Adrian Tchaikovksy’s award-winning novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Who will inherit this new Earth? The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age — a world terraformed and … past age — a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth? Span
more
Recommended for fans of Vernor Vinge and Charles Stross, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time is another great Big Idea sci-fi novel that’s NOT for the arachnophobic. It was timely that I was buzzing about A Deepness in the Sky last week; this book reminds me a lot of Vinge’s best work.
It’s one of the better stories I’ve read told across the deep time of near-lightspeed space travel. It manages to weave a single consistent human narrator in between generations upon generations of alien spiders over the millennia, with the spiders winding up often more sympathetic than the human viewpoints.
It’s pretty dark: both sides of the story are staring species-level extinction squarely in the eye throughout the book. The stress of centuries upon centruies of space travel on individuals and the last of human society don’t always paint a pretty picture of our nature either.
But if you’re not turned off by a fairly bleak setting, there’s a lot of “oh wow” moments packed into this gem. I think this is one of the books I’ve enjoyed the most so far in 2016.
Loved this book! Spans the galaxy, cuts across thousands of years and has some super interesting intelligent aliens. I don’t want to give too much away, but I highly recommend this if you’re into space operas with a long time-scale.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Children of Time, consists of two narratives that alternate throughout. They share a beginning and come together at the end.
I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who loves science fiction.
However, I found one story was riveting, the other, less so.
Children of Time begins in the future, hundreds of years from now. We’re on a top-secret space mission, light-years away from Earth. The mission is to ensure humanity’s survival. As the ship circles a planet, destined to be a new Eden, Dr. Avrana Kern, a scientist whose ego is the size of a supernova, prepares to complete her directive. Kern heads a team that will“seed” this new world (she secretly calls “Kern World”), delivering a huge cylindrical crate filled with young apes, (a barrel of monkeys?).
Soon, this package of primates will land softly, ready to populate new world. Accompanying the apes is a case filled with a genetically engineered virus. The plan is for the apes to settle in their new home while the virus spreads, accelerating the apes’ intellect, along with civilization-building social skills. The end result, in a few generations, will be a new type of human, one not contaminated by the toxic mix of warring ideologies that threatens to destroy humanity. Kern, who seems ever more annoying, calls them “my monkeys.”
Back on Earth, some people want humans to continue to evolve by using genetics as well as developing more powerful and sophisticated AI systems. The other group rejects the whole “super human” and “super Hal” ideas. We should stay our “natural selves” (though that hasn’t seemed to work out so far). There are wars, terrorists, pollution and poverty—all the things that say home sweet home.
Not so fast, Dr. Know-it-all, because just as the ape barrel and barrels of other Earth fauna are launched, bombs planted by a crew member, a spy of NUN (Non Ultra Natura!) explode, killing the apes and the entire crew except Dr. Kern, who manages to escape in a sentry pod where a designated crew member (who was the NUN bomber) was to orbit the planet until the accelerated evolution of the apes signaled developing technology and the time to call Earth Central.
Clearly not happy and wishing there had been time to give the traitor a piece of her impressive mind, Kern looks out the pod window. Seeing her favorite barrel burning, she despairs. Never one to give up, Kern is determined to round up more monkeys and try again. She sends an SOS back to Earth. Knowing that her message will take decades to get there and then decades for help to come, she decides to put herself in cold storage.
But the ship’s computer isn’t happy and peppers Kern with “what-if” questions. Rolling her eyes, Kern uploads her mind to the computer. “AI Kern” can make decisions while keeping her physical self frozen and zip-locked until it’s rescue time and she’s defrosted.
Two stories, told in alternating chapters, stem from Kern’s attempt to create a new branch of the human family tree. One takes us far into the future, hundreds of years after Kern’s message. We’re on the ark ship Gilgamesh, which carries what’s left of humanity. Years of war not only destroyed the Earth but all of the settlement planets. People take turns coming out of cold storage to operate and maintain the ship and to look for planets suitable for colonization. During the time out of storage, people continue to age, a good reason to limit these active periods.
Attempts with test colonies have ended in disaster. Things are getting testier on the ship. As always, factions develop and there’s fighting.
If this continues, soon, we’ll go the way of the dodos.
So if humanity is to survive, we must find a new home and oh look, there’s a pretty green planet! Let’s check it out.
The second story is the one that I couldn’t put down. All the main characters are spiders. You see, though the monkeys didn’t make it, the virus did, as well as a barrel filled with spiders, ants and other creepy crawlies. Barrels intact, small mammals also survive. The virus works its magic, not on the mammals, but on the spiders. Tchaikovsky, who is a zoologist, shows us a credible evolution of creatures I occasionally find in my shower before sending them to their next life.
Beginning with two spiders that collaborate in bringing down their prey, each spider chapter chronicles the way a spider society might evolve and what challenges it might face as it develops a technology. Portia is one of the names given to certain lady spiders that play major roles in each stage of the spider evolution story. Bianca is another. The name of Fabian pops ups up for male spiders. To each Portia, the light moving across the night sky is a god. The light comes from Kern’s Pod.
When the Gilgamesh encounters the spider world, all on board are excited. Then the pod operated by “AI Kern,” who has observed signs of intelligent life on her pet project, and assumes that somehow, a few of the simians survived, threatens to destroy the Ark. It mustn’t contaminate “her” monkeys. The sentry pod carries formidable weapons, more sophisticated than the dated technology of the Gilgamesh. The ship leaves, hoping to find another promising planet. They don’t. Eventually, they come back.
At this point, neither AI Kern nor the Gilgamesh crew knows that the planet is home to smart spiders. Along with technology, culture and politics, new social norms developed. Male spiders are smaller than females and considered less intelligent. Led by one of the Fabians, they fight for equal rights.
Progress means it is no longer socially acceptable to eat the father of your children.
Eventually, after centuries of wandering the galaxy and finding no suitable planet to call home, the Gilgamesh is forced to return to Spider World. As they orbit the planet, the ship’s crew is horrified to see what’s looking back at them from the surface. The planet’s current tenants glare back at them. Each face has more than two eyes. Just before the crew scours the Gilgamesh in search of a big can of Raid, AI Kern, readies the big guns. Although a little unsettled by the results of her planet seeding, Kern is determined to protect her eight-legged “children.” By this time, the spiders have made their first forays into space and the battle between arachnids and the humans is on.
I loved the outcome of this three-way showdown. It was a resolution I had not already guessed. It surprised me.
I did have issues with the Gilgamesh story. I had difficulties with the dialect of the Ark humans. It often sounded like British generic-bad-guy-speak. I realize that my American language filter was my problem, but for me, it was an obstacle in terms of following the narrative and investing in the characters, especially because of the continued war between factions.
Also, there is little character development in the ship’s crew. The brief time the characters were active might partially explain this. Even the people on board who aren’t on your friends list on the ship Facebook page, are members of a seriously endangered species. This should have led to some serious survival kumbaya. Literally in the same boat, these humans never seem to just get along nor do they learn anything other than ways to keep alive. Finding a new home is not the only priority. A new attitude would help.
In contrast, the author details the ways spiders might converse and explores aspects of a fictional spider culture. The wars for dominance between spider colonies and assaults by armies of marauding ants fascinated me. Using his knowledge of spiders, Tchaikovsky imagines the development of arachnid literature and art. Religion (the Kern Pod/God) plays an important role in their values plus conflict between believers and non-believers drives much of the story.
Mr. Tchaikovsky’s award-winning Children of Time was worth my time.
I may read it again. Spider lover or not, lovers of sci fi should make room on their reading list for The Children of Time.
Fascinating, award winning sci-fi novel that builds an incredibly believable, but totally original world, with action that takes place over hundreds of years, yet which flies wonderfully though the time span of the story.
A masterpiece.
This story had me right from the start. Crips characters to love, hate, and contemplate against worlds that tempting for takeover.
Tchaikovsky keeps human readers captivated in a web that draws one in and before you know it’s too late, you are caught. At times I didn’t know who to cheer for more. Some chapters made for a difficult night’s sleep.
What I love about this book is that I learned new things, and questioned others I never would have thought to consider.
My highest compliment is I am a better person for having read this book. I had fun.
This is the kind of rational exploration of the future that Arthur C. Clarke was justly famous for.
A fascinating story, and one of the most amazing pieces of writing of a truly alien race. Probably only eclipsed by Peter F. Hamilton and his rendition of the Primes, and MorningLightMountain in particular.
A scientific mission terraforms a planet, seeds it with a nanovirus that will accelerate the evolution of introduced primates, and sets it to bake. Thousands of years later human civilisation has collapsed, and a ship of refugees arrives at the planet – but the experiment went wrong, and a totally different species of animal has achieved intelligence and civilisation. Great book but not recommended for arachnophobes.
CHILDREN OF TIME is unlike any novel I’ve read before it. A brilliant concept, deftly executed, that will leave you contemplating the nature of intelligence, empathy, and community.
Mind. Blown. I really enjoyed this book. It made me think of The Forever War, but with spiders. Very smart spiders. Spiders I cheered for. A tricky kind of story to convey, well-told and well-framed. I had a hard time putting it down to sleep at night. I can’t wait to read the sequel! This is the second novel I’ve read by this author, and I’ve loved both of them. Recommend.
Unbelievably imaginative sci-fi odyssey that spans time, space, spirituality and much more.
A totally original story that is beautifully crafted by a very capable author, to be enjoyed by discerning sci-fi fans.The scope of this novel is vast and requires a certain commitment from the reader but the payoff is an amazing reading experience that will challenge the very notion of what it means to be human.
If you’re a fan of truly great sci-fi, this is a must read!
Absolutely stunning. One of the best books I’ve ever read. So good, I want to go back to the beginning and start all over again. The concepts! The science! And yet, the essence of the story is as old as time.
I’ll be ordering a paper copy of this for the keeper shelf.
At first, it’s easy to discount Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s first science fiction novel. After all, best-known fantasy series (Shadows of the Apt) has a very singular theme that has made him well known: insects. And, to a certain regard, Children of Time, continues the motif.
Spiders… in… Space!!!
Well, not in space. They’re on a terraformed planet, the accidental consequence of a bioengineering project. The reader witnesses the evolution of the new sentient race. Their early days are as hunters, morphing over time to a space-age society.
The other half of the story focuses on the Gilgamesh; an ark ship carrying the last vestiges of the human race. Faster-than-light travel isn’t a part of this world, so the voyagers go into stasis. Members of Key Crew awaken every so often to make sure the ship is running smoothly. Of course, things go off the rails, and it’s the fault of the people. Per usual.
Tchaikovsky’s prior work has been as a fantasy writer. That serves him in good stead for this volume, particularly for the spiders’ culture. Evolutionary biology goes into the background of the story. Bit it’s easy to see that the society he presents is the effort of a cracking good world-builder. I itched to skip over the human chapters, only to focus on the more creative work he did with the spiders. But doing that would have been detrimental to the strength of the story.
I’m giving that half too little credit. The Gilgamesh portions were as good. But in a different way. Thinking about how humanity will end is bittersweet. It’s tough to see the race hasn’t moved past its tribalism and obsession with mortality.
There’s a great phrase near the end of the story: “a tyranny of priorities.” The drama between the two groups is driven by their own survival needs and hampered by a lack of communication. The way that they realize that the tyranny can fall away is a bit of a slick trick that comes at the eleventh hour. It’s a good solution, but it feels like Tchaikovsky had a clever idea that he couldn’t quite follow through on.
My biggest gripe about the story is the main human character, Holsten. He’s an interesting academic, and provides a great viewpoint. But he lacks agency. He’s there as a reader’s avatar, and he doesn’t grow too much as a person. You could argue that his static nature is symbolic of humanity as presented. Which is a sad commentary, but important.
That said, Children of Time is an excellent book with a lot of great, entertaining ideas. I highly recommend it!
Slightly dated technology, but a standard challenge for SciFi stories. Slow start that jumps around, until the reader begins to see what is tying the various, seemingly unrelated characters together. But, considering hundreds or thousands of years are involved, it all comes together. An epic story in many respects.
Years ago I tried to read award-winning science fiction and found the genre (or the awards) still dominated by a kind of limited, conventional, techno perspective. Now I read science fiction and find so many wonderful books and good writing. This novel is based in techno space travel but also weaves in the biology and evolution of ants and spiders. Fast-paced, far-reaching, interesting turns. Satisfying conclusion!
A tremendously imaginative, inventive premise for a plot–a plan to save the human race from extinction by terraforming potentially habitable planets that goes remarkably wrong and initiates expedited evolution of a spider species over just a few centuries into a technologically advanced race who will fight for “their” planet when the human arkship finally arrives.
This book is on my top ten all time Sci-Fi list. There are many reasons it won the Arthur C. Clarke award. Stunning in scale, truly original and science so solid that it reads more like a first hand account. The depth of understanding and extrapolation of other species creates a truly eerie step inside the minds of creatures we often consider abhorrent. The humans are no less realized in their egos, anxieties and failures. A genuine literary accomplishment by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I LOVED IT! What a great read this was, with exceptional writing. I was hooked from the 1st chapter until the last page. Don’t want to give spoilers, but wow – a wonderful story. I was impressed.
What a wild ride! Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite authors now. Such a story of humanity and the programmed nature of survival.