Children of Time (a review)

Children of Time by Adrien Tchaikovsky is one of those epic science fiction tales that takes place over a span of thousands of years. But, lest you fear that you have to acquaint yourself with new characters every couple of chapters, no. Not so much. There are two separate races that we follow in the story: the humans and the spiders. The spiders were an experiment gone wrong. The experiment was supposed to introduce creatures from Earth to a newly terraformed planet where an introduced virus would genetically uplift a selection of monkeys, so their accelerated evolution into intelligent creatures could be observed. Unfortunately, an ill-timed war (is war ever well-timed?) killed off most of the human population of the galaxy including the scientists working on the experiment. The monkeys did not survive their descent from orbit, so the virus found other organisms to uplift, namely, spiders. I love that this idea of genetic uplift pays homage to David Brin’s Uplift series. The ship that the scientists were on is even called the “Brin 2”.

After the wars and the collapse of human civilization, the humans made a comeback. But the Earth was damaged beyond sustainability, so they built a few ark ships, put thousands of people in suspended animation, and went in search of some habitable planet to land on and start over.

Believe me, I haven’t spoiled anything. This all happens in the first couple of chapters. Since the main characters that we follow are going in and out of suspension, we have continuity of characters even thought their voyages last thousands of years. The chapters alternate between following the humans on the ark ship and following the progress of the spiders on the planet. We know there has to be a conflict at some point, and I have to admit that part of me was rooting for the spiders. I am not a big fan of spiders in real life, so if Tchaikovsky can get me rooting for them, he must be a good writer. This is a satisfying epic.

Star Liner

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