In his 2019 novel, Machines Like Me, 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, a plausible scenario for the problematic interaction between humans and androids the novel portrays, 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 twenty-first 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, with historical figures like Alan Turing juxtaposed to fictional characters. 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.
Forward to the past: la sfida della storia in "Machines Like Me" di Ian McEwan
Ferrari R.
2023-01-01
Abstract
In his 2019 novel, Machines Like Me, 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, a plausible scenario for the problematic interaction between humans and androids the novel portrays, 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 twenty-first 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, with historical figures like Alan Turing juxtaposed to fictional characters. 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.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
