Children of Time is the first book in a trilogy of the same name by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016, and the trilogy was awarded the Hugo for Best Series in 2023.

I really enjoyed this novel, which is cleverly done on several levels, tackling some big themes including the future of humanity, god-like technology, and xenophobia.

We start with the point of view of Dr. Avrana Kern, whose personality at the start of the novel seems based on someone like Margaret Thatcher, arrogantly certain that her view of the world is the correct one.

In the far future humanity has developed the ability to travel between stars (though at less than light-speed) and to terraform planets to make them suitable for human habitation. The expedition led by Avrana Kern, however, has a more ambitious project: to raise up another species to sentience. The planet she egotistically dubs "Kern's World" has already been successfully terraformed and seeded with a wide variety of Earth plants and lifeforms. Now the plan is to introduce a large contingent of monkeys, alongside a virus which should speed up their evolutionary development. Freed from the historical baggage of humans on Earth, what kind of being and society will develop here?

Alas for Dr. Kern, her mission is sabotaged and her starship destroyed by a radical group fighting against the idea of interfering with the evolution of other species. Kern alone manages to escape into an orbiting satellite. Unknown to her, the landing craft containing her "barrel of monkeys" burns up in the atmosphere and all the monkeys are killed.

However, the capsule containing the evolutionary virus does make it down to the surface. The virus was tailored so as not to affect other mammals which might compete with the monkeys. In their absence, however, it finds receptive non-mammalian hosts. One of these is a species of jumping spider, Portia labiata, and the virus begins its slow work.

The story then splits into two parallel streams. One of these streams deals with the slow evolutionary development of the spiders, which become larger and more intelligent as time passes, to the point where they have a recognisable civilisation. Some wonderful world- and culture-building here, with the spider society based on webs and the control of other species such as ant colonies.

The other stream deals with the remnants of humanity, in desperate search for a new home. Many thousands of years after Kern's experiment goes astray, an ark-ship, the Gilgamesh, leaves a ravaged Earth carrying all that is left of humanity. They are delighted to find a green world apparently perfectly designed for them. Alas, they are to be disappointed.

In both streams of the story we are introduced to interesting characters (though admittedly none of them have any great depth). In the spider stream we have characters who the narrator dubs as "Portia", "Bianca", "Viola" and "Fabian" though of course these are not their real names. These notional names are re-used as the generations pass, and serve to give us a feeling of continuity, although the individuals involved differ. In the human stream the most important characters are Holsten Mason, a "classicist" who has studied the ancient culture from which Dr. Kern came, and can help translate; and Issa Lain, the female Chief Engineer of the Gilgamesh.

Each of the narrative streams is full of interest in its own right, and I certainly won't attempt to try to detail all of what happens in the novel.

Let me just say that it’s a testament to Tchaikovsky's skill as a writer that when the inevitable, existential conflict occurs between the spiders and humanity, I found myself wanting to cheer on the side of the spiders.

I though this was a terrific work of hard science fiction, a really engaging and often very thoughtful story with many interesting twists and turns (I particularly liked the fight for gender equality in the spider civilisation). Yes, you could claim there's not a lot of character development or depth, but even on that front it compares pretty well with most works of hard SF.

I'll certainly be going on to read the rest of this series, and I'll also be checking out some other books by Tchaikovsky. ( )

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Children of Time has been right on the edge of my radar for a while now, I'd seen lots of great things about it but other books were just higher on my list. And then, one of my partners'; friends recommended and lent him a copy, and at the same time, I spotted it popped up for 99p on Kindle. I like it when we get to read a book at the same time because we have such different reading tastes it can lead to some interesting chats! And it turns out two more of his friends have also read it recently, so lots of discussion around on this one.

Plot
The premise is that in the far future human scientists are about to launch a bold new experiment to study the effects of a specially engineered virus on a newly terraformed planet. The intention was to study the accelerated evolution of primates, but when war breaks out plans go awry and the virus ends up targeting the local arachnid population. Thousands of years later an arc ship carrying the last remnants of humanity is looking for a new planet to make home.

Spiders
The spider portions were interesting and made me think about the way we humans look at the world, particularly our tendency towards domination and destruction. It is this that bumps up what would otherwise be a three-star read for me to four stars. It is amazing to me that the author pulled off writing a book with slowly evolving sentient spider characters! And we are not talking about spider-people hybrids, they very much remain spiders with crucial differences in thought, language and behaviour to the humans. The fact that they are spiders is very much the point!

Though initially, I didn't mind the scientific reasoning for the path their evolution takes after a while, because I don't understand the biology (or have a particular desire to), I just started to skim read all the explanatory stuff (much like when I read
Project Hail Mary
;I skipped over all the maths!).

I enjoyed that the spiders are named after romance novel/soap opera characters (Portia, Bianca, Viola, Fabian). Having been an Eastenders fan in its heyday, there is something hilarious to me about a spider called Bianca.

(I just realised how incredibly weird this book must sound to anyone who had not already read it!).

Humans
I do like the idea of a human colony ship on a thousands year journey, but then I found - as I always do - all the time jumps involved kept me from being truly invested in the characters, or understanding them. We only sort of get to know POV character Holsten, and eventually Lain but that comes so late in the book that she felt like wasted potential as easily the most interesting character. Really all the interesting stuff takes place while Holsten is frozen in his pod, and he just gets woken up an intervals and has to catch up on events without ever experiencing them first hand.

To get very picky about why this book didn't completely thrill me, I felt there was a big hole in the human side of the story that I found distracting. We are told that humanity destroyed itself, and the technology was disabled somewhere around one to two thousand years ago (the start of the book). So far in the past that Holsten's people refer to the "ancients" and the "Old Empire," know next to nothing about what really happened, and now speak different languages.

The technology that humans have now is meant to be basic compared to that of the Old Empire. I guess building giant arc ships for a thousands-year journey is relatively simple technology compared with nano viruses and terraforming. Clearly, there was something akin to a Dark Age, but I wanted to understand a bit more about the reasoning and ideology behind all of that. My mind wasn't satisfied with such a vast expanse of missing history andhuman experience (how did society collapse, survival rates, religion, education etc), that explains how all these people came to be on the arc ship. Holsten is our POV and we never learn anything about his past life, anything about his family, relationships or how he came to be on the key crew.

I suppose at the end of the day I am more interested in who and how the humans came to be where they are, rather than the biological reasoning for how spiders could form a society or create technology!

Writing
As for pacing, at times it did feel a bit hard going (mainly in the middle spider bits), and when things did pick up it would only be a chapter before another big time jump that broke my engagement. This is always something I struggle with in books! I would prefer to have spent a bit more time with the humans, witnessing more of the pivotal events, and understanding them as people so I could feel more invested in the individual characters.

All that said though the ideas and imagination here are incredible! It's such a cool idea, and actually very well executed despite not aligning with my very picky personal preferences. While I didn't love it, I am open to reading the next book in the series which is honestly a huge endorsement for me (I rarely get into a series)! I am intrigued to see where the heck this is going to go!

I am on a bit of a streak with books like this, where I definitely understand why other people are so excited about it but it just misses my sweet spot. For what its worth my (not a sci-fi fan and arachnophobe) partner gives this 5 stars and states "it's the best science-fiction book I've ever read."

If you like more thought-provoking science fiction, I highly recommend giving it a go.

You can read this review and more on my blog.

REVIEW SUMMARY
I LIKED
- Incredibly imaginative, just such a cool idea and actually very well executed.
- Never thought I’d be interested in how spiders could evolve!
- Thought provoking – must human nature always be so destructive?

I DIDN'T LIKE
- Not character driven enough for my personal preferences (spans centuries, time jumps etc).
- I would have liked more on the huge “dark ages” gap in human history.



View all my reviews ( )

Great! My first read by Adrian Tchaikovsky and I love his writing. Colorful without being overly flowery or overindulgent. An epic story with a really satisfying arc. ( )

Beginning with the genius Dr, Kern, the stage is set for her invented nano virus to create enhanced species to inhabit new worlds now that earth is no longer available. What follows are two stories: a spaceship full of humans in stasis searching for a planet to escape to; and a developing civilization of spiders complete with growing knowledge and "understandings," and a new language. The merging of these two stories is inevitable and satisfying in the end, but it takes a very long time to get there. ( )

Did this one on audio and OMG this man is wonderful. NO ONE does anthropomorphism better. I need to check previous reviews, but I'm pretty sure I've said that before for another of his books. And as of now, he has made it to my auto-buy list. ( )