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A book about intelligent spiders by Adrian Tchaikovsky… oh wait, all his books are about intelligent spiders. You have to admire a person who has a niche enthusiasm and really goes for it. I applaud his commitment to all things entomological and arachnid, and if he ever visits Mariposa he can sleep in the Spiderhouse.
If you do not want to read about spiders, skip this entire post.
This book is fantastic. I am arachnophobic and I loved it anyway, though admittedly my issue with spiders is how they look, not reading about them. (In fact, the parts of the book I found squicky and horrifying and phobic-triggering all involved ants, not spiders.) I can’t believe how attached I got to the valiant spiders and their civilization, and how much I was rooting for them to succeed.
[OH SHIT as I am typing I noticed my cats staring at something and there is a GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDER ON THE OUTSIDE SCREEN OF MY DOOR!!!! IT’S GOT A BIG FAT BODY AND THICK LEGS AND IT’S FUCKING HUGE!!!! I am not making this up. Um, so I guess this book did not cure my arachnophobia. Luckily someone came to the door and the spider scuttled away. Welp. Guess I won’t be using the back door any time soon.]
So, back to Children of Time. It’s old-school, big-picture, sweep of history, cool ideas, sense of wonder anthropological science fiction – something I haven’t enjoyed in ages. It reminded me of how much I used to like it.
The premise is that Earth has been largely trashed by wars and environmental damage, and there is currently a war between the humans who are trying to terraform other planets, and humans who are trying to stop this from happening. One woman is doing an experiment in which she plans to seed a terraformed planet with monkeys and
[AAAAAH I JUST NOW REALIZED THAT THE GIGANTIC SPIDER IS INSIDE THE DOOR, BETWEEN THE GLASS AND THE SCREEN AND THERE IS A BIG CHUNK OF GLASS MISSING ON THE INSIDE OF THE DOOR SO IT CAN GET TO ME. I just ran and grabbed tape and taped the inside of the door so it can’t get in. Hopefully there is a way out that it can use to get out the same way it got in. And thanks to decluttering, I knew instantly where my tape was. Marie Kondo just saved me from the spider.]
Um, so, this scientist, Dr. Kern, intends to seed a planet which has already been terraformed with Earth plants, bugs, and some small mammals like mice with a literal barrel of monkeys and a nanovirus which will enable them to evolve extremely fast, so what would normally take millennia will occur over a few thousand years. Her intent is to create a monkey civilization that will be intelligent but not as much as humans and can be used as servants. But things go drastically wrong, the entire Earth civilization blows up, and the monkeys never make it to the planet. But the nanovirus does. And it turns out to be quite compatible with spiders…
Meanwhile, a motley handful of human refugees flees the now-destroyed Earth in a generation ship. They have cryogenic sleep, so the story of the same few humans continues on their ship over a period of thousands of years, as they wake up for a few days or months or years at a time. At the same time, the spiders are evolving. We follow generation after generation of spiders as they fight wars and plagues, develop new technologies, and try to communicate with the mysterious thing in the sky—the AI that’s all that remains of Dr. Kern—that keeps sending them messages…
I don’t want to say too much about the spider civilization is because it’s so much fun to discover it on your own, but as a lure, I just want to mention that they figure out how to make colonies of nonsentient ants work as living computers. But seriously, the spider technology and culture is SO FUCKING COOL.
It took me longer to warm up to the human characters, and I was almost always more into the spiders’ story. But I did end up enjoying the humans’ story too. But the spiders? I LOVED the spiders. And not just as a civilization, but as individual, complex characters.
The nanovirus also uplifted some crustaceans, and in the midst of all the spider and human drama, every now and then we get an update about how the crustacean civilization is living out its own grand epic underwater and 99.9% off-page. It was delightful and slightly hilarious.
Spoilers:
SPIDER RADIO. SPIDER WEB ORBITALS. SPIDER MUSCLE FUNICULARS.
And Understanding! That was such a neat concept, so beautifully worked out.
The choice to use human-type names, and the same set of names at that, for the spiders was odd but it ended up working for me. You got a sense that they were spiders from literally everything else, and it ended up being rather charming to keep reading sentences like “Bianca dangled from the ceiling to take a nap.”
I’m having trouble understanding how the ant computers actually worked. I understand that the colonies had a lot of computing power, but how did the spiders present them with problems and how did the ants present their solutions?
[Okay, my door spider is now out of the door and has been swept off the balcony. Pretty sure it’s fine and will live out its spidery life, hopefully very far away from me.]
More book spoilers.
The ant bit that I found absolutely horrifying was when the ants were destroying everything in their paths and they create a fortress entirely composed of living ants and the spiders have to go inside it UGH UGH UGH.
The ending is so touching. You expect the spiders to slaughter the humans, which they’d be completely justified in doing given that the humans are hellbent on killing them. Especially after all that buildup about the spiders’ debate and how they solemnly decided to make the hard choice. I have literally never seen the “hard choice” presented in fiction as anything but the choice to kill a bunch of people. (Which makes me think that in fact, killing is the easy choice and cooperating is the hard one.) Here, the hard choice is to not kill.
Instead, they use a version of the virus that created their own civilization to instill a sense in the humans—and in themselves—that they are kin, so they have a chance now to share the planet rather than killing each other. It’s in part an anti-arachnophobia virus, and I wish I could get it so I could see that fucking giant spider inside my door as a little friend, like Tchaikovsky undoubtedly does.
Only $2.99 on Kindle! Children of Time
The cover is both correct and not really representative of the experience of reading the book. However, an accurate cover would probably make at least a quarter of the intended audience flee screaming, so there's that.
If you do not want to read about spiders, skip this entire post.
This book is fantastic. I am arachnophobic and I loved it anyway, though admittedly my issue with spiders is how they look, not reading about them. (In fact, the parts of the book I found squicky and horrifying and phobic-triggering all involved ants, not spiders.) I can’t believe how attached I got to the valiant spiders and their civilization, and how much I was rooting for them to succeed.
[OH SHIT as I am typing I noticed my cats staring at something and there is a GIANT FUCKING BLACK SPIDER ON THE OUTSIDE SCREEN OF MY DOOR!!!! IT’S GOT A BIG FAT BODY AND THICK LEGS AND IT’S FUCKING HUGE!!!! I am not making this up. Um, so I guess this book did not cure my arachnophobia. Luckily someone came to the door and the spider scuttled away. Welp. Guess I won’t be using the back door any time soon.]
So, back to Children of Time. It’s old-school, big-picture, sweep of history, cool ideas, sense of wonder anthropological science fiction – something I haven’t enjoyed in ages. It reminded me of how much I used to like it.
The premise is that Earth has been largely trashed by wars and environmental damage, and there is currently a war between the humans who are trying to terraform other planets, and humans who are trying to stop this from happening. One woman is doing an experiment in which she plans to seed a terraformed planet with monkeys and
[AAAAAH I JUST NOW REALIZED THAT THE GIGANTIC SPIDER IS INSIDE THE DOOR, BETWEEN THE GLASS AND THE SCREEN AND THERE IS A BIG CHUNK OF GLASS MISSING ON THE INSIDE OF THE DOOR SO IT CAN GET TO ME. I just ran and grabbed tape and taped the inside of the door so it can’t get in. Hopefully there is a way out that it can use to get out the same way it got in. And thanks to decluttering, I knew instantly where my tape was. Marie Kondo just saved me from the spider.]
Um, so, this scientist, Dr. Kern, intends to seed a planet which has already been terraformed with Earth plants, bugs, and some small mammals like mice with a literal barrel of monkeys and a nanovirus which will enable them to evolve extremely fast, so what would normally take millennia will occur over a few thousand years. Her intent is to create a monkey civilization that will be intelligent but not as much as humans and can be used as servants. But things go drastically wrong, the entire Earth civilization blows up, and the monkeys never make it to the planet. But the nanovirus does. And it turns out to be quite compatible with spiders…
Meanwhile, a motley handful of human refugees flees the now-destroyed Earth in a generation ship. They have cryogenic sleep, so the story of the same few humans continues on their ship over a period of thousands of years, as they wake up for a few days or months or years at a time. At the same time, the spiders are evolving. We follow generation after generation of spiders as they fight wars and plagues, develop new technologies, and try to communicate with the mysterious thing in the sky—the AI that’s all that remains of Dr. Kern—that keeps sending them messages…
I don’t want to say too much about the spider civilization is because it’s so much fun to discover it on your own, but as a lure, I just want to mention that they figure out how to make colonies of nonsentient ants work as living computers. But seriously, the spider technology and culture is SO FUCKING COOL.
It took me longer to warm up to the human characters, and I was almost always more into the spiders’ story. But I did end up enjoying the humans’ story too. But the spiders? I LOVED the spiders. And not just as a civilization, but as individual, complex characters.
The nanovirus also uplifted some crustaceans, and in the midst of all the spider and human drama, every now and then we get an update about how the crustacean civilization is living out its own grand epic underwater and 99.9% off-page. It was delightful and slightly hilarious.
Spoilers:
SPIDER RADIO. SPIDER WEB ORBITALS. SPIDER MUSCLE FUNICULARS.
And Understanding! That was such a neat concept, so beautifully worked out.
The choice to use human-type names, and the same set of names at that, for the spiders was odd but it ended up working for me. You got a sense that they were spiders from literally everything else, and it ended up being rather charming to keep reading sentences like “Bianca dangled from the ceiling to take a nap.”
I’m having trouble understanding how the ant computers actually worked. I understand that the colonies had a lot of computing power, but how did the spiders present them with problems and how did the ants present their solutions?
[Okay, my door spider is now out of the door and has been swept off the balcony. Pretty sure it’s fine and will live out its spidery life, hopefully very far away from me.]
More book spoilers.
The ant bit that I found absolutely horrifying was when the ants were destroying everything in their paths and they create a fortress entirely composed of living ants and the spiders have to go inside it UGH UGH UGH.
The ending is so touching. You expect the spiders to slaughter the humans, which they’d be completely justified in doing given that the humans are hellbent on killing them. Especially after all that buildup about the spiders’ debate and how they solemnly decided to make the hard choice. I have literally never seen the “hard choice” presented in fiction as anything but the choice to kill a bunch of people. (Which makes me think that in fact, killing is the easy choice and cooperating is the hard one.) Here, the hard choice is to not kill.
Instead, they use a version of the virus that created their own civilization to instill a sense in the humans—and in themselves—that they are kin, so they have a chance now to share the planet rather than killing each other. It’s in part an anti-arachnophobia virus, and I wish I could get it so I could see that fucking giant spider inside my door as a little friend, like Tchaikovsky undoubtedly does.
Only $2.99 on Kindle! Children of Time
The cover is both correct and not really representative of the experience of reading the book. However, an accurate cover would probably make at least a quarter of the intended audience flee screaming, so there's that.
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I would read that.
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(It is not actually the spider-planet crustacean society, but a different one. But it is awesome)
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Awesome! I have room for more than one crustacean society in my life. I've read Phyllis Gotlieb's Emperor, Swords, Pentacles.
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I LOVE books that do this, another entirely unrelated huge story running off-page. It's maddening and yet utterly engaging.
We can hope for a crustacean sequel!
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(It is not actually the spider-planet crustaceans, but a different and even more awesome species)
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Have you picked up the sequel? It has OCTOPUSES (octopodes?) and they are even weirder than the spiders.
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I thought I was confused about the ant computers because regular computers also confuse me, so that's good. Maybe we should co-write a fan letter in which we ask him to explain the ant computers, and then you can explain to me what he means.
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In some ways Children of Ruin (the sequel) is very similar to CoT in that it covers the rise of a civilization over a long period of time (complete with the same names for different individuals), woven in with a more personal narrative, but it didn’t feel at all like a retread. The two personal-plotlines are very different in nature to the sleeper ship and AI plotlines in CoT.
And I looooove the octopuses even more than the spiders. They are SO VERY WEIRD.
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(He’s also got some of the Shadows of the Apt short story books up on KU now! I guess he’s got some rights newly reverted)
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https://www.amazon.com/Dogs-War-Adrian-Tchaikovsky-ebook/dp/B06XXJ4P9H
However Amazon's annoying region-limiting thing means I can't see if it's actually available to buy (or in Kindle Unlimited) in the US - it directs me to the UK store instead.
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Grpuavpnyyl lrf - ohg ng gur irel raq bs gur obbx, nsgre n ybat yvsr (vzcyvrq arnevat uvf angheny yvzvg), naq ol pubbfvat gb znxr n urebvp fnpevsvpr gb npuvrir uvf hygvzngr tbny.
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Ants are very very chemical-focused and behave very precisely according to IF > THEN etc in the presence of different chemicals so I think it does work setting them up as logic gates in a computing system. You need to have enough ants, basically, and breed them to react to very specific chemical inputs, and then translate the chemical outputs. (It's an idea Terry Pratchett also played with a bit, with Hex, who also runs partly on an ant colony.)
I have to say, the last few chapters of this were an intensely stressful reading experience! I was so afraid that the humans would slaughter the spiders. I was just trusting very much that Adrian does not, in fact, tend to do downer endings...!
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2. Right, but as a human reader, I was still programmed by many years of reading fiction written by humans for it to go the other way.
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(I don't think it's MEANT to be obvious... the blurb is careful not to mention it, and there are what seem to me to be deliberate red herrings planted throughout the first quarter which made me think what I did)
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But I loved all the spider civilization, worldbuilding, architecture...
And I loved the ending, too :) The image of the entire planet being covered in gigantic spider webs is kinda cool and at the same time you understand immediately why the humans are freaked out. I was very surprised and very glad that the book did not end with one side wiping out the other.
I really look forward to the sequel - I bought it but did not get around to reading yet, but hopefully soon.
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Subhuman...monkey...servants? EWWWWWWWWWWWW I DO NOT LIKE WHERE THAT TROPE IS GOING AT ALL.
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I respected it, and I think it's excellent in many ways. But it suffered greatly from the Eight Deadly Words. I hated the fact that human civilization fell TWICE, and that that was because humanity appeared to be entirely toxic. I also wasn't thrilled about recycling the spider names in different generations to represent a particular personality type.
On the other hand, I did like the eucatastrophe ending. It was believable and yet totally unexpected.
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I wonder about the bit where the spiders' association with the ants was what made their choice different from what humans were planning to do (i e kill everyone). I mean, humans also have a long-standing association with domesticated animals (dogs, cows, etc). OTOH I guess they didn't have any of those on their spaceship.