PLOT

The story is set in London in 1982: Great Britain has just lost the Falklands War and, thanks to Alan Turing's research, the father of artificial intelligence, the Internet, mobile phones and self-driving cars - and the first deceptively real artificial humans - are already available in the early 1980s.

At the centre of the story is 32-year-old Charlie, who can't get anything together and earns his living with not always entirely successful stock market speculation. Charlie has been fascinated by artificial intelligence since childhood and Alan Turing is his idol.

He is lonely and in love with his upstairs neighbour, 22-year-old Miranda.

Due to an inheritance from his late mother, he can afford one of the first of those sentient robots, a model called Adam, which he sees as a chance to get closer to Miranda, hoping that their shared responsibility for Adam will bring them together.

Together with Miranda, he programmes the android Adam. He looks like a human and is very clever. While Adam initially takes care of the household, he becomes more and more a part of Charlie's and Miranda's lives as the story progresses. This not only includes Charlie discovering that Adam is much more successful in his stock market transactions, but also a not entirely uncomplicated love triangle develops.

Miranda has a dark secret. She accused a man of doing something wrong to get back at someone who hurt her friend. But the man didn't do anything wrong. He got in trouble and went to jail because of Miranda's lie. Even though Adam likes Miranda, he thinks she should be punished for what she did. Adam wanting justice puts Charlie in a tough spot because Miranda might go to jail. If she does, they can't get married and can't adopt Mark, a boy Miranda really cares about. To protect Miranda and their future, Charlie does something really hard. He breaks Adam, the robot, so Miranda's secret stays safe.