The ethics and possibilities of artificial intelligence (AI) creating entities that are more intelligent than humans is a hot topic among the Premier League players of British fiction. Speculative sci-fi informed Ian McEwan’s recent Machines Like Me, while Kazuo Ishiguro has spoken of exploring AI in his next novel. Such concerns also lie at the heart of Jeanette Winterson’s latest work.
McEwan offended readers and writers of the genre when he casually mentioned that his sci-fi novel was not about “travelling at ten times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots”, but rather real human dilemmas, as if he was the first to think of the idea. Frankissstein is unlikely to win over many who enjoy the fiction of science either.
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