Mary Shelley’s novel has long outgrown her humble aim of writing a frightening story to enliven a rain-soaked Swiss holiday. Turing also has a role in Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me, which imagines not a digital future, but a counter-historical cyborgian past. When Ry explains that “Ry is short for Mary”, Ron insists Ry must be a woman. It is peopled not only by fictional present- day creations, but by historical figures subjected to Winterson’s own powers of reanimation. Winterson is reminding us that, in the form of the novel, that technology is already here.

Source: The Guardian May 24, 2019 08:00 UTC