![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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.
The macrocosmic/microcosmic stuff was so so cool. And the “adventure” motif was absolutely chilling. I loved all the callouts to classic horror, from the shambling zombies to the suddenly occupied spacesuit.
The very extra octopi were so great. I especially loved the bit where Helena realizes that being very restrained and calm and professional is getting nowhere, and she needs to be 100% more dramatic to get their attention.
”Adventure,” the creature says, and Kern has seen the stars through the imaginations of things invisible to the naked eye.
This is what science fiction exists to do. Just marvelous.
Feel free to have a spoilery discussion in the comments.
Children of Ruin
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.
The macrocosmic/microcosmic stuff was so so cool. And the “adventure” motif was absolutely chilling. I loved all the callouts to classic horror, from the shambling zombies to the suddenly occupied spacesuit.
The very extra octopi were so great. I especially loved the bit where Helena realizes that being very restrained and calm and professional is getting nowhere, and she needs to be 100% more dramatic to get their attention.
”Adventure,” the creature says, and Kern has seen the stars through the imaginations of things invisible to the naked eye.
This is what science fiction exists to do. Just marvelous.
Feel free to have a spoilery discussion in the comments.
Children of Ruin
From:
no subject
Yes, and the way he just sorta... snuck his pets into the ship without telling people what he was doing! Or, later, exactly how many of them there might be. You can imagine him whistling all casual, "doo de doo de doo, nothing to see here, definitely no more than five octopuses here! Oh, that... um... that's a spare octopus. No more than six octopuses, yessirree! Don't look in that tank."
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
"Okay, bad news is that my experiment is not QUITE as much in control as I've been claiming. In fact, it's not under my control at all. But, on the upside, at least the ship is still functional!"
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
"We're going on an adventure" started so cheerfully and then became so utterly horrifying. I particularly liked it because the microbes themselves weren't malicious or evil, just... really really different. I didn't actually realise that the italic sections were the microbes until the big reveal in the lab - up until them I thought it was the octopi.
I thought the resolution was beautiful. One of the things I most enjoy about Tchaikovsky is that he seems to have a genuine abiding faith in people (or, uh, sentient beings) to make good moral decisions. I mean, any individual character in his books is likely to suffer a hideous fate, but in the end there's always hope for a better future.
And I too laughed and laughed at the NEEDS MOAR DRAMA of Helena's attempts to communicate. The way Tchaikovsky wrote those sections in a fairly dry, matter-of-fact way (sometimes just with literal lists of along the lines of "She was outraged. She was intensely aroused. She was overwhelmed with grief.") was just hilarious to me.
I mmmmmay have gone around pelting everyone I know with weird octopus facts for at least two weeks.
From:
no subject
I also really loved the resolution. It's so optimistic, especially given that the microbes literally destroyed the entire octopus planet! But believable.
The bits from the Paul the often-bored octopus ambassador were also so funny! Staring at the color screen and going, "Okay, so they're saying they're friendly and happy and bored and impatient and also super horny... Yeah, sounds about right!"
Hit me with weird octopus facts (that we don't get in the book, I mean).
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
Off-topic
https://findthatbook.dreamwidth.org/65579.html
From:
Re: Off-topic
From:
no subject
The octopuses were great, and their way of thinking fantastically alien (the quote you highlighted is one of my favorites.) And the horror was extremely effective *shudders* Yes it all turned out okay but I don't think I'll react normally to the phrase "We're going on an adventure" again.
From:
no subject
The whole concept of the separated cognition making it feel to the octopi like they were essentially doing magic every time they figured out a problem or made something was so cool.