Children of Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Avrana Kern had only limited and artificial emotional responses, being dead and a computer composed at least partially of ants.

Shine on, crazy bug-shaped diamond. Shine on.

Tchaikovsky’s sequel to Children of Time is similar enough to be delightful if you enjoyed the first book, while different enough to recapture the original’s sense of wonder and mind-expanding qualities. It catches up with the next generation of spiders and humans, while introducing some new sets of humans and uplifted societies:

The population of the planet now stands at some thirty-nine billion octopuses.

The octopus civilization is marvelous, and rather more alien than the spiders.

At first she was baffled and almost offended: this is not, after all, how sentience is supposed to work. Humans and Portiids agree on these things. Now, after enough time to reflect, she wonders if the octopuses are not happier: free to feel, free to wave a commanding tentacle at the cosmos and demand that it open for them like a clam.

There’s a lot of really funny bits in this story, mostly involving the octopi. I was cracking up at the early stages of their uplifting, which involve one guy who really likes octopi and his baffled colleagues. There’s also some absolutely terrifying horror. And a whole lot of uplift (in both senses of the word), touching human or rather touching sentient being moments, a vast scope, and more sense of wonder than you can shake a stick at.

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This is what science fiction exists to do. Just marvelous.

Feel free to have a spoilery discussion in the comments.

Children of Ruin