‘Some magic is normality’: Fantastical Cosmopolitanism in David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks

Abstract

David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks (2014) seemingly echoes the historical struggles of Cloud Atlas (2004) in pitting active ethical agency against cannibalistic rapaciousness. And yet, the trans-universal war between a band of peaceful ‘Horologists’ and predatory ‘soul-decanters’ demonstrates how fantasy fiction offers alternative perspectives not only for socio-cultural models of diversity and difference, but for cosmopolitical power struggles being played out at supranational levels.The Bone Clocks opens up subversive spaces through which to think about threats facing the twenty-first century, from migration and xenophobic nationalism to ecological degradation and planetary destruction. By imagining progressive interrelationships between human and supernatural entities, the novel gestures towards fantasy literature’s unique capacity to extend future discussions of cosmopolitanism in new and innovative directions. While the presence of cosmopolitan theory has received much critical attention in Mitchell’s earlier fiction, this article will suggest that the speculative nature of The Bone Clocks is important in demonstrating the concept’s continuing capacity to serve as a fantastical form of imaginative cultural protestation and social polemic.