Status
Available
Call number
Series
Publication
Pan (2016), Edition: Reprint, 600 pages
Description
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 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?… (more)
Media reviews
The concept of “uplift” has been around for a while; in this version, humans have destroyed Earth, and are making a last ditch effort to terraform a new home planet. The last stage of the terraforming includes uplifting some apes to serve as slaves for colonists via a nanovirus.
Alas for the
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humans, things do not go as planned. They accidentally create a planet of sentient spiders. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member RobertDay
Adrian Tchaikovsky (yes, apparently a distant relative of THAT Tchaikovsky) had built up a fairly solid track record in fantasy before producing this, his first, stand-alone sf novel. I've come to this book a little behind most people, and I'm pleased I've caught up with it. It marks a return to
The basic plot: human seedship sets out to colonise a new world and uplift simians to sentience as a client race. (Tchaikovsky nods to David Brin for his concepts of 'uplift', though as will be seen, things do not go to plan - despite one of the human characters expecting that they have, a deft touch.) However, some political plotting goes badly wrong, resulting in the simians being destroyed before making it to the target planet and the uplifting nanovirus being deployed against a population mainly comprised of spiders and ants. This then causes a major upset when a later human colony vessel arrives expecting to be able to inherit a new planet ripe for colonisation.
Tchaikovsky displays a command of plot development, using relatavistic flight and coldsleep technology to enable his crew of humans to undertake voyages whilst generations of development occur on the spider planet. Through the device of giving different characters in the spider narrative the same names (which works well; the spiders have access to distilled genetic memories of ancestors, and so descendents can easily identify one with another), we are shown the development of the spider society over time through characters with similar traits and so the story moves forward in different eras as though seen through the (eight) eyes of the same dramatic character.
Meanwhile, the human generation starship finds its options getting narrowed down by the vastness of space and the ever-increasing age of their technology. I found the human characters a little less sympathetically drawn but they play their parts well enough. Tchaikovsky interestingly depicts arachnophobia on both an obvious, personal level (in the shape of one particular character) and on a cultural level, where the humans continue to think of reclaiming the spider world after "burning out the infestation" or after a bug-hunt; only slowly - too slowly - do they realise that they are facing sentient beings rather than simple insect pests.
Tchaikovsky makes a good attempt at depicting a spider society, with some clever manipulation of phrase and saying to translate our human experience into spider terms. (For instance, I particularly liked suggesting solidarity amongst spiders through saying "standing knee-to-knee" where we would say "shoulder-to-shoulder".) Indeed, I came out of the novel knowing more about spiders than I did previously. He takes the opportunity to reflect some human traits back onto the spiders in terms of their matriarchal society and some of its attitudes as that society evolves. Some might see that as preachy; but the spiders only make high-level conceptual breakthroughs in understanding their world once they have evolved to recognise the contributions made by males to their society (and stop eating them after sex - though there is one instance where, having established the cessation of that practice as a badge of societal evolution, Tchaikovsky neatly turns that on its head to show heroism in an arachnid context).
There is a streak of humour dotted through the story; but overall, I was left with an overwhelming sense of the span of time; as the humans spend thousands of years in coldsleep, the spiders pass through major societal and technological change. The sense of the passage of time is almost Stepledonian; in the coda to the novel, an expedition sets out to find the source of new signals from another old human colony, and the atmosphere is almost that of the ending of Wells' 'Shape of Things to Come'.
So this is possibly the best science fiction novel I have read this year, though readers should note that I do not suffer from archnophobia!
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old-fashiooned sense of wonder sf with big themes and an almost cosmic span of events.The basic plot: human seedship sets out to colonise a new world and uplift simians to sentience as a client race. (Tchaikovsky nods to David Brin for his concepts of 'uplift', though as will be seen, things do not go to plan - despite one of the human characters expecting that they have, a deft touch.) However, some political plotting goes badly wrong, resulting in the simians being destroyed before making it to the target planet and the uplifting nanovirus being deployed against a population mainly comprised of spiders and ants. This then causes a major upset when a later human colony vessel arrives expecting to be able to inherit a new planet ripe for colonisation.
Tchaikovsky displays a command of plot development, using relatavistic flight and coldsleep technology to enable his crew of humans to undertake voyages whilst generations of development occur on the spider planet. Through the device of giving different characters in the spider narrative the same names (which works well; the spiders have access to distilled genetic memories of ancestors, and so descendents can easily identify one with another), we are shown the development of the spider society over time through characters with similar traits and so the story moves forward in different eras as though seen through the (eight) eyes of the same dramatic character.
Meanwhile, the human generation starship finds its options getting narrowed down by the vastness of space and the ever-increasing age of their technology. I found the human characters a little less sympathetically drawn but they play their parts well enough. Tchaikovsky interestingly depicts arachnophobia on both an obvious, personal level (in the shape of one particular character) and on a cultural level, where the humans continue to think of reclaiming the spider world after "burning out the infestation" or after a bug-hunt; only slowly - too slowly - do they realise that they are facing sentient beings rather than simple insect pests.
Tchaikovsky makes a good attempt at depicting a spider society, with some clever manipulation of phrase and saying to translate our human experience into spider terms. (For instance, I particularly liked suggesting solidarity amongst spiders through saying "standing knee-to-knee" where we would say "shoulder-to-shoulder".) Indeed, I came out of the novel knowing more about spiders than I did previously. He takes the opportunity to reflect some human traits back onto the spiders in terms of their matriarchal society and some of its attitudes as that society evolves. Some might see that as preachy; but the spiders only make high-level conceptual breakthroughs in understanding their world once they have evolved to recognise the contributions made by males to their society (and stop eating them after sex - though there is one instance where, having established the cessation of that practice as a badge of societal evolution, Tchaikovsky neatly turns that on its head to show heroism in an arachnid context).
There is a streak of humour dotted through the story; but overall, I was left with an overwhelming sense of the span of time; as the humans spend thousands of years in coldsleep, the spiders pass through major societal and technological change. The sense of the passage of time is almost Stepledonian; in the coda to the novel, an expedition sets out to find the source of new signals from another old human colony, and the atmosphere is almost that of the ending of Wells' 'Shape of Things to Come'.
So this is possibly the best science fiction novel I have read this year, though readers should note that I do not suffer from archnophobia!
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LibraryThing member Narilka
Children of Time is a stand alone science fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The story alternates between two plot threads. The first thread is about the last survivors of earth roaming the universe in a colony ship in an attempt to save what's left of humanity and yet seemingly unable to escape
Tchaikovsky has a quite a vision. Events unfold gradually across a couple thousand years of time. This is great for those who love some hard science in their fiction as plenty of time is given to show just how insects evolve from a fairly mindless species into a civilization that includes both religion and a form of biological sciences that was absolutely fascinating. Fair warning: if you have arachnophobia you may want to stay away from this story as it goes into quite a bit of descriptive detail about the bugs. As much as I enjoyed the insects story, the human story just didn't do it for me. I think Tchaikovsky painted too good a picture of the darker side of human nature and unfortunately those chapters left me feeling slightly depressed and made it slower for me to get through.
I listened to the audio book narrated by Mel Hudson. She does a great job with the material. I particularly loved how she portrayed Dr. Kern.
In a complete surprise.... Insects: 5 Stars. Humans: 1 Star.
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what caused their downfall in the first place. The second thread follows the inhabitants of a terraformed planet. The humans that were terraforming the planet released a nano-virus intended to speed up evolution for a group of monkeys that intended to be delivered to the planet and something went wrong so the monkeys never arrived. Instead the nano-virus uplifts the insects on the planet and their species grow as a civilization. Eventually the two plots converge and this leads to a fairly exciting ending.Tchaikovsky has a quite a vision. Events unfold gradually across a couple thousand years of time. This is great for those who love some hard science in their fiction as plenty of time is given to show just how insects evolve from a fairly mindless species into a civilization that includes both religion and a form of biological sciences that was absolutely fascinating. Fair warning: if you have arachnophobia you may want to stay away from this story as it goes into quite a bit of descriptive detail about the bugs. As much as I enjoyed the insects story, the human story just didn't do it for me. I think Tchaikovsky painted too good a picture of the darker side of human nature and unfortunately those chapters left me feeling slightly depressed and made it slower for me to get through.
I listened to the audio book narrated by Mel Hudson. She does a great job with the material. I particularly loved how she portrayed Dr. Kern.
In a complete surprise.... Insects: 5 Stars. Humans: 1 Star.
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LibraryThing member wishanem
This is the sort of book that was periodically a chore to read, but really fun to think about when I wasn't reading it.
I loved the premise of this story, and enjoyed the overall plot, but I really struggled with a lot of the individual chapters. The way that the story jumps around in time, and
The moments of the story usually focused on uncertainty, pessimism, struggle, and trauma, but the overarching direction was one of progress and hope.
At the end, I was happy that I stuck it out.
I don't know if I'll read the next book in this series anytime soon, but I do think I'll get to it eventually.
I loved the premise of this story, and enjoyed the overall plot, but I really struggled with a lot of the individual chapters. The way that the story jumps around in time, and
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especially the author's decision to recycle the same names over and over, made it difficult for me to invest in the shorter narrative arcs.The moments of the story usually focused on uncertainty, pessimism, struggle, and trauma, but the overarching direction was one of progress and hope.
At the end, I was happy that I stuck it out.
I don't know if I'll read the next book in this series anytime soon, but I do think I'll get to it eventually.
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LibraryThing member AlanPoulter
Never stops, lots of good ideas, great space opera...
LibraryThing member iansales
I sort of read this by accident. I bought it at Edge-Lit 4, and on the train ride home I finished the book I’d taken to read during the journey there and back, so I started Children of Time. And since I’d started it, I decided to continue reading it. Which I think makes it one of the very few
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books I’ve actually bought and then started on the same day. The elevator pitch for this novel didn’t sound all that appealing, and the author is better known for a ten-book fantasy series, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I found was a polished sf novel with several neat twists on the generation starship story (it seems to be the generation starship’s year, with this and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora). The world the ship plans to colonise, and the only possible candidate its crew have found, unfortunately turns out to have been terraformed and colonised millennia earlier. By spiders (the result of a human seeding programme that went wrong). The novel alternates between events on the ship and the development of the spider civilisation – and the latter narrative is absolutely fascinating. Tchaikovsky puts a few spins on his generation ship tropes, although it soon devolves into a well-visited territory. Which was a little disappointing – but on balance the spiders more than make up for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the BSFA Awards shortlist next year. Show Less
LibraryThing member tronella
Mostly excellent. I could have done without the "what if feminism but spiders" stuff, which I found too heavy-handed .
LibraryThing member tuusannuuska
Every time I read Children of Time, I love it a tiny bit more than the last time. This is the perfect book.
“He could be human, in that last moment. He could exalt in his ability to destroy.”
This is a book that shines a light on everything that has gone wrong with humanity and continues to do
“In the end, he supposed, it didn't matter. Genocide was genocide. He thought of the Old Empire, which had been so civilized that it had in the end poisoned its own homeworld. And here we are, about to start ripping pieces of the ecosystem out of this new one.”
This is a book that covers huge topics, all pertaining to humanity’s past and current social issues. The setting provides a distance that gives the reader the opportunity to view things a little more objectively, although the message is by no means subtle. It covers ruthless gender inequality, otherness and othering, history, religion, the pitfalls of blind obedience, as well as individual efforts, for better or for worse, in trying to make a mark. It covers courage, sacrifice, individuality, and how fragile we all are in the face of trying to survive. How can we change when surviving means safety, and safety means leaning on what we already know, no matter how destructive the results have been in the past?
“If there had been some tiny bead present in the brain of all humans that had told each other, They are like you; that had drawn some thin silk thread of empathy, person to person, in a planet-wide net – what might then have happened? Would there have been the same wars, massacres, persecutions and crusades?”
This is a book about humanity, about humanity’s endless tendency towards destruction, about delusions of grandeur, about our tendency to glorify the past without the ability to learn from past mistakes, about our inability to see each other as kin, rather than as other, about greed, and fear, and self-destruction. Maybe a little about hope, in the end, if we are forced to change our ways.
This book hits a little different, what with the constant looming threats of environmental disasters, diseases, the current trend of stepping back in time when it comes to human rights , and wars led by people who have truly decided to cherry pick the lessons of our global histories.
I recommend this book to everyone.
“He could be human, in that last moment. He could exalt in his ability to destroy.”
This is a book that shines a light on everything that has gone wrong with humanity and continues to do
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so without end in sight. We start the journey in a future where humanity has conquered the stars, and end up thousands of years further still. There is a planet humans have terraformed for their new Eden, but through our inability to fight for a common cause, instead of fighting each other, that world is now home to something wholly unexpected and horrifying. A fight for survival ensues, because to fight is all humans are capable of. “In the end, he supposed, it didn't matter. Genocide was genocide. He thought of the Old Empire, which had been so civilized that it had in the end poisoned its own homeworld. And here we are, about to start ripping pieces of the ecosystem out of this new one.”
This is a book that covers huge topics, all pertaining to humanity’s past and current social issues. The setting provides a distance that gives the reader the opportunity to view things a little more objectively, although the message is by no means subtle. It covers ruthless gender inequality, otherness and othering, history, religion, the pitfalls of blind obedience, as well as individual efforts, for better or for worse, in trying to make a mark. It covers courage, sacrifice, individuality, and how fragile we all are in the face of trying to survive. How can we change when surviving means safety, and safety means leaning on what we already know, no matter how destructive the results have been in the past?
“If there had been some tiny bead present in the brain of all humans that had told each other, They are like you; that had drawn some thin silk thread of empathy, person to person, in a planet-wide net – what might then have happened? Would there have been the same wars, massacres, persecutions and crusades?”
This is a book about humanity, about humanity’s endless tendency towards destruction, about delusions of grandeur, about our tendency to glorify the past without the ability to learn from past mistakes, about our inability to see each other as kin, rather than as other, about greed, and fear, and self-destruction. Maybe a little about hope, in the end, if we are forced to change our ways.
This book hits a little different, what with the constant looming threats of environmental disasters, diseases, the current trend of stepping back in time when it comes to human rights , and wars led by people who have truly decided to cherry pick the lessons of our global histories.
I recommend this book to everyone.
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LibraryThing member NormalMostly
When I kill a spider I leave its corpse around as a warning to any others thinking of trespassing. I do this even though I know it's silly, that spiders are dumb and don't understand my message.
What I didn't know was that this book follows the evolution of spider from minor demonic annoyance into
But I did read it, and I... I think I'm okay with spiders now? At the very least I'm going to stop with my barbaric displays of carnage, cause I mean, like, maybe they... you know...?
5 stars, and that's not only just in case they're reading this!
What I didn't know was that this book follows the evolution of spider from minor demonic annoyance into
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fucking astronaut. This is nightmare grade plutonium as far as I'm concerned. These are dangerous ideas, Mr. Tchaikovsky(!!!), and I wouldn't have read it had I known what was waiting within.But I did read it, and I... I think I'm okay with spiders now? At the very least I'm going to stop with my barbaric displays of carnage, cause I mean, like, maybe they... you know...?
5 stars, and that's not only just in case they're reading this!
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LibraryThing member sgsmitty
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. It was highly rated which for me sometimes doesn’t mean anything. But this was a very good book. It is a story of survival, of experimental ships sent out to start new planets and of colonization ships sent out to spread mankind. The story had some
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surprises with the experimental ship and its’ cargo and the impact it has on a planet previously terraformed for terrestrial life. I cannot say much more but the life that developed was extremely fascinating and unique in how they formed and developed. The ending was wonderful and makes me hopeful that there might be a sequel someday. Show Less
LibraryThing member rivkat
Terraforming meets extinction and evolution: Earth is trying to terraform other planets even as factions try to destroy the technology that keeps humanity alive in farflung places. Result: an uplift virus is released on a new planet, but the monkeys that were supposed to get it don’t survive, and
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the spiders do instead. Meanwhile, over centuries, a ship of the few survivors of Earth heads to a planet they thought might save them, but the mistakes of the past seem to repeat again and again. It’s very interesting speculative work, though rather depressing in its conclusions about un-altered humanity. Show Less
LibraryThing member majkia
What an imaginative and deeply thought and well-executed look at the far future. I can't say much more to spoil it, but read it!
LibraryThing member ssimon2000
I know I'm in the minority here, but I struggled mightily with this book. The concepts are fascinating, but for me anyway, the execution was lacking.
This is hard sci-fi, and the explanations border on non-fiction, from the description of the species of spiders to the deep-space generation ships
The other problem was the lack of a single (or a few) character to care about. When the plot covers thousands of years and thousands of generations, it becomes hard to care what happens to specific individuals. It also didn't help that the female spiders had the same name in each generation. Mind-boggling is what it was.
To me, this would have worked better as a series instead of a single long book.
This is hard sci-fi, and the explanations border on non-fiction, from the description of the species of spiders to the deep-space generation ships
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traveling across the galaxy. Somewhere along the way, it became overwhelming. The other problem was the lack of a single (or a few) character to care about. When the plot covers thousands of years and thousands of generations, it becomes hard to care what happens to specific individuals. It also didn't help that the female spiders had the same name in each generation. Mind-boggling is what it was.
To me, this would have worked better as a series instead of a single long book.
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LibraryThing member Claudia.Anderson
exciting story but too preachy at the end
LibraryThing member jkincaid
Once the opening scenario is established, the two sides of the story are interwoven into a fantastic tale that always remains on a knife edge.
LibraryThing member scottcholstad
An epic story that many people love, but I just couldn't get into it. Its slow pacing and constant switching between human and insect protagonists from chapter to chapter drove me nuts. It had some interesting ideas and, yes, was fairly unique, but I actually found it fairly boring.
Humanity has
Meanwhile, a spaceship carrying thousands of people in cyrosleep is searching for a planet to colonize and happen upon this one. As they approach it, an AI stops them and threatens them. The AI is based on this scientist, who is mad as a hatter by now.
The rest of the story revolves around what happens when the humans interact with the spiders, basically. And I've got to say, the chapters with the humans don't do much for me. The chapters with the spiders are moderately interesting, as well as with the ants. But then again, it's sort of creepy, with an almost horror-like vibe to it.
Whatever the case, it's just not my cup of tea. I had heard a lot of good things about it, so I decided to give it a try. I'm more of a military sci fi guy, so maybe I'll just stick with that. I'll stick with David Weber. This probably isn't a bad book for most. Just didn't do it for me. Three stars for boredom, as well as for possibly being overrated. Recommended for people who like hard science, but only cautiously so.
Humanity has
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destroyed Earth, but slightly before this happens, a scientist discovers a planet that gets terraformed and she hatches a plan to drop a nano-virus on some chimps to start over, minus people, but this nano will help them evolve quickly, super quickly, and will turn them into geniuses within centuries. Trouble is, the chimps never make it to the planet, so when the nano is dropped, it's dropped on spiders and ants. And so we get the tale of super spiders that grow larger and stronger and smarter over generations, so that at some point, they're geniuses.Meanwhile, a spaceship carrying thousands of people in cyrosleep is searching for a planet to colonize and happen upon this one. As they approach it, an AI stops them and threatens them. The AI is based on this scientist, who is mad as a hatter by now.
The rest of the story revolves around what happens when the humans interact with the spiders, basically. And I've got to say, the chapters with the humans don't do much for me. The chapters with the spiders are moderately interesting, as well as with the ants. But then again, it's sort of creepy, with an almost horror-like vibe to it.
Whatever the case, it's just not my cup of tea. I had heard a lot of good things about it, so I decided to give it a try. I'm more of a military sci fi guy, so maybe I'll just stick with that. I'll stick with David Weber. This probably isn't a bad book for most. Just didn't do it for me. Three stars for boredom, as well as for possibly being overrated. Recommended for people who like hard science, but only cautiously so.
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LibraryThing member koeniel
What an amazing book. What a clever sci-fi. Totally epic world building. Certainly not an easy book to read in all sense; it was a struggle for me for a while, but what a great feeling it gave me after I finish it. It gave me a lot to think about, for sure.
It's a mish mash of things - Interstellar
In Children of Time the last of the human race had to leave Earth that had become too toxic to live in, and look for a new planet to settle on and preserve their species. They followed star maps left by their more technologically advanced ancestors (who were also the ones destroyed the Earth), and set out on an ark ship called the Gilgamesh. After millenia of journey, during most of which they were kept 'sleeping', they finally found a terraformed planet, green like the old Earth, not the dying Earth they left. But the planet wasn't just waiting there for them to be claimed. It had to be won.
The story covers several thousands of years and involves a lot of biological and social evolutionary elements in it, which is why I compared it not only to the likes of space sci-fi but also to Dawkins' and Diamond's books. Even though it is long (the book has 600 pages full of tiny fonts), there are a lot of actions, battles, politics and enough suspense at each stage of the story to grip us.
It definitely evoked a lot of questioning, but foremost in my mind when reading it were the following questions: Are humans inherently self destructive? Are we all essentially selfish, with instincts to protect our own life (or maybe our own kind, to a certain extent) to the destruction of anything and everything else? Are humans the perfect example of entropy, and the bearer of chaos?
Yes, the tone of the book is really sombre; there were glimmers of hope here and there, but for most of the story it was rather depressing. And I actually read it during the US election and its ugly divisive campaign, which came not long after Brexit that likewise had ugly, "us and them" campaign, and also during the political brouhaha in my own country, again with "us and them", very divisive narratives thrown about. At one point I felt the line between fiction and reality blurred. Or maybe the book was really a good and realistic mirror of humanity.
[BIG SPOILER AHEAD]
Even when it wasn't all doom and gloom, when the future had been assured, you still have to ask those same questions, because humankind was only saved in the nick of time by an outside factor. So basically the author is saying we are still going to destroy and poison Earth one day. Unless, like in the story, we are infected by nanoviruses that encourages teamwork, social life and brotherly affection in the lifeforms they invade.
Ok, enough despair. Time for some joy. I marvelled at Tchaikovsky's brilliantly clever world building; he went mad with the 'what if' ideas and followed a drastically different path of technology advancement - not of fire, metal and electricity like ours, but of biochemistry and photosynthesis. Computers made of colonies of ants, anyone?
It's a mish mash of things - Interstellar
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meets Battlestar Galactica meets 2001 Space Odyssey meets Star Trek the Next Generation Episode The Schizoid Man meets Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale meets Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel meets Aliens meets Planet of the Apes. Yes, a lot of the ideas in this book have been explored before, but some are new and definitely the way they were twisted and plaited together into a tale by the writer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, is I feel very original. In Children of Time the last of the human race had to leave Earth that had become too toxic to live in, and look for a new planet to settle on and preserve their species. They followed star maps left by their more technologically advanced ancestors (who were also the ones destroyed the Earth), and set out on an ark ship called the Gilgamesh. After millenia of journey, during most of which they were kept 'sleeping', they finally found a terraformed planet, green like the old Earth, not the dying Earth they left. But the planet wasn't just waiting there for them to be claimed. It had to be won.
The story covers several thousands of years and involves a lot of biological and social evolutionary elements in it, which is why I compared it not only to the likes of space sci-fi but also to Dawkins' and Diamond's books. Even though it is long (the book has 600 pages full of tiny fonts), there are a lot of actions, battles, politics and enough suspense at each stage of the story to grip us.
It definitely evoked a lot of questioning, but foremost in my mind when reading it were the following questions: Are humans inherently self destructive? Are we all essentially selfish, with instincts to protect our own life (or maybe our own kind, to a certain extent) to the destruction of anything and everything else? Are humans the perfect example of entropy, and the bearer of chaos?
Yes, the tone of the book is really sombre; there were glimmers of hope here and there, but for most of the story it was rather depressing. And I actually read it during the US election and its ugly divisive campaign, which came not long after Brexit that likewise had ugly, "us and them" campaign, and also during the political brouhaha in my own country, again with "us and them", very divisive narratives thrown about. At one point I felt the line between fiction and reality blurred. Or maybe the book was really a good and realistic mirror of humanity.
[BIG SPOILER AHEAD]
Even when it wasn't all doom and gloom, when the future had been assured, you still have to ask those same questions, because humankind was only saved in the nick of time by an outside factor. So basically the author is saying we are still going to destroy and poison Earth one day. Unless, like in the story, we are infected by nanoviruses that encourages teamwork, social life and brotherly affection in the lifeforms they invade.
Ok, enough despair. Time for some joy. I marvelled at Tchaikovsky's brilliantly clever world building; he went mad with the 'what if' ideas and followed a drastically different path of technology advancement - not of fire, metal and electricity like ours, but of biochemistry and photosynthesis. Computers made of colonies of ants, anyone?
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LibraryThing member santhony
I’ve read an enormous amount of science fiction over the years, so it takes more than a run of the mill space opera to get my attention. That having been said, this was a very good work, which while not completely original, certainly could not be considered hackneyed or derivative.
MINOR SPOILERS
In a distant future, the Earth undergoes something of a civil war, between those who wish to explore the stars and those who adamantly do not. The former seek to terraform and colonize nearby star systems. As this project is progressing, the opposition sparks an Armageddon that takes life on Earth back to the Stone Age.
Meanwhile, life on one of the terraformed planets develops, quickened by a catalyst, though this life progression is nothing like what had originally been planned. Over the years, life on Earth undergoes a slow return to pre-cataclysm technological capability, including space flight. The Earth is slowly becoming less and less habitable, and the remnants of the human race depart the earth aboard a space ark of sorts, destination our terraformed planet.
So, with all this background, the novel tracks both the alien life on the terraformed planet and the Earth colonists in alternating story threads that ultimately converge in the final fifty pages.
The alien life form (not entirely alien in nature) and its evolution are presented very cleverly by the author. The human characters are outstanding. I can very heartily recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys science fiction.
MINOR SPOILERS
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AHEADIn a distant future, the Earth undergoes something of a civil war, between those who wish to explore the stars and those who adamantly do not. The former seek to terraform and colonize nearby star systems. As this project is progressing, the opposition sparks an Armageddon that takes life on Earth back to the Stone Age.
Meanwhile, life on one of the terraformed planets develops, quickened by a catalyst, though this life progression is nothing like what had originally been planned. Over the years, life on Earth undergoes a slow return to pre-cataclysm technological capability, including space flight. The Earth is slowly becoming less and less habitable, and the remnants of the human race depart the earth aboard a space ark of sorts, destination our terraformed planet.
So, with all this background, the novel tracks both the alien life on the terraformed planet and the Earth colonists in alternating story threads that ultimately converge in the final fifty pages.
The alien life form (not entirely alien in nature) and its evolution are presented very cleverly by the author. The human characters are outstanding. I can very heartily recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys science fiction.
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LibraryThing member wrevans
Materialistic determinism will only get you so far. This book lacked the basic plausibility found in others of this genre. Generations of humans acting as machines with no soul or independent thought is a little dull after 600 pages. The story bogged down a lot in the middle chapters as well. The
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typical pointless gender switching is getting a little old as well. Dune and Hyperion are infinitely better reads. Three Body Problem is infinitely better. Show Less
LibraryThing member AnnieMod
Dying Earth, nano-virus, terraforming, arkship, non-human intelligence, a crazy scientist, AI, human-AI mix, crazy ship captain and a few millennia of history. It sounds like a checklist of what can be added to a science fiction series, doesn't it?
For his debut science fiction novel (but not his
It all started with the uplift project (ran by the Brin Habitat of course - how else could it have been called?) - a project to terraform a string of planets, add monkeys and a nano-virus to allow them to reach intelligence a lot faster and see what will happen. It should have been the biggest success of the human race. But that being humanity after all, the things do not go as planned and the slightly crazy scientist Dr. Kern ends up overseeing her own project - minus the monkeys. And while the planet is evolving with the help of the virus (but without the recipients for it), humanity destroys Earth in more than one way (and lives through an ice age just to make it really messy) and ends up on an arkship, trying to follow a map everyone had forgotten for millennia. And that's where the story really starts.
The planet, Kern's World, now has a living population - of big intelligent spiders (at least it was not cockroaches - that would have been logical but would not have worked - Tchaikovsky knows his animals and picked the one that actually could pull off a success). The protection inside of the virus that was supposed to protect the monkeys from competition, does its job rendering all vertebrae animals stupid. But everyone forgot the other members of the animal family - and the green planet is more of a nightmare. And humanity is coming.
Add a few battles, a shifting story (we have one chapter with the humans, one with the spiders) and evolution on a scale that noone had ever seen (time passes and the nano-virus helps as well), more than one reversal of fortune (for both species), the titular crazy scientist getting crazier and causing a lot of the issues on both sides and an end that was so logical but also so unexpected that I did not see it coming. And it is a perfect end of a story about intelligence and beliefs.
But it is not just a story of battle and survival - because Tchaikovsky builds his evolution story step by step - through the dark ages and the religious dark times (and it is almost logical that the first time the spiders go on a war against each other, it is because of a human); through innovation and progress. It is a success story, even if the monkeys never made it on the planet - and at the end, the evolution wins against stupidity.
A wonderful story (as long as you are not afraid of spiders) and I am not surprised at all that it won the Arthur C. Clarke award - it is a reimaged story from the past but told in a new way.
For his debut science fiction novel (but not his
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debut novel by a lot), Tchaikovsky did not just pick one thing from the list. Or 2. Or 5. He used all of them - and added even more. And then he decided that this will be a standalone story and wrapped the story in 600 pages. It should not have worked. And yet, it is one of the best SF novels I had read in a long time. It all started with the uplift project (ran by the Brin Habitat of course - how else could it have been called?) - a project to terraform a string of planets, add monkeys and a nano-virus to allow them to reach intelligence a lot faster and see what will happen. It should have been the biggest success of the human race. But that being humanity after all, the things do not go as planned and the slightly crazy scientist Dr. Kern ends up overseeing her own project - minus the monkeys. And while the planet is evolving with the help of the virus (but without the recipients for it), humanity destroys Earth in more than one way (and lives through an ice age just to make it really messy) and ends up on an arkship, trying to follow a map everyone had forgotten for millennia. And that's where the story really starts.
The planet, Kern's World, now has a living population - of big intelligent spiders (at least it was not cockroaches - that would have been logical but would not have worked - Tchaikovsky knows his animals and picked the one that actually could pull off a success). The protection inside of the virus that was supposed to protect the monkeys from competition, does its job rendering all vertebrae animals stupid. But everyone forgot the other members of the animal family - and the green planet is more of a nightmare. And humanity is coming.
Add a few battles, a shifting story (we have one chapter with the humans, one with the spiders) and evolution on a scale that noone had ever seen (time passes and the nano-virus helps as well), more than one reversal of fortune (for both species), the titular crazy scientist getting crazier and causing a lot of the issues on both sides and an end that was so logical but also so unexpected that I did not see it coming. And it is a perfect end of a story about intelligence and beliefs.
But it is not just a story of battle and survival - because Tchaikovsky builds his evolution story step by step - through the dark ages and the religious dark times (and it is almost logical that the first time the spiders go on a war against each other, it is because of a human); through innovation and progress. It is a success story, even if the monkeys never made it on the planet - and at the end, the evolution wins against stupidity.
A wonderful story (as long as you are not afraid of spiders) and I am not surprised at all that it won the Arthur C. Clarke award - it is a reimaged story from the past but told in a new way.
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LibraryThing member Jayeless
It surprised me that I ended up enjoying this book; even at the halfway mark (300 pages in!) I was grumbling that it was so dry and unengaging that I thought it'd barely scrape two stars. However, the more advanced the spider civilisation became, the more interested I became in the story, and by
It's also one of those cerebral books that tries to provoke thoughts more than it does entertain. Children of Time is set deep into the far future, and is mostly about humanity's tendency towards self-destruction. At the very beginning, Doctor Avrana Kern is attempting to begin an experiment on a terraformed world, whereby monkeys will be infected with a nanovirus to hasten their evolution, in the hope that this results in a version of humanity without the same flaws. The experiment is sabotaged by a member of her own team, so the monkeys never land, and instead the planet is populated by ants, spiders, and other creepy-crawlies – with the nanovirus taking root in the spiders. Avrana Kern herself manages to make a getaway while everyone else on her team is killed, and places herself in suspended animation, anticipating rescue.
Rescue never comes. The conflict that destroys her team ends up also destroying Earth, and nearly all of it – just excluding a thin band around the equator – is covered in ice. Humanity's numbers dwindle precipitously, and as day-to-day survival takes up so much of their time, they lose the cultural and technological knowledge that Kern's generation had. Once the species stabilises enough that they can build their technological base back up again, they cause global warming and discover that the permafrost had been covering oodles of nasty poisons. To escape that, they have to put as much of humanity as they can into suspended animation, and send them out into the stars in pursuit of a new, habitable planet, on a vast ship called the Gilgamesh.
The half of the book that focuses on the humans details the struggle of the Gilgamesh's crew to find a planet they can land on. They find Kern's planet, but the AI of the computer keeping Kern's suspended body alive denies them permission to land. And so they remain in space, generation after generation, with the egotists on the crew plunging them into a series of petty, destructive conflicts and with the machinery of the ship slowly but steadily deteriorating beyond the ability of the crew to repair. The main perspective here is that of Holsten, a classicist who periodically comes out of suspended animation to despair at how humanity is falling back into the self-destructive habits of the Ancients before going back into deep sleep again.
Meanwhile, on Kern's planet, a sophisticated arachnid society is emerging, and flourishing. Like I said, I found the first half of their plotline, where they're mainly fighting wars against ants, really boring, but they got exponentially more interesting once they had an actual civilisation going. The spider society is no utopia – one of the major threads running through the book is male spiders' struggle to be given respect and authority on par with females (or at least enough that the females will stop killing them after mating for sport) – but the depiction is sympathetic. Honestly, it's remarkable how well Tchaikovsky has depicted this society which is profoundly non-human, but still made them understandable, and even relatable, for an obviously human readership.
There are definitely some aspects to this book that some readers will find unsatisfying. The ending is a bit of a conceit, if a conceit set up from early on in the book – despite what the cover might suggest, this is not “hard sci fi” in a scientific sense. Most of the human characters are extremely unlikeable. The universe it presents is, mostly, bleak. And overall, its merits are way more that it stimulates the mind rather than grips you by the feels… so if you prefer books that you have more of an emotional investment in, this is not ideal. It is, nonetheless, a very accomplished book that I'm glad to have read, even if it was rough going a lot of the time.
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the last third or so I found it a real page-turner.It's also one of those cerebral books that tries to provoke thoughts more than it does entertain. Children of Time is set deep into the far future, and is mostly about humanity's tendency towards self-destruction. At the very beginning, Doctor Avrana Kern is attempting to begin an experiment on a terraformed world, whereby monkeys will be infected with a nanovirus to hasten their evolution, in the hope that this results in a version of humanity without the same flaws. The experiment is sabotaged by a member of her own team, so the monkeys never land, and instead the planet is populated by ants, spiders, and other creepy-crawlies – with the nanovirus taking root in the spiders. Avrana Kern herself manages to make a getaway while everyone else on her team is killed, and places herself in suspended animation, anticipating rescue.
Rescue never comes. The conflict that destroys her team ends up also destroying Earth, and nearly all of it – just excluding a thin band around the equator – is covered in ice. Humanity's numbers dwindle precipitously, and as day-to-day survival takes up so much of their time, they lose the cultural and technological knowledge that Kern's generation had. Once the species stabilises enough that they can build their technological base back up again, they cause global warming and discover that the permafrost had been covering oodles of nasty poisons. To escape that, they have to put as much of humanity as they can into suspended animation, and send them out into the stars in pursuit of a new, habitable planet, on a vast ship called the Gilgamesh.
The half of the book that focuses on the humans details the struggle of the Gilgamesh's crew to find a planet they can land on. They find Kern's planet, but the AI of the computer keeping Kern's suspended body alive denies them permission to land. And so they remain in space, generation after generation, with the egotists on the crew plunging them into a series of petty, destructive conflicts and with the machinery of the ship slowly but steadily deteriorating beyond the ability of the crew to repair. The main perspective here is that of Holsten, a classicist who periodically comes out of suspended animation to despair at how humanity is falling back into the self-destructive habits of the Ancients before going back into deep sleep again.
Meanwhile, on Kern's planet, a sophisticated arachnid society is emerging, and flourishing. Like I said, I found the first half of their plotline, where they're mainly fighting wars against ants, really boring, but they got exponentially more interesting once they had an actual civilisation going. The spider society is no utopia – one of the major threads running through the book is male spiders' struggle to be given respect and authority on par with females (or at least enough that the females will stop killing them after mating for sport) – but the depiction is sympathetic. Honestly, it's remarkable how well Tchaikovsky has depicted this society which is profoundly non-human, but still made them understandable, and even relatable, for an obviously human readership.
There are definitely some aspects to this book that some readers will find unsatisfying. The ending is a bit of a conceit, if a conceit set up from early on in the book – despite what the cover might suggest, this is not “hard sci fi” in a scientific sense. Most of the human characters are extremely unlikeable. The universe it presents is, mostly, bleak. And overall, its merits are way more that it stimulates the mind rather than grips you by the feels… so if you prefer books that you have more of an emotional investment in, this is not ideal. It is, nonetheless, a very accomplished book that I'm glad to have read, even if it was rough going a lot of the time.
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LibraryThing member JohnFair
Although I found almost impossible to read this book in long stretches, this is a thought provoking novel on the nature of what it means to be a person - 'human' isn't really suitable here, nor is Tchaikovsky, from the evidence of this book, a fan of the human race. We get to see the strange
Tchaikovsky does take a few liberties with his spiders, allowing them to grow sufficiently large to carry a large brain. and it has to be said that the concept of the Flying Dutchman starship, or even 'giant' spiders don't originate with him, but the way he combines the various elements and creates the new society does mark up this book as something special - once you get past the first hundred pages or so that is!
Although all the entries my reading group have read based on the Arthur C Clarke short list have been fairly bleak, this is easily the most depressing except for the last couple of chapters, which feels quite a bit out of kilter with the tone with the rest of the book
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society that the shipborne voyagers create as they surf through the galaxy in the search for a world where they could survive as Earth dies under the reborn weapons of a civilisation millennia dead, and the even stranger society that grows on Kern's World, the result of a strangely successful genetic uplift that should have failed.Tchaikovsky does take a few liberties with his spiders, allowing them to grow sufficiently large to carry a large brain. and it has to be said that the concept of the Flying Dutchman starship, or even 'giant' spiders don't originate with him, but the way he combines the various elements and creates the new society does mark up this book as something special - once you get past the first hundred pages or so that is!
Although all the entries my reading group have read based on the Arthur C Clarke short list have been fairly bleak, this is easily the most depressing except for the last couple of chapters, which feels quite a bit out of kilter with the tone with the rest of the book
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LibraryThing member Guide2
Amazing world building on an uplifted world, as well as on a human ark ship. Gotta love the kudos to David Brin too. Easy to understand why it won the Clarke's award.
LibraryThing member brakketh
Surprisingly creative and enjoyable far future story of the different cultures that could develop in other species.
LibraryThing member jdifelice
This was not what I expected, but in a good way.
I really enjoyed the exploration of the evolution of a species, and the intricate details of each generations' life given.
I also enjoyed seeing the lives of those on a generation ship, and the eventualities of it falling apart, and needing a repair
The whole story was really well done, and eventually came together in a way I wasn't expecting it to. I really liked how we saw the evolution of how the spiders got to the point they did, and the predictable response of the humans - it was very clever commentary.
Overall, this was a very intelligent book, and a great take on the human race.
I really enjoyed the exploration of the evolution of a species, and the intricate details of each generations' life given.
I also enjoyed seeing the lives of those on a generation ship, and the eventualities of it falling apart, and needing a repair
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crew, and next generations being born. The whole story was really well done, and eventually came together in a way I wasn't expecting it to. I really liked how we saw the evolution of how the spiders got to the point they did, and the predictable response of the humans - it was very clever commentary.
Overall, this was a very intelligent book, and a great take on the human race.
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LibraryThing member vladmihaisima
Spanning huge periods of time and following the destinies of two "children" of humanity: the last humans that abandoned Earth after an apocalyptic war and a biotechnology experiment to give another species intelligence. It is almost like two books into one although the occasionally links between The action is split between the intelligent spider/and planet, which become well versed in genetics and chemistry and the last human colony ship which lost a lot of the previous knowledge and struggles to survive. Ending is optimistic and a bit unexpected (which is a plus) although in some parts of the book the colony ship had a more horror atmosphere.
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the two stories enhance the story in a good way. Many types of characters seen either almost at a glimpse, racing through their own evolution (Kern, Guyen) or almost as a standstill (Holsten, various Portia-s). Show Less
Awards
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2015-06-04
Physical description
600 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
1447273303 / 9781447273301