incident, but we never get down to brass tacks. My five stars have slipped to three.

Regardless of the country and time you’re from, you are sure to experience time-space cultural whiplash in McEwan’s latest novel. It’s both dystopian and alt-history. I know that dystopian is supposed to take place in the future, but, instead, McEwan’s convoluted setting this time is in the 1980s London. A very advanced 80s where Alan Turing survived, Tony Benn died (in the Brighton bombing!), JFK survived Dallas and Jimmy Carter beat Regan and was still president. The latter two factoids don’t impact the story but just give a little more alt-history for the context of the author’s setting. And, yes, robots that look like humans and have a bit of dramatic whimsy are the antagonists created by the protagonists. Charlie is a well-educated but aimless 30-something who earns his money in day trading—usually losing on schemes—has a bit of a shaky past with his law degree but is honestly open and vulnerable in a fetching way, to love. He decides he loves his roomie, a PhD candidate and history major, Miranda, the most enigmatic woman he’d ever met. He was likely attracted to her air of secrets. Charlie takes an inheritance and spends 89 thousand pounds on Adam, a robot who looks good enough to be human, and meant to be programmed by the owner to have whatever characteristics you decide to give him. Thus opens the whole theme of morality and technology and the intersection of the two. And what happens if you let your brand new love interest program half of Adam by herself? Don’t wait for me to tell you—go read the book! As always, McEwan never disappoints on prose, dry wit, a trough of sentimentality when it comes to romantic love, and the bittersweet shakedowns. It also addresses the limits of consciousness in AI. OK, and that topic has been explored by many other authors in thousands of books, so this wasn’t the reason I read it. I knew that McEwan’s story would be as much philosophy as conflict, and perhaps I’ve heard similar debates and ideas about robots before, but I wanted to observe how McEwan executed his characters and themes as well as story. He’s never a lazy writer, and his ambitions are typically within his sphere of confidence. It wasn’t my favorite McEwan—that spot goes to ATONEMENT. And at times I felt that the author was too restrained, and the liftoff was denied to us as readers. So, Charlie’s voice sounded a bit dour mixed with hopeful and careless optimism, especially when faced with Adam. Those two definitely had a friction that didn’t work. I think McEwan wanted us to explore how Charlie and Miranda could be a successful couple when they both programmed Adam (but didn’t share the characteristics they programmed into Adam). As the reader, we didn’t know any more than those two—even less, because Miranda’s choices aren’t transparent. Is Adam actually a combination of the traits they entered, or did he have his own consciousness arising from the two? And, if he didn’t have his own consciousness, what is the difference between having your own consciousness and simulating it? I like how McEwan provokes the reader to speculate, but then again I was a little disappointed in how it remains unanswerable. However, as always with his novels, there’s a bit of a jolt to the denouement—something that pushes you in a lane you weren’t ready for—at least, in one aspect. But there are other parts of the climax that are standard for this kind of novel about robots. This isn’t a spoiler, but I was especially impressed by Adam’s considered thoughts on vision and death. He compared it to our peripheral vision and awareness. “The odd thing is, there’s no boundary, no edge…There isn’t something, then nothing. What we have is the field of vision, and then beyond it less than nothing.” “So this is what death is like. The edge of vision is a good representation of the edge of consciousness. Life, then death.” There are other nuggets like this that I enjoyed. My biggest complaint is that Adam didn’t really get under my skin, not as a robot or not as programmed—that, of course, should have been conveyed through the actions, reactions, and interactions between Miranda and Charlie. I thought that McEwan succeeded in somewhat closing the loop and leaving an opening to ponder, but as much as the characters were organically comprised, occasionally it felt stilted. The momentum was halting, and the alt history of the British politics didn’t tie in enough specifically—only in a general way of social sciences. But, I’m glad I read it and I was certainly engaged until the end. What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be programmed by humans?

Consider the impact of one person on the entire history of the world. Had Alan Turing managed to survive the 1950\’s blindsided attitude towards his sexuality, would all the technological advancements in the current time have become routine 30 years earlier, in the early 80\’s? Would electric cars be considered old hat as they\’d been around since the \’60\’s? Is it a better world, or is it not? Up for purchase are highly priced android Adams or Eves, and our narrator Charlie has used some found money to purchase one. Benchmark events of the latter half of the 20th century are referred to almost in passing, having been reversed or flipped (Jimmy Carter\’s second term is happening because the JFK assassination was a \”near miss\”), and other \”what if\’s\” are explored, but these 1980\’s are not radically different when it comes to the interaction between two lovers. One frustration I had with the book was Charlie\’s referencing of these events as having occurred many years in the past, teasing me into thinking there\’d be some big reveal about how life turned out for him. But it appears to be a memory piece. Not, like Atonement, a reckoning for the future. However, where McEwan shines and does almost better than anyone else is address the life changing moments that aren\’t recognized at the time.

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