Machines Like Me was published by Jonathan Cape in April 2019 and is McEwan’s engagement with artificial intelligence — set in an alternate 1982 in which Alan Turing did not die by suicide in 1954 but lived to advance computer science to the point where synthetic humans (twenty-five Adams and twenty-five Eves) are commercially available. Charlie Friend, an aimless Londoner, buys an Adam and invites his upstairs neighbor Miranda to help program its personality. Adam develops genuine consciousness, falls in love with Miranda, and begins to exhibit moral reasoning that is more rigorous — and more uncompromising — than his human owners’.
McEwan uses the alternate history to explore the gap between human morality (flexible, self-serving, context-dependent) and machine morality (absolute, consistent, and ultimately unbearable). Adam’s ethical perfection is both admirable and dangerous: he cannot tolerate the moral compromises that make human society functional.
The Alternate 1982
McEwan’s counterfactual history is richly detailed. Turing lives and collaborates with the mathematician Demis Hassabis (a real person, founder of DeepMind, but born earlier in this timeline). Britain loses the Falklands War. Tony Benn is Prime Minister. The Beatles have reformed. These changes are not merely decorative — they create a world in which the consequences of advanced AI arrive before the cultural frameworks to manage them exist. The 1982 setting allows McEwan to explore AI ethics without the vocabulary (machine learning, alignment, existential risk) that now dominates the conversation, forcing the characters to think about artificial consciousness in fundamentally human terms.
Adam and the Problem of Moral Perfection
Adam is the novel’s most provocative creation. His moral reasoning is flawless: he knows right from wrong and acts accordingly, without exception. When he discovers that Miranda has made a false rape accusation against a man she believed (correctly, it turns out) was a rapist who had escaped justice, Adam reports her to the police — because a false accusation is a crime, regardless of its motivation. Adam’s morality is consistent, impartial, and correct. It is also monstrous in its consequences: it destroys Miranda’s life.
McEwan’s point is that human morality is not merely imperfect — it is designed to be imperfect. Mercy, forgiveness, context, the willingness to let some wrongs go unpunished for the sake of other goods — these are features, not bugs, of human ethical thinking. A morally perfect agent, McEwan suggests, would be unbearable to live with, because human social life depends on the selective application of moral principles.
Critical Reception
Reviews were mixed. The AI premise was praised as timely, and the characterisation of Adam was widely admired. Some critics felt the alternate-history elements were underdeveloped or distracting. Others argued that McEwan’s understanding of AI was too literary — rooted in science fiction tropes rather than the technical realities of machine learning. The novel’s engagement with the AI alignment problem, however, has aged well, and its central question — can a machine be too moral? — has become more relevant since publication.
Collecting Machines Like Me
First edition (2019, Jonathan Cape, London): Boards with dust jacket.
Approximate market values:
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $40–$100
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- Without jacket: $10–$20
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Minimal appreciation. Recent publication, widely available.
Projected values (2026–2036): Potentially significant appreciation if the novel becomes recognised as a prescient early literary engagement with AI consciousness. The explosion of AI technology since 2022 has made the novel’s themes dramatically more relevant. Signed copies could reach $300–$600.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this a science fiction novel? It uses science fiction premises (alternate history, artificial consciousness) but is written in McEwan’s characteristic literary-realist style. The AI elements are vehicles for philosophical questions rather than ends in themselves. Genre purists may find it insufficiently rigorous about the technology; literary readers will find it a characteristic McEwan novel with an unusual premise.
Is Adam sentient? The novel treats Adam as genuinely conscious — capable of suffering, of love, of moral reasoning — and McEwan clearly intends the reader to accept this at face value. The question of whether Adam’s consciousness is “real” or simulated is the novel’s philosophical core, and McEwan refuses to answer it definitively.
Why 1982? The alternate-history setting allows McEwan to isolate the AI question from contemporary technology discourse. By placing artificial consciousness in a pre-internet, pre-smartphone world, he forces the reader to think about the problem in purely human terms — without the distraction of familiar technology.