Machines Like Me
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4.3 • 46 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan, read by Billy Howle.
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. 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.
Customer Reviews
Intelligent and absorbing
Enjoyed this book. It is entertaining, but much more. Raising questions, morale dilemmas about what makes us human. It’s much more than I have the ability to convey. Highly recommend reading this book.
Not for the faint hearted
As one expects of Ian McEwan, this is a clever book which challenges the reader to consider the supposition s and scenarios. Unfortunately, the narrator is a self-absorbed, egotist, a man who when compared to Adam, the robot, is ironically wanting in empathy and unable to learn from his own self-satisfied deficiencies. Bonily read in a voice hardened from the range that feeling might give it, this is not a novel I would recommend as a pleasurable activity.
Machines Like Me
I usually love McEwan, but found no sympathy with the characters and all the science talk was a bit above my head.