'Children Of Time' by Adrian Tchaikovsky, winner of the 2016 Arthur C Clarke Award for best science fiction novel published in the UK, is a story of survival. Of the last survivors of humanity travelling the vast reaches of space in search of a new home. Upon discovering a new world ready to be humanity's new Eden - an abandoned terraformed world full of promise, this paradise isn't what they expect it to be. It's protected by a lone sentry pod with the uploaded hybrid consciousness of Dr Avrana Kern (overseer of the terraforming project) together with the AI of the pod, and warns them to stay away from disturbing the project. Which of course, humanity being humanity, decides isn't in their best interests.
It's also a story of evolution, as we also follow the inhabitants of Kern's world, a race of spiders infected with a nano virus to help speed up their evolutionary progress, evolve from the primitive beginnings of hunter-gatherers and over generations rising to become a technological capable race of fully sentient beings, complete with complex communities and civilizations.
Where one group expands and evolves (the spiders), the other seems to devolve back into tribal instincts and traits (the humans), and the inevitable crossover of the two groups creates chaos!
The chapters alternate between each of the two factions over the course of time and it all works really well. The way the spider chapters were written, you could easily imagine David Attenborough narrating them, and were really interesting, seeing them become more sentient and especially in how they seemed to mirror humanity in some ways. The human chapters were equally interesting, and mostly focused on Holsten Mason, a classicist of human history, and Isa Lain, chief Key Crew engineer of the Ark ship the Gilgamesh, and we see the devolution of humanity through their viewpoint. I also loved the banter between the pair, sarcastic and very British at times!
It's a smart and imaginative stand alone story that's full of twists and turns, decent world building, and takes a look at humanity, civilization as well as natural history through science fiction tinted glasses.
Available from Waterstones, Kobo ebooks: (UK) / (USA) / (Canada), Audible Audiobooks and all good bookstores.
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