Children of Time by: Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

It’s fascinating to read a book that runs two plots in perfect reverse parallel yet somehow manage to pull off a happy ending.  Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is the first in a trilogy dealing with the remnants of humanity’s attempts to survive after leaving a destroyed Earth, largely following generations of humans surviving on the Gilgamesh in parallel with the rapid evolution of spiders on Kern’s World, an experiment world where a manmade virus has accidentally been unleashed on the budding planet instead of surviving in a barrel of monkeys.  Okay, so the science behind Children of Time is clearly not meant to be taken as literal scientific exploration like classic examples of science fiction, nor does it entirely give itself over to modern character driven storytelling.  The time of the title is incredibly important for what Tchaikovsky’s entire point with the novel is, an examination of generations and the evolution of culture and society when specific pressures are applied to both positive and negative effect.  The human characters don’t progress through the generations since they are able to enter suspended animation while the spiders progress through thousands of years in real time.  The way Tchaikovsky characterizes the spiders is fascinating, as the novel essentially alternates chapters between the humans and the spiders, though there are only ever four names assigned to the spiders.  This means that you see four strains of evolution with the spiders based on dominant characteristics each would display.

 

The first chapter from their perspective introduces them as spiders in the way that the reader would know and understand.  Tchaikovsky’s prose here and the other early spider chapters emulates the style of nature documentary, being clinical yet strangely inviting.  There is some genuine scientific explanation for how spiders and ants create a society based on collectivism and needs.  The four spiders Tchaikovsky uses are designated Bianca, Portia, Viola, and Fabian.  These names come from their genetic genus and species but it is more interesting to compare to the Shakespeare references which feel intentional: Bianca coming from The Taming of the Shrew, in the play a character with a number of suitors, while Bianca the spider is often characterized as responsible for species propagation; Portia coming from The Merchant of Venice where the character is known for intelligence, while Portia the spiders are generally the warriors and our spider “point of view” characters.  Viola and Fabian don’t quite work, both names coming from Twelfth Night and both being more minor spiders, Fabian being the only male spider given a name.  Tchaikovsky excels at making the spider society evolve technologically and societally only in was that spiders could, while reflecting developments of bigotry and oppression that would have had some biological advantage which is an interesting angle.  There is a portion in the middle of the novel where male spiders are attempting to build themselves up as equals to the females which is utterly fascinating.  There is also this genuine buildup of intelligence until the actual first contact with humanity occurs right near the end of the novel and an understanding is somehow managed.

 

The human plot is one for desperate survival, and near ultimate destruction of the human race.  The setup for humanity is an ark ship with plenty of people in suspended animation, but since the experiments on Kern’s World went wrong by evolving spiders instead of monkeys, Dr. Avrana Kern was placed in suspended animation and the problems snowballed from there.  There is almost a danger of sufficiently advanced technology baked into the novel, but never so much that you feel as if Tchaikovsky is speaking of technology on the whole, more warning against hubris and exploring the short sightedness of humanity.  Kern as a character, along with her ‘sister’ Eliza, is the human’s primary threat for the first third of the novel, or so.  The characters on the Gilgamesh enter several gambits and at almost every step of the way, something goes wrong.  The commander, Guyen, is also a perfect example of the spiral into an almost adamant madness in his attempts to keep everything together.  Once again his arc is not one of Tchaikovsky so much as decrying technology, but exploring the issues with it.  This is a society where artificial intelligence has been adopted and treated which is fascinating.

 

Overall, Children of Time wasn’t so much as a pleasant surprise, but more of what I was expecting since it’s a book that grabs you and lures you in with a mix of genuinely interesting science fiction concepts plus some genuinely existential horror.  The spiders aren’t even the scariest things as they are a dangerous society, the reader being more interested in wanting to see their society develop interesting ideas and technology.  Yes, he gives the spiders their own technology that kind of makes them an unstoppable force.  It also helps especially that while there’s a trilogy, the ending of the book is a complete story so there isn’t a pressure to continue if you absolutely don’t want to, yet there is still so much more potential that can be explored in this universe.  10/10.