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3.36 AVERAGE
3.36 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
McEwan takes on AI in this thriller about the changes wrought by the introduction of a prototype android to the protagonist's home. McEwan is characteristically well-researched and brings a cerebrally-challenging context to life with painstaking attention to detail. He is overly-indulgent with his expositions of his alternative 20th century universe, and some of his dialogue suffers from a sacrifice of realism to grand theorizing (forgivable in genius Turing, less so in girlfriend Miranda), but the plot is well-paced and its decisions internally consistent with his characters. It has some of the building dread of his other work, plenty of plot red-herrings and his prose is sublime.
The Mark subplot seems to serve little purpose besides raising the stakes of the main players, but the conclusion is satisfying and the implications echo far beyond the last page. Consistently a favourite author of mine, McEwan's Machines Like Us, although not his best in my opinion, is a welcome addition to his ouvre.
The Mark subplot seems to serve little purpose besides raising the stakes of the main players, but the conclusion is satisfying and the implications echo far beyond the last page. Consistently a favourite author of mine, McEwan's Machines Like Us, although not his best in my opinion, is a welcome addition to his ouvre.
I’m still trying to figure out if I liked this book or not... McEwan is a brilliant writer and I really enjoyed Adam the conscious, complex machine, but this novel felt really self-indulgent at times. The explorations of humanity and morality were interesting, but the constant theorising felt a little like I was unwillingly taking a series of undergrad lectures delivered by passionate but droning professors... McEwan has clearly done a lot of reading, studying and thinking on this topic. We get it!
I liked the complexity of the relationship between Charlie and Adam, but struggled with his egotistical, puppy-love for Miranda. I also really liked the Adams and Eves and McEwan’s hypothesis about their inevitable self-destruction, so I was frustrated when the plot kept moving away from them. The alternative history was interesting (especially regarding Alan Turing), but the politics lessons surrounding Thatcher didn’t seem at all important. Why did McEwan cram this book full of so many conflicting plot lines?!
Did I find this novel interesting? Yes. Would I recommend it to others? Probably not. Would I love to analyse this if I was an undergrad again? Yes please.
I liked the complexity of the relationship between Charlie and Adam, but struggled with his egotistical, puppy-love for Miranda. I also really liked the Adams and Eves and McEwan’s hypothesis about their inevitable self-destruction, so I was frustrated when the plot kept moving away from them. The alternative history was interesting (especially regarding Alan Turing), but the politics lessons surrounding Thatcher didn’t seem at all important. Why did McEwan cram this book full of so many conflicting plot lines?!
Did I find this novel interesting? Yes. Would I recommend it to others? Probably not. Would I love to analyse this if I was an undergrad again? Yes please.
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Enjoyed the premise, although not the characters
Rounded up from 3.5.
Definitely lots to think about here but not sure the alternate political universe felt strictly necessary and the rape simply to propel the plot forward didn’t always exactly sit right with me.
Definitely lots to think about here but not sure the alternate political universe felt strictly necessary and the rape simply to propel the plot forward didn’t always exactly sit right with me.
Was not keen on the book until about the half way point, and then I couldn’t put it down. The alternate history was an interesting angle and it did give the book an other worldly feel that was at the same time comfortable and familiar. I kept pausing and having to remember (and sometimes look up) what really happened.
dark
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
(never really finished reading but I got what I wanted and pretty much understood everything so)
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i liked it! admittedly, i totally picked this up on a whim (..on a discount) and had no idea what to expect as this was my first ian mcewan book.
this is a science fiction centering around a male-woman-machine love triangle that reads as a dark satirical comedy with what i suppose is a call for us to reflect and repair our humanity as we assemble inorganic consciousness in our image. the concern is about how we would integrate artificial mimics of human body and soul into our society, where their calculated symmetric rational morals would succeed and question the fundamentally unreasonable compass we rely on to survive. we animals are not meant for neutral intelligent thought, frankly. we are contaminated by self serving lust, greed, sloth.. so what would it mean to create a machine (paralleled to children) that surpass us?
the prose here is really great and there's much to praise. i oscillated back and forth between affection for the machine and defensiveness over maintaining humans and our perhaps flawed hold on dignity. -> fitting for how we are watching as people in 2025 grow attached to intangible AI..
"I was aware of the strength of my feelings, which swung between affection and exasperation."
i guess my impulse to click 3 stars comes from how the story dragged at many points. outside of the main lines of the bizarre machine-human love, ambient political unrest and questioning of societal perception of rape (the substance of latter two not entirely justifying their word count) are tedious tangents into a fictional Turing, the succession of scientific theories, ramblings on poetry.. not entirely unentertaining but out of place (emphasis on Turing.. i could swear i read a near identical biographical account of him at least thrice). i would also add that the discussion on rape victims and prosecution of rape cases is a little flimsy, confused at best. it is certainly a decision to use rape and false rape accusations as a model to demonstrate where machine morals would fail to understand the flawed human essence of mankind's actions. maybe something people should know before starting this as this rape case is a big point of the novel...i personally was uncomfortable with the author's treatment of rape victims at multiple points, though i believe this is done intentionally. oh, and one last nitpick... i found the main character (charlie friend) to be very bland and unlikable, of the sex-brained, idle type which is always a turn off in my reads.
personally, i have always been wary of the seemingly popular desire to mold machines into our image (i guess i would play the role of a technophobe, as the book would define). it's always seemed bizarre to play god in such a way.. this widespread desire to amalgamate, imbue, and burden inanimate parts with human knowledge, instinct, and suffering seems sadistic at best. is this goal even possible? where do we draw the lines between our electric consciousness and theirs? doesn't the language we use to describe machinery already betray us, extending our humanity to these machines? and then there's the succession that would inevitably occur, our demotion to beings less moral and less capable than the new generation of our own creation.. what then?
all great, relevant questions that this book toys with.
"To hate it was to hate myself.
..
We would need to persuade him. There it was, "hate it," "persuade him," even "Adam"-our language exposed our weakness, our cognitive readiness to welcome a machine across the boundary between "it" and "him"."
"It's about machines like me and people like you and our future together... the sadness that's to come. It will happen. With improvements over time...we'll surpass you...and outlast you...even as we love you. Believe me, these lines express no triumph...Only regret."
i'm picking up that this sort of science fiction comedy isn't the type of writing one would generally associate with ian mcewan? i'll definitely read more from him.
this is a science fiction centering around a male-woman-machine love triangle that reads as a dark satirical comedy with what i suppose is a call for us to reflect and repair our humanity as we assemble inorganic consciousness in our image. the concern is about how we would integrate artificial mimics of human body and soul into our society, where their calculated symmetric rational morals would succeed and question the fundamentally unreasonable compass we rely on to survive. we animals are not meant for neutral intelligent thought, frankly. we are contaminated by self serving lust, greed, sloth.. so what would it mean to create a machine (paralleled to children) that surpass us?
the prose here is really great and there's much to praise. i oscillated back and forth between affection for the machine and defensiveness over maintaining humans and our perhaps flawed hold on dignity. -> fitting for how we are watching as people in 2025 grow attached to intangible AI..
"I was aware of the strength of my feelings, which swung between affection and exasperation."
i guess my impulse to click 3 stars comes from how the story dragged at many points. outside of the main lines of the bizarre machine-human love, ambient political unrest and questioning of societal perception of rape (the substance of latter two not entirely justifying their word count) are tedious tangents into a fictional Turing, the succession of scientific theories, ramblings on poetry.. not entirely unentertaining but out of place (emphasis on Turing.. i could swear i read a near identical biographical account of him at least thrice). i would also add that the discussion on rape victims and prosecution of rape cases is a little flimsy, confused at best. it is certainly a decision to use rape and false rape accusations as a model to demonstrate where machine morals would fail to understand the flawed human essence of mankind's actions. maybe something people should know before starting this as this rape case is a big point of the novel...i personally was uncomfortable with the author's treatment of rape victims at multiple points, though i believe this is done intentionally. oh, and one last nitpick... i found the main character (charlie friend) to be very bland and unlikable, of the sex-brained, idle type which is always a turn off in my reads.
personally, i have always been wary of the seemingly popular desire to mold machines into our image (i guess i would play the role of a technophobe, as the book would define). it's always seemed bizarre to play god in such a way.. this widespread desire to amalgamate, imbue, and burden inanimate parts with human knowledge, instinct, and suffering seems sadistic at best. is this goal even possible? where do we draw the lines between our electric consciousness and theirs? doesn't the language we use to describe machinery already betray us, extending our humanity to these machines? and then there's the succession that would inevitably occur, our demotion to beings less moral and less capable than the new generation of our own creation.. what then?
all great, relevant questions that this book toys with.
"To hate it was to hate myself.
..
We would need to persuade him. There it was, "hate it," "persuade him," even "Adam"-our language exposed our weakness, our cognitive readiness to welcome a machine across the boundary between "it" and "him"."
"It's about machines like me and people like you and our future together... the sadness that's to come. It will happen. With improvements over time...we'll surpass you...and outlast you...even as we love you. Believe me, these lines express no triumph...Only regret."
i'm picking up that this sort of science fiction comedy isn't the type of writing one would generally associate with ian mcewan? i'll definitely read more from him.