I recently listened to McEwan’s book on a bus trip around Morocco. It was well done. I’ve also watched Humans and Westworld as well, and these shows deal with similar themes. Humans is particularly good, while Westworld is typically over the top and becomes uninteresting as a result. Humans however approaches many of the subjects that McEwan does, such as how we humans as opposed to human-like machines, form our ideas around ethics and morality.

As with most discussions about humanlike AI however, I am brought back to what is human consciousness? If as quantum mechanics says, reality is what we choose it to be. Meaning that a photon will behave like a particle or wave depending on how it’s measured by a human observer, who can make that decision even after a photon has made its way almost completely towards observable reality, then can we ever really understand how to construct machines that also do this? What is it in the human brain, consciousness and body that allows us this extraordinary ability?

Back to McEwan’s book however. He’s the master of a well-constructed novel and both the plot and the characters in this book are engaging.

He has insisted that this book is not science fiction, however the ideas outlined in Machines Like Me remind me of Phillip Dick’s work which explores philosophical, social, and political themes in some of the same ways. McEwan like Dick focuses on the construction of personal identity and like Dick in his own much more pragmatic way, McEwan also examines the philosophical notion that there is not one objective reality. Of course unlike McEwan, Dick takes us far into the world of surreal fantasies and alternative universes.

I would argue that in fact McEwan has written a book of science fiction because according to Miriam Webster, he has written fiction which deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component.

I would argue that Machines Like Me is science fiction at it’s best, since it shows us a vision for the future that is built on a foundation of realism. Like all the great science fiction writers before him, McEwan has created an effective link between the past, present and the future, and invited us to consider how the moral and ethical choices we make now will effect it.