Here, that something else is the non-biological lifeforms of the future, coincidentally also the subject of Ian McEwan’s new novel Machines Like Me, published just last month. “Because everything is relational, everything is about our interaction with something else.”Ĭharlotte Coleman (left) and Geraldine McEwan in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1990). She is a romantic, with capitals and without: “Love comes in and out of fashion and I’m sticking to it,” she says. Declaring its literary genesis in neon pink on the cover, Frankissstein is subtitled “a love story”, because all Winterson’s novels are love stories. The novel looks back 200 years to Mary Shelley and the industrial revolution and takes us into the present day revolution of artificial intelligence, sexbots and cryogenics. “But of course what they haven’t got, and never will have, is a clitoris. A mother and daughter are celebrating a birthday with afternoon tea at the next table. They’ve got huge tits and small waists and long legs”. Female sex dolls start at “around $2,000 for a really crap one”, she says, and it was no surprise to learn that they are “entirely fantasy. Watching guys have sex with bots,” she announces cheerfully, attacking dessert in a smart London restaurant. R esearching Frankissstein, her 11th novel, led Jeanette Winterson down some unlikely digital paths.
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