Ian McEwan: Machines Like Me

FROM BEING THE ENFANT TERRIBLE of British writing, producing such shockers as The Comfort of Strangers and Black Dogs, earning him the soubriquet Ian Macabre, McEwan has become something like the grand old man of British letters, producing 17 books, winning multiple awards, including the Booker (for Amsterdam, one of his least convincing novels), with at least five, by my count, of his novels being adapted for the screen.

In this, his latest, McEwan again tackles what one might call an existential question, perhaps the existential question: what is it to be human? And by extension, what is it to be a machine programmed to resemble, in all observable respects, a human, that is, a plausible android? What is a self, and can a machine have one?

Well, here’s the android, called, of course, Adam, “the first truly viable manufactured human with plausible intelligence and looks, believable motion and shifts of expression” just before having life streamed into him through a 13-amp socket: “He was compactly built, square-shouldered, dark-skinned, with thick black hair swept back; narrow in the face, with a hint of a hooked nose suggestive of fierce intelligence, pensively hooded eyes, tight lips…” He is also “uncircumcised, fairly well endowed, with copious dark pubic hair”, but “not a sex toy”, though “capable of sex”.

Adam’s owner, master, “user” (a term he rejects) is Charlie Friend, a somewhat feckless 32-year-old day trader, who has bought Adam with the proceeds of the family home he inherited. He is not quite sure what he wants Adam for (the Eves were all sold out), but he studied anthropology at university and has a layman’s interest in the intersection between technology and humanity.