Machines Like Me

By: Ian McEwan

Narrated by: Billy Howle

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.

Critic reviews

Machines Like Me reminds us that McEwan is a once-in-a-generation talent, offering readerly pleasure, cerebral incisiveness and an enticing imagination.

[Machines Like Me] is right up there with his very best [novels]. Machines Like Me manages to combine the dark acidity of McEwan’s great early stories with the crowd-pleasing readability of his more recent work. A novel this smart oughtn’t to be such fun, but it is. (Alex Preston)

Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me is a dazzling account of our interaction with technology… He marries a gripping plot, handled with rarefied skill and dexterity, to a deep excavation of the narrowing gap between the canny and the uncanny, leaving the reader pleasurably dizzied, and marvelling at human existence. (Philip Womack)

Compelling… unforgettably strange… there are many pleasures and many moments of profound disquiet in this book, which reminds you of its author’s mastery of the underrated craft of storytelling… [Machines Like Me] is morally complex and very disturbing, animated by a spirit of sinister and intelligent mischief that feels unique to its author. (Marcel Theroux)

[McEwan's] fierce intelligence [crackles] like a Jumping Jack on Bonfire Night… Arguably the finest English writer of his generation, the ideas he explores are important, now more that ever. (Richard Dismore)

[McEwan is] as mordant a chronicler of the age as we have… Machines Like Me offers as good a primer on the multifarious anxieties that should afflict us all as anything catalogued as “non-fiction”. (Bill Prince)

Machines like Me displays… impressive richness. Excited by ideas and perceptive about emotions, encompassing cutting-edge science, philosophical speculation and lively social observation, it is funny, thought-provoking and politically acute… In this bravura performance, literary flair and cerebral sizzle winningly combine. (Peter Kemp)

Original, and as always with McEwan’s novels, beautifully written.

McEwan knows all the novelistic rules… [and his] restlessness when it comes to subject matter, even as he enters his seventies, is stunning… [Machines Like Me] shimmer[s] with relevance. (Janan Ganesh)

[Machines Like Me] traverses the muddled morality of Artificial Intelligence... This is new and exciting ground for McEwan, one of Britain's most consistently brilliant writers. (Olivia Ovenden)

Intelligent and beatiful

The novel Machines like us is a tale about human morals and the limitations of comprehension. Despite addressing social issues, it retains a personal touch. Thereby a hauntingly beautiful story enfolds in front of the reader’s eyes, which is somewhat reminiscent of Dostojevskij.
The author describes clashes of different perspectives without passing judgment and leaves it up to the reader to make up his or her opinions. This novel is a mirror of our times and can stand proudly among those of Huxley and Orwell. A truly amazing work of thought!

Incredibly thoughtful story about what AI will mean 

Being a follower of much that has happening in AI currently, I found this novel remarkable. It was being written before the current debates and discussion but is much more thoughtful and insightful about the challenges that will follow when we have genuine artificial general, intelligence, embodied in automatons, which have agency. Highly recommended. 

Is AI what we need more of?

Ian asks questions we should all be thinking about but blends them into a great story. It finished too soon.

Interesting but linear

Masterfully writing and well flowing the story is kept simple. The different elements stay a little bit too separate and don't seem to mix in any too creative way. Overall nothing to complain about and good entertainment.

A book about us!

Easy listening to, and an intense storytelling.
A real deal to look closely at ourselves. One may thought this book is about IA and ML will be pleased to listen/read to this piece.
Beutifully writen, with care and understanding about mankind in general.
Sorry if I sound cheesy. I realy loved it!!!