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it's about spiders.
Jul. 10th, 2025 08:41 pmthis post is about adrian tchaikovsky's children of time, which is, yeah, a book about spiders. but it's not really just about spiders, that's just the easy and funny way i described it to people. absolute brick of a book that took me several days to read even including the fact that several of THOSE days i was traveling/hanging out at my grandparents' house with nothing to do but read.
in this book, humanity starts terraforming other planets, and one scientist decides to bioengineer some monkeys to create a sister species to the human race. except then there's some space terrorism, the monkeys die, and the intelligence empathy nanovirus affects some spiders instead. this leads to a very fascinating worldbuilding culture society kind of story. i studied anthropology in college and early human history fascinates me (not like EARLY early but like, the minoans and the etruscans and shit like that). so watching the spider society develop over the course of the book was SUPER interesting. the way their biology figures into their culture and their expressions, the way their language is almost entirely tactile, the development of spider religion and spider heretics? the development of spider feminism??? or spider masculism, as it were. anyway.
but that's only half the plot. the other half of the plot follows an ark ship/generation ship after humanity survives nuclear winter and gets radiation poisoning for all their troubles. the ship's classicist is awoken from and returned to stasis several times over the course of what i suspect is like two thousand years, with various supporting characters aging in and out of sync with him. there's an attempt to land on the spider planet, an altercation with the mad scientist creator god, an attempt at another different colony, some mutiny, spider first contact, the ship's captain attempting to ascend to godhood, all that jazz. overall i liked this plot too. i love love love a generation ship story. (did remind me of time to orbit somewhat but maybe that just means i need to diversify my reading within the genre.) i do think the conclusion was a little hasty though. the spiders infect the humans with the intelligence empathy nanovirus and all of a sudden everything is peace and rainbows and they go back to space? no. GIVE ME HUMAN SPIDER DIPLOMACY.
in this book, humanity starts terraforming other planets, and one scientist decides to bioengineer some monkeys to create a sister species to the human race. except then there's some space terrorism, the monkeys die, and the intelligence empathy nanovirus affects some spiders instead. this leads to a very fascinating worldbuilding culture society kind of story. i studied anthropology in college and early human history fascinates me (not like EARLY early but like, the minoans and the etruscans and shit like that). so watching the spider society develop over the course of the book was SUPER interesting. the way their biology figures into their culture and their expressions, the way their language is almost entirely tactile, the development of spider religion and spider heretics? the development of spider feminism??? or spider masculism, as it were. anyway.
but that's only half the plot. the other half of the plot follows an ark ship/generation ship after humanity survives nuclear winter and gets radiation poisoning for all their troubles. the ship's classicist is awoken from and returned to stasis several times over the course of what i suspect is like two thousand years, with various supporting characters aging in and out of sync with him. there's an attempt to land on the spider planet, an altercation with the mad scientist creator god, an attempt at another different colony, some mutiny, spider first contact, the ship's captain attempting to ascend to godhood, all that jazz. overall i liked this plot too. i love love love a generation ship story. (did remind me of time to orbit somewhat but maybe that just means i need to diversify my reading within the genre.) i do think the conclusion was a little hasty though. the spiders infect the humans with the intelligence empathy nanovirus and all of a sudden everything is peace and rainbows and they go back to space? no. GIVE ME HUMAN SPIDER DIPLOMACY.
