This Q&A with Ian McEwan is from a few years back when ran our book club “Humanity & Technology.” We read his book Machine Like Me. No time like the present to share it.
The questions the had for Mr. McEwan were:
-Why was the novel set specifically in 1982? Was it because that's the year Blade Runner was released? What about the political climate was appealing? Turing, Carter, Thatcher, the Falklands...what made this era appealing as the setting of the novel?
-And the second question--how did you arrive at the price of an Adam? $86,000 is specific.
Hi Elliot,
Great idea about Blade Runner - I’m a great fan, even of the sequel. But it didn’t cross my mind at the time of writing.
I wanted 1982 so that I could have Alan Turing still alive and active. Also, it was a time close to our own, but before the digital revolution began to re-shape our lives. If Turing had lived, perhaps the digital upheaval would have happened differently, or faster. Who knows? It’s always seemed to me quite arbitrary and unguessable, how and why and at what speed science and technology advance. If doctors in the 17th century had troubled to look down an early microscope, they might have had a germ theory of disease 200 years before they did. As your question suggests, 1982 was something of a crossroads in history. Again, the contingent is fascinating to speculate about. If the Argentinians had primed their Exocet missiles, the British fleet could have been sunk. Mrs Thatcher would not have been re-elected that year, and British social history would have been radically different. (And the fascist junta in Argentina would have lasted longer.)
As for £86k - simply the pursuit of realism. Rounded up to 90k would have been less convincing, I think.
Good luck with your book club,
Ian McEwan