Machines like me

Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Machines like me.
What does this title mean?
Machines are like me, or they feel well about me?
There is second line of the title: ...and people like you.
Same thing - are like me (the reader) or like me.
Together it gives a number of combinations:
- machines are like me and people are like you,
- machines have liking to me and people have liking to you,
- machines have liking to me and to people like you.
First two separate worlds of humans and machines. The third one bring them together, but only for people like me - the owner or the reader.
I selected the third option and from this moment I felt part of the book.
From the title we know that the book will be about people and humanoid robots.
And here comes surprise.
Year of action = 1982.
Futuristic book placed in year 1982?
This alone made me feeling comfortable.
This is very subjective of course, but I do not like books placed in too remote future.
Simply I feel cheated - author wastes my effort on reading his/her drivel on unknown future reducing size and contents of the main story.
Year 1982 - what happened in England that year - similarities with current Brexit chaos and confusion are obvious.
Charlie, the main character is a person a bit below average - did not complete studies, has no proper job. From the beginning we see that his property - Adam - is superior to him.
There is also a bit of the challenge to the reader - can you follow Adam's considerations on various subjects - artificial intelligence, literature, etc.
I appreciated it, remember - I felt being part of the story.
But then comes a crunch - Adam falls in love.
I reread the motto of the book:
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie... -- Rudyard Kipling - Secret of the Machines.
I checked the next line of the poem: ...We can neither love nor pity nor forgive... - full text HERE
Alarm bells ringing. Ombudsman, help! - we, humans, have been cheated!!
Can robot love?
There were 25 humanoid robots in this series - 12 Adams and 13 Eves. There are rumors, that some of them fell into deep depression, committed suicides. For me the reason was obvious - totally disenchanted with their owners/masters.
From this point of view "our" Adam is a very promising case, an amazing opportunity of future mutual cooperation of people and machines.
But here comes the ultimate power - the Author - and brings order, obeying statement in the motto to the letter.
Great disappointment for me, here I dropped one star from the rating.


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