Infection as Multispecies Mediator in Stephen King’s Cujo and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time Series

Abstract This article examines Stephen King’s Cujo and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series as examples of infection literature that explore the violence and potential of multispecies encounters brought about by zoonotic disease, using infectious agents as mediators in interactions between humans and nonhuman lifeforms. Both texts are interested in the interplay between violence and relationality: King’s horror novel uses an encounter between a woman and a rabid dog to deconstruct narratives of domestication and portray a different kind of intimacy, while Tchaikovsky’s science fiction series uses war and infection as the groundwork for multispecies communication, cohabitation, and collaboration. Cujo, Children of Time , and Children of Ruin are thus useful for exploring “outbreak narratives” (Wald, 2008) from the perspective of human-animal studies.