Introduction: Special Issue on “Machines, Monsters and Animals: Posthumanism and Children’s Literature”

Some 2100 years ago an ancient pleasure barge sank off the coast of Antikythera, Greece. The wreck, discovered in 1900, held a fascinating piece of technology, now known as the Antikythera mechanism. The calculator was at least a thousand years ahead of its time, or at least ahead of any competing machine that has survived, with scores of intricate gears able to indicate the position of the planets, the phases of the moon, and even the schedule of the Olympic games.¹ The men who produced and worked this mechanism were already, in an important sense, posthuman. They were able to navigate beyond the safety of the shore, and to plan for the future, through a non-biological, technological enhancement of their own human limitations. They experienced the wonders of the intersection of man and computational machine for the first time (as far as we know).

Of course, the sinking of the Antikythera vessel and the loss of such advanced engineering until at least the Medieval period points to a particular counter-narrative about the dangers of exceeding human limitations. Recalling the hubris of Prometheus, the Antikythera sailors ultimately floundered despite their advanced computer. Herein lies the crux of posthumanism – when does the ‘post’ human go too far, whether on moral, technological, or biological grounds? Occurrences of post-humanism can be frightening as much as they can be liberating and, as N. Katherine Hayles puts it, such ‘terror is relatively easy to understand’ (283). ‘Post’ implies a space after and beyond – and any species should be concerned to ensure that such an event does not occur as one of the most basic tenets of evolution. Hardly more genial is the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of ‘post-human’ as ‘Designating or relating to art, music, etc., in which humanity or human concerns are regarded as peripheral or absent; abstract, impersonal, mechanistic, dispassionate’. It seems entirely appropriate that the first recorded use of the term in this guise comes from Jack Kerouac in 1944 (OED, ‘post-human’, adj. and n. A.2). Although it would be years before Kerouac would go On the Road (1957), posthumanism might be said to revel in the kinds of anti-authoritarianism and alternative lifestyles of the Beat generation, although in a slightly less bohemian and more downbeat guise.

If post-WW2, post-Holocaust and post-A-bomb society might be taken to be increasingly ill-at-ease with its status as ‘humane’, at the same time the nature of childhood has slipped indelibly towards the posthuman. The growth of TV and computer ownership places machine-mediated fantasy before the eyes of children as a part of daily life. It might be said today that fantastical encounters with screen-based narrative and visual arts are a dominant mode for childhood engagements with the world. Children carry computers in their bags and pockets that were inconceivable just 10 years ago. Machine-generated fantasy, whether through games, websites, eBooks, or song, is now the everyday experience of contemporary childhood. The UK regulator OfCom reports that in 2013 60% of 13 year olds owned a smartphone and 38% of 5-7 year olds regularly used a tablet computer.² The effects of these posthuman upbringings are little understood. Surprisingly, they generate considerably less cultural anxiety than that exhibited about Mike TV’s television in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) of half a century ago, at least if one measures anxiety by the number of tablet computers now distributed in schools. But what underscores these encounters is the accessibility of narrative, and the huge variety of narratives, whether through an Internet created for adult audiences, digital games, or other electronic media. The posthumanification of story – from TV to tablets – is probably the greatest change to face modern childhood. As such, the contact zones between humans and the non-human have become especially significant to children’s literature. The Guardian newspaper notes for instance that ‘Robots are turning up more and more in YA fiction’ as authors and readers seek to come to terms with the fact that...