Abstract:

Ian McEwan uses elements of science-fiction and puts forwards some vague issues about artificial intelligence in Machines Like Me, thus leaving the reader in a technologically advanced, sci-fi utopia dominated by hyperrealism, subjectivity, and consumerism, which later turns into a moral dystopia with discrepancies of humankind’s interaction with AI humanoid robots. He offers a retro-futuristic universe where notions such as morality, human nature, and free will are challenged in an environment generated by postmodern tactics of historiographic metafiction and intertextuality as well as simulation. McEwan also provides us with a postmodern picture of contemporary individuals and conditions in which thin lines between the intrusion of artificial intelligence into our lives and the representation of truth and reality are blurred. Making use of theoretical concepts such as postmodern simulation, historicity, and production of knowledge under how McEwan presents the major subject matters in the novel with the reflection and depiction of a futuristic world of artificial intelligence, this article tries to answer the questions about the condition of the postmodern individual who struggles with the issues of discerning reality and truth haunted by the existence and intrusion of AI Adams and Eves.