Q&A: Ian McEwan on how 'Machines Like Me' reveals the dark side of artificial intelligence

Charlie Friend, the critics, the album and the Beatles reunion (two years after Lennon was actually assassinated) are all figments of Ian McEwan's fertile imagination in his latest novel, "Machines Like Me." The Beatles' presence is a tiny diversion in a counterfactual novel by the author of books including "The Innocent," "Amsterdam," and "Atonement." Set in a world where the atom bomb was never dropped and John Kennedy survived his Dallas shooting, the crucial alternative reality is that Alan Turing, the genius who broke Nazi Germany's secret codes during World War II, was not hounded into suicide for being homosexual -- instead, he lived to spark huge technological breakthroughs that led to an earlier Digital Age, with progress sped up by Turing's generous open sourcing.