Shakespearean Spiders and Shakespearean Slime Mold

Abstract

This article draws on the debts to Shakespeare—in particular Hamlet , Macbeth , The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest —in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time (2015–22) novels to illuminate the trilogy’s complex engagement with posthuman identities. It identifies and analyzes a sustained pattern of connections between Tchaikovsky’s allusive processes and the various biological mechanisms of transformation and inheritance which drive the trilogy’s complex plot. The Shakespearean subtext becomes particularly resonant at moments when human survival or identity is challenged by unfamiliar life forms. In response to critical disagreement over whether Tchaikovsky embraces or rejects an anthropocentric view of the universe, it argues that Shakespeare’s own practice of presenting ethical or political debates in utramque partem , on both sides of the question, provides a model for decoding Tchaikovsky’s complex, shifting, and playful exploration of humanity’s encounters with very different life forms.