Machines Like Me Study Guide

Ian McEwan is a British novelist and screenwriter. Born in 1948 into a working-class family, he spent much of his childhood abroad, in countries where his father was posted for military service. The family returned to England when McEwan was 12. He later attended college at the University of Sussex, earning a degree in English literature in 1970. McEwan began his career writing Gothic short fiction, and his first published work was the collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites (1975). His first novel, The Cement Garden (1978), continued his focus on Gothic themes. McEwan achieved mainstream success with his 1997 novel Enduring Love, a work of realism that marked a departure from the more macabre themes that dominated his earlier works. In 1998, he won the Booker Prize for his novel Amsterdam. His subsequent novel, Atonement (2001), received critical and commercial acclaim; in 2007 it was adapted as a film starring Keira Knightley and James McAvoy. McEwan’s later novels include Solar (2010) and Sweet Tooth (2012), both of which feature more political themes, and Nutshell (2016), a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Machines Like Me, which was published in 2019, received mixed (although generally positive) reviews. His most recent novel is Lessons, published in 2022. McEwan’s works are lauded among critics, and he has won or been nominated for numerous prestigious awards, including the Booker Prize, for which he has been nominated six times. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Today, McEwan lives in London with his second wife, the journalist, writer, and former Guardian editor Annalena McAfee.

As a speculative reimagining of 1980s Britain, Machines Like Me alludes to (and, in many cases, alters) real events from British history. Much of the story unfolds in the aftermath of the Falklands War, which the novel’s Britain loses. The actual Falklands War was an undeclared conflict between the U.K. and Argentina and took place over 10 weeks in 1982. The conflict was over the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which at the time were British dependent territories. The Falklands War began on April 2, 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands; Argentine forces invaded South Georgia the following day. British forces responded with a naval task force assault against the Argentine Navy and Air Force (in the novel, this mission ends in failure for British forces). Ultimately, Argentina surrendered and ceded control of the islands to the British, whose successful retaking of the islands the U.S. Navy had deemed “a military impossibility” due to Britain’s comparative lack of aircraft and to the Argentine naval forces’ superior surface vessels and submarines. British victory in the Falklands War marked a significant turning point in the ongoing political conflict over the sovereignty of British territories, with Argentina justifying its takeover of the islands as a rightful reclamation of territory the British Empire had stolen the prior century. In history, Britain’s unlikely victory in the Falklands War led to a rise in Margaret Thatcher’s popularity and to renewed support for the staunch conservative ideology she represented. Argentina’s defeat, meanwhile, led to diminished support for the military, which ultimately paved the way for the country’s return to democratic rule in 1983. In the novel’s reimagined history, Argentina’s successful takeover of the islands leads to the installment of a dictatorship on the Falkland Islands, subjecting its residents to authoritarian rule.

McEwan is among Britain’s most prolific living writers, having published 17 novels to date. His most famous works include the novel Atonement (2001), which takes place during World War II and the present. The novel tells the story of a woman as she comes to terms with the unintended, tragic consequences of an innocent mistake she made when she was a young girl. Amsterdam (1998), for which McEwan won the Booker Prize, tells the story of two friends who make a euthanasia pact. McEwan’s most recent novel, Lessons (2022), follows the coming of age of a boy who is seduced by his piano teacher. As a work of science fiction, Machines and Me primarily focuses on the philosophical and moral implications of artificial intelligence. Another work of recent science fiction to grapple with this subject is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021), which takes place in a dystopian future in which children are genetically engineered for academic success and in which wealthy families buy their children androids as replacement friends. One such android,  Klara, serves as the book’s narrator. Finally, though not a direct reimagining of the work, Machines Like Me makes clear references to Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. The Tempest takes place on a remote island, where a wizard named Prospero and his daughter Miranda live with Prospero’s two servants, Caliban and Ariel, whom Prospero forcibly enslaved upon settling on the island. Notably, Caliban’s subhuman status and the mistreatment he suffers as a result parallel Charlie’s mistreatment of Adam. In addition, the disturbing scene in which Adam admits to forcing Miranda to watch him masturbate parallels Caliban’s attempted rape of (Shakespeare’s) Miranda.