MAN AND THE MACHINE: THE ROLE OF AGENTIAL REALISM OF THE AUTOPOIETIC MACHINES IN THE WORLD-BUILDING OF STEPHEN BAXTER’S WORLD ENGINES DUOLOGY

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The present article endeavors to study Stephen Baxter’s two novels, namely World Engines: Destroyer (2019)
and World Engines: Creator (2020), in order to analyze the role of agential realism of the autopoietic, selfaware machines in creating and sustaining a post-anthropocentric and posthuman world. Also, since the novels
are set against the backdrop of a continuously proliferating manifold of parallel worlds, the study will attempt
to show how adopting a post-anthropocentric viewpoint can help us in ascribing equal agency to each entity
whether it be human or non-human or biological or mechanical. Also, it will be shown that even though the
machine minds appear to be quite godlike in their virtually limitless technological capabilities, still they are
not given the unquestioned and absolute supremacy as befits a Creator God; rather they are placed alongside
and on an equal pedestal with the humans, or specifically the posthuman descendants of mankind.

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