McEwan gives Turing the life he deserved. In McEwan’s alternate ’80s the internet is long-established and work on artificial intelligence is advanced, thanks to Alan Turing, a real-life World War II codebreaker and computing pioneer.Īfter the war, Turing was prosecuted for having sex with a man, forcibly treated with female hormones and died aged 41 in 1954. In McEwan’s version, the war is lost and Thatcher faces a crisis that brings a left-wing Labor government to the verge of power. won the war and Thatcher spent a tumultuous decade in office. The novel opens as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher takes Britain to war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands. That sounds a lot like the present, but it’s the past - an alternative version of the 1980s. McEwan’s ménage à trois unfolds in a divided Britain: roiled by protests, uncertain about its place in Europe and the world. “I’m writing somewhat against that grain, wanting to think about, what if we gave our new cousins our best selves, or we tried to?” McEwan said during an interview at his sun-filled London mews house. McEwan describes the novel as a sort of anti-“Frankenstein.” In Mary Shelley’s story, a scientist’s creation becomes a killer. “It’s really only a betrayal if we regard Adam as a kind of human, and (Charlie) can’t help himself but feel that.” “I wanted the reader to be in Charlie’s situation of half the time, at least at first, thinking he’s just playing a computer game - an elaborate, rather spooky computer game - but then feeling very upset when Adam goes and has a night of shame with his girlfriend,” McEwan said. They soon confront profound questions: Can a machine feel emotions? Is Adam a lodger, a servant or a highly intelligent household appliance? Does cheating on your partner with a robot count as adultery? Narrator Charlie Friend, a smart but directionless thirtysomething, spends his inheritance on Adam, one of the first “truly viable manufactured human(s) with plausible intelligence and looks.”Īdam, Charlie and Charlie’s neighbour/girlfriend Miranda form an unorthodox household.
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