Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[schneefink]

This book is a fantastic example of why I love Science Fiction: alien cultures, developments over loooong time spans, humans at the very edge and beyond their understanding and horizon. I loved it. It's half fascinating and never dry spider civilization worldbuilding and half about the last humans trying to survive in an ark ship; the way they mirrored and played off each other was great, but the contact moments were the best.

The spider civilization is sooo interesting. Ant computers! A web that spans the whole planet! Biomechanical spaceships, even. But even before they get that far, their different perspective with silk as their primary building material and thinking in three dimensions etc., the ant war (the ant armies were scary *shivers*), the males' slow emancipation process, … The way the author gave similar spiders in different generations the same names worked well for me, otherwise I would have lost track of all the different characters quickly. I love the different relationships between Portia and Fabian, from betrayal to self-sacrifice. The spiders' developing relationship with the Messenger/Kern is cool too. Dr. Avrana Kern, downloaded into ants, hah.

The portrayal of humans in the book makes it very clear that these are people in a desperate situation, leading to conflict and harsh decisions. Here the millennia-lasting relationship was actually between the same two people, they just slept for thousands of years in-between. I also think Lain's "Tribe" is interesting, Alpash and the others: basically born and raised as a servant class, knowing that they themselves were not intended to reach the promised paradise. The 2.0 version of Guyen's fanatical monks.

And then, contact! Returning to the green world in a ship that's falling apart and seeing it full of spider webs, ouch. No wonder their reactions are extreme. (Though tbh Vitas would always have reacted this way.) Good thing the spiders were warned, otherwise it would have ended very differently. Would they even have had the big web up yet? Either the humans would have burned all the spiders, or after huge losses the spiders would have rallied and killed all the humans. I think the latter would be more likely simply because the spiders are so many more and they also have the ants. It would have been ugly.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

I recently cataloged this at work. I get the impression you would recommend I take it home and read it?

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Absolutely! Especially if you're interested in SF and/or worldbuilding. I hope you like it if you check it out :) & then come talk to me about your favorite parts. I'm also planning to request it for Yuletide and I know at least one other person nominated it.

[arcanetrivia]

I am only about 60 pages in, but that was already longer than I should have stayed up reading last night ;) so you can take from that that it was a good recommendation.

eta: Is Fabian a male spider?

[schneefink]

I'm glad you're enjoying it! :)

Yes, Fabian is a male spider.

[arcanetrivia]

I don't think it got taken up, or at least I didn't see it in the tagged fandoms in the collection. Ah well. I was able to use it as a rec in someone's stocking in fandom_stocking, at least!

[schneefink]

Sadly not :(
But reccing it to other people is also good! And the author said he's working on a sequel :)

[arcanetrivia]

Oh, I should hope so! It seems to fairly beg for one. I really didn't guess the actual ending even when I was only a few pages out from it - I thought it was going to go the obvious homicidal way (literally speaking).

[schneefink]

Me too. I was rooting for the spiders, even. It was clear that the humans had written off cooperation, and without something as drastic as what the spiders did it wouldn't have worked. Sad, but fortunately it ended well.