Ian McEwan turns to sci-fi tropes to explore the suddenness of change in human relationships in his newest novel, Machines Like Me. The book is set in an alternate-universe 1980s-era London, one in which the gay computer genius Alan Turing was not driven to his death, and where a workshy tax cheat named Charlie impulse-buys one of the first artificial humans. Together with his crush, Miranda, an upstairs neighbor who's a doctoral student, they co-program their new synthetic friend—with momentous consequences. According to NPR's Heller McAlpin, McEwan disgusted sci-fi fans with his casual disparagement of the genre, but he seems to have brought some interesting twists on old ideas.