From The Times Literary Supplement:
An extract from Ian McEwan’s new novel Machines Like Me
In an alternative 1982, our narrator, Charlie, has just purchased a limited-edition robot, Adam, “the first truly viable manufactured human with plausible intelligence and looks”. Upstairs, Charlie’s neighbour, Miranda, is preparing to come round for dinner…
He stood before me, perfectly still in the gloom of the winter’s afternoon. The debris of the packaging that had protected him was still piled around his feet. He emerged from it like Botticelli’s Venus rising from her shell. Through the north-facing window, the diminishing light picked out the outlines of just one half of his form, one side of his noble face. The only sounds were the friendly murmur of the fridge and a muted drone of traffic. I had a sense then of his loneliness, settling like a weight around his muscular shoulders. He had woken to find himself in a dingy kitchen, in London SW9 in the late twentieth century, without friends, without a past or any sense of his future. He truly was alone. All the other Adams and Eves were spread about the world with their owners, though seven Eves were said to be concentrated in Riyadh.
As I reached for the light switch I said, ‘How are you feeling?’
He looked away to consider his reply. ‘I don’t feel right.’
This time his tone was flat. It seemed my question had lowered his spirits. But within such microprocessors, what spirits?
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t have any clothes. And—’
‘I’ll get you some. What else?’
‘This wire. If I pull it out it will hurt.’
‘I’ll do it and it won’t hurt.’
But I didn’t move immediately. In full electric light I was able to observe his expression, which barely shifted when he spoke. It was not an artificial face I saw, but the mask of a poker player. Without the lifeblood of a personality, he had little to express. He was running on some form of default program that would serve him until the downloads were complete. He had movements, phrases, routines that gave him a veneer of plausibility. Minimally, he knew what to do, but little else. Like a man with a shocking hangover.
Link to the rest at The Times Literary Supplement
I liked the excerpt. When I’m reading, I read what I like and I don’t care what genre other readers say it belongs to and I ignore especially any author declarations about what their book is supposed to be. Any book in any genre can be good, or bad. If a book is good, it’s good. If it’s not good, I don’t read it. This one sounds worth a look, at the very least. 😀
Yuck. Literary fiction attempting to pretend it’s sci-fi.
On the contrary, it’s SF attempting to pretend that it’s not SF by imitating lit-fic: the product of which is usually bad lit-fic and worse SF. This game comes around every couple of decades or so. It was big in the sixties, and again in the eighties – when Margaret Atwood was shocked, shocked I say, that anyone would mistake her gloriously lit’ry Handmaid’s Tale for icky cootie-ridden genre fiction.
Good analysis. I’ll retract my comment and endorse yours.