“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.”
“Due out next spring and set in an alternate 1980s London, the book depicts a man and a woman drawn into a love triangle with a ‘synthetic human’.
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.”
Ian McEwan’s new novel, “Machines Like Me”, will be published in the UK on the 18th April 2019.”
“Machines Like Me” is not McEwan’s first venture into speculative fiction.
His 1987 novel “The Child in Time” was set in a near future on the edge of nuclear war, with a neo-Thatcherite government pledging to “to keep order, and to defend the state against its enemies”.
His 2001 novel “Atonement” was originally a science-fiction story set “two or three centuries in the future”.
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/111/1117889/machines-like-me/9781787331662.html
Ian Russell McEwan (born 21 June 1948) is an English novelist and screenwriter. He is considered one of the greatest British writers and one of the most relevant people in British&European culture.
http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/mcewan_ian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_McEwan
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