Forward to the Past: la sfida della Storia in Machines Like Me di Ian McEwan

Abstract

In his novel, Machines Like Me (2019), Ian McEwan offers an interesting example of “alternate history” while dealing with crucial ethical issues connected with the development of Artificial Intelligence. Instead of setting his story in the future, the author chooses to set it in the past, but he radically changes the contours of the latter. Hence, the England of the early 1980s is turned into a technologically advanced society, well ahead of the scientific progress of the early 21st century. Thus, the future casts its light on the past in what appears as a typically postmodernist mélange: besides mingling genres (from speculative fiction to uchronia), McEwan also performs an intriguing hybridization of fact and fiction. The paper intends to explore the rich historical dimension of the novel, which betrays the author’s interest in the reflection on history and on its narrativization – as well as its manipulation and/or contamination – within the literary text.

Keywords

• ian mcewan
• machines like me
• history
• speculative fiction
• uchronia
• alternate history
• artificial intelligence