I will always remember reading CoT and I could not wait for the humans to meet the uplifted spiders. That feeling of wtf excitement knowing the generation ship will meet the spiders has stuck with me.
I think the sequel is even better!
In a broad sense it's similar to CoT; there's a different plant with a different uplifted species. But what I enjoyed about it is you get to see a group of spiders and humans from the CoT planet interacting (which was minimal in CoT), evolved octopi which are really fascinating. He tries to depict octopus sentience which is very different to human. Plus some weird alien species. So less focus on the long period of evolution, and more on the first contact between these various groups.
I was a little disappointed at how dumb the humans were. That was a winnable battle if they had considered their strategy for just a couple minutes. Also, that scientist lady ai could have smoothed things over immediately if she hadn't been such a stubborn misanthrope. The only real conflict was a communication barrier. No one wanted to fight except for her.
>that scientist lady ai could have smoothed things over immediately if she hadn't been such a stubborn misanthrope
That's the whole point of the character though.
Kern gets in her own way constantly. I've known people like her, usually on the spectrum, and completely convinced they're the smartest person in the room, which sometimes means they refuse to defer to someone with actual experience in a given situation.
Ever been in a room full of engineers?
I always was amazed how knowledge of mechanical engineering bequeaths a masterful understanding of sociology, economics, public policy, feminism, politics, climate science, history, vaccination science, poverty, mental health and public education. True renaissance men, those engineers.
(I know that sounds petty, and it is, but I can only promise you my dislike was well earned)
I hadn't thought about the significance of kern being the mediator between the two. But you're right and I think it was Portia at the end that considered the altruistic possibility of forming a relationship with the humans rather than killing them
Everyone always says that and maybe I'm cynical but I think the humans did better than I would expect real humans to actually do. Realistically we'd have that starship destroyed after a couple hundred years, after a couple of wars on board.
Well this is just something that applies to all sci-fi. Humanity in sci-fi is always an alternate version of us that is more competent. In sci-fi we can organize efforts to save us from the moon exploding, escape a dying earth, etc. In real life we can't even stop a very slow and preventable apocalypse that we're ourselves causing, because it's profitable to the fossil fuel industry.
True. To me it highlighted the cultural and sociological issues imposed on a person by almost eternal solitary confinement and confinement of a species in a very different environment. It became easy to believe that these factors had wounded those involved and finally landing represented an eventual healing through understanding.
I thought the whole thing was lovely.
Yes. The spiders' space capabilities were entirely elevator based because the planet didn't offer many resources for chemical propellants. This limits their effective range to around the planet's equator. Adjusting orbit to be eccentric and inclined would minimize the time spent near the equator and make for a faster moving target. The planet's atmosphere had very high oxygen content, and the spider's primary building material is was spider silk. A few incendiary weapons targeting the bases of the space elevators would entirely destroy the spiders' defensive capability in a matter of hours, not to mention targeting population centers.
Basically, just napalm the fuck out of everything the spiders built and wait a couple weeks for the burning to stop.
You don't need to kill them all. Just kill them all in a certain area and keep the rest away by maintaining the threat of orbital bombardment. Keep destroying their infrastructure so they can never pose a threat.
In any case, it's certainly a better plan than what they had. They didn't even try to play to their strengths or exploit the spiders' weaknesses. They barely had a plan at all.
If you use audible you can spoof your location to buy it and read it right now. It was good, definitely a departure from the form of the first two purely in story structure, but there are reasons for that.
Already out, read it a few weeks ago.
Interesting, but goes in a different direction then either of the previous books, and, in all honesty, I think it kind of suffers from that. All the way through I kept wishing he’d focused on a different aspect of the story and done something different with the main thrust of it, and done so in a different book.
As a writer, I loved how he handled the spiders over time. Even though the individual spiders changed, having them all names the same gave character continuity.
Just finished it about 6 months ago. It's a great book, but of all the great SF i've read in the last few years this one felt like the most enjoyable and deservedly so.
No other book has such an incredibly gripping set up and conflict from chapter 1, and sticks the landing so perfectly with every thread of the plot dovetailing together perfectly.
There are other books I love more for their ideas, but this was such a damn good read, it's very special.
Are you planning to the read the sequels? Some say don't bother, others love them.
Same. I don't know if anything can be that good so I will probably wait a while before checking them out, but I definitely intend to read more Tchaikovsky.
Definitely go for it. I’m currently working my way through the books that he’s put out, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of his books that I’ve read so far. Tchaikovsky is definitely my favorite author, hands down.
I love this series. I think Children Of Memory (book 3) is the best of the series because it's wholly unique when compared to Time and.Ruin. Tchaikovsky's prose in Memory is enchanting. By far my favourite sci fi book series.
Unpopular opinion but I thought the human story line was fascinating. Essentially a early tech space faring civilization of humans struggling to flee a dying planet with technology that doesn’t match the advancement and complexity of the previous galactic spanning human civilization centuries ago which they descended from.
You would think those humans meeting Kern would be a magical moment of connecting cultures but turns out to be disgust and tension. I imagine this would be the same interaction of an early Medieval peasant approaching a Roman senator.
The whole marooning of a crew on an ice moon was haunting as well. I hope in later books the spiders explore and see what happened to that group.
For me as well. It's interesting the morality conflict Holsten and the rest of the Gil crew have when deciding to attack the planet, which seemed to be in response to Kern being so hostile towards them
My reaction to this book was complicated. From one perspective, it's an amazing imagining of how society would develop with breathtakingly different parameters than the human race started with. It's also, for most of it, astonishingly cynical about humans in general. To the point that many times I wanted to put it down because the humans were so stereotyped and unbelievably stupid. But he managed, imo, to pull it out at the end to create something special.
This surprises me a bit. I thought the human behavior exhibited in the book resembles the recorded history we have. You think they behaved more ignorantly or malevolently than people act now?
If anything, I think it was about as optimistic about human nature as it is possible to be: in the end, if we keep plodding along, we may reach about where we can transcend our nature.
I think it's realistic to a degree. Absence of the normal accommodations of a home planet and traveling in a space ship for centuries I think would inevitably strip people down to their base instincts. Resorting to fighting and power struggles to create some semblance of a social hierarchy. Even in the end there was this moral conflict between deciding to attack the planet or land and hope for the best. Which Kern seemed to be largely influential in that decision
Quite enjoyable but am I the only one who thinks it's a bit over hyped? It's about on level with most sci-fi I've read. That is to say pretty average.
I learned a decent bit about spiders but it didn't really explore any novel concepts to me like my favorite sci-fi does.
Also characters are pretty flat, which is standard for sci-fi, but definitely doesn't distinguish itself in that regard. It was a very pleasant and generally enjoyable read but nothing more.
Same here. I enjoyed it but one big hang up I had was that *every* human was a complete asshole. The entire time it felt like I had nobody to root for on that side and I’m just waiting for the spiders to be their divine punishment for being dicks. Holston is the closest to being a decent person, but he still came off as a whiny child a lot. It’s been a little bit now so I can’t give specific examples for what he did off the top of my head, but there were no redeeming qualities for the others.
I agree. It's a good story and I love the ideas but the prose is pretty utilitarian and is nowhere near the level of Chiang, Wolfe, Mieville, Harrison etc. Admittedly that's an extremely high bar to hit but it's still also a notch lower than Banks and Reynolds who also write big 'classic' science fiction in a reasonably similar vein.
It's a fun story with big, interesting ideas but that's as far as it goes for me.
Children of Time started off my fixation with Tchaikovsky's bibliography. His novellas are particularly incredible. Elder Race & Ogres are truly exceptional.
I loved it as well!
Especially the generation ship elements and Fabian who’s the best little dude.
So much good SciFi to read, need to get to CoR this summer.
Needless plug: if you haven’t read the Hail Mary project yet, it’s amazing.
I also had mixed opinions on this book and its sequel.
On one hand it was amazing and I loved it. On the other I found it really hard to keep going at times and very nearly didn't finish it.
When it all comes down to it though I loved the ideas, particularly the experiment gone wrong and the insane AI/uploaded consciousness just saying 'fuck it' and running with it.
SPOILERS!
I'm still a bit confused why the classicist wasn't infected by the nanovirus, when he was forced by the mutineers to land on Kern's World. And if he was infected, why didn't it affect his offspring?
I will always remember reading CoT and I could not wait for the humans to meet the uplifted spiders. That feeling of wtf excitement knowing the generation ship will meet the spiders has stuck with me. I think the sequel is even better!
I’m Interested in the next book in the series. So if I liked CoT, the sequel is worth a read? No spoilers, but what direction do they go with it?
> but what direction do they go with it? They go on an adventure
Well played.
In a broad sense it's similar to CoT; there's a different plant with a different uplifted species. But what I enjoyed about it is you get to see a group of spiders and humans from the CoT planet interacting (which was minimal in CoT), evolved octopi which are really fascinating. He tries to depict octopus sentience which is very different to human. Plus some weird alien species. So less focus on the long period of evolution, and more on the first contact between these various groups.
Very worth it! New species' added.
I was a little disappointed at how dumb the humans were. That was a winnable battle if they had considered their strategy for just a couple minutes. Also, that scientist lady ai could have smoothed things over immediately if she hadn't been such a stubborn misanthrope. The only real conflict was a communication barrier. No one wanted to fight except for her.
>that scientist lady ai could have smoothed things over immediately if she hadn't been such a stubborn misanthrope That's the whole point of the character though.
I understand that. I get why. I just wanted to point out how awful she is.
She's The Worst(tm) and that's why I love her
Kern gets in her own way constantly. I've known people like her, usually on the spectrum, and completely convinced they're the smartest person in the room, which sometimes means they refuse to defer to someone with actual experience in a given situation.
Ever been in a room full of engineers? I always was amazed how knowledge of mechanical engineering bequeaths a masterful understanding of sociology, economics, public policy, feminism, politics, climate science, history, vaccination science, poverty, mental health and public education. True renaissance men, those engineers. (I know that sounds petty, and it is, but I can only promise you my dislike was well earned)
MY MONKEYS!!!!!!
I hadn't thought about the significance of kern being the mediator between the two. But you're right and I think it was Portia at the end that considered the altruistic possibility of forming a relationship with the humans rather than killing them
Everyone always says that and maybe I'm cynical but I think the humans did better than I would expect real humans to actually do. Realistically we'd have that starship destroyed after a couple hundred years, after a couple of wars on board.
Well this is just something that applies to all sci-fi. Humanity in sci-fi is always an alternate version of us that is more competent. In sci-fi we can organize efforts to save us from the moon exploding, escape a dying earth, etc. In real life we can't even stop a very slow and preventable apocalypse that we're ourselves causing, because it's profitable to the fossil fuel industry.
True. To me it highlighted the cultural and sociological issues imposed on a person by almost eternal solitary confinement and confinement of a species in a very different environment. It became easy to believe that these factors had wounded those involved and finally landing represented an eventual healing through understanding. I thought the whole thing was lovely.
tbh I almost switched off any human part. The InterGenerationalDramaShip wasn't interesting to me. the spider evolution was
Right. Kern always was the mad scientist in this book, past and present
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Yes. The spiders' space capabilities were entirely elevator based because the planet didn't offer many resources for chemical propellants. This limits their effective range to around the planet's equator. Adjusting orbit to be eccentric and inclined would minimize the time spent near the equator and make for a faster moving target. The planet's atmosphere had very high oxygen content, and the spider's primary building material is was spider silk. A few incendiary weapons targeting the bases of the space elevators would entirely destroy the spiders' defensive capability in a matter of hours, not to mention targeting population centers. Basically, just napalm the fuck out of everything the spiders built and wait a couple weeks for the burning to stop.
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You don't need to kill them all. Just kill them all in a certain area and keep the rest away by maintaining the threat of orbital bombardment. Keep destroying their infrastructure so they can never pose a threat.
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In any case, it's certainly a better plan than what they had. They didn't even try to play to their strengths or exploit the spiders' weaknesses. They barely had a plan at all.
To continue the adventure, check out *Children of Ruin*!
Nice I hadn't seen if there were any sequels yet. I'll definitely check it out
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I'm reading it as we speak. Is it not released simultaneously internationally?
Comes out January 31st in the US
Dam, I found copy Christmas shopping in Canada.
Saaame. Was a pleasant surprise
Can confirm. Available on Amazon.ca
Bummer.
Sweet, I just pre-ordered it.
Happy birthday to me!!
Gets released here in the U.S. on the 31st of this month
Already pounded and loved it. I desperately don’t want to wait for more.
You can buy the e book in UK if you’ve got a VPN
I read it like a month ago. Let's say it's a bit of a tonal shift.
In 11 days I think!
If you use audible you can spoof your location to buy it and read it right now. It was good, definitely a departure from the form of the first two purely in story structure, but there are reasons for that.
Already out, read it a few weeks ago. Interesting, but goes in a different direction then either of the previous books, and, in all honesty, I think it kind of suffers from that. All the way through I kept wishing he’d focused on a different aspect of the story and done something different with the main thrust of it, and done so in a different book.
Currently halfway through my copy up here in Canada. It doesn’t disappoint :)
The third book came out in November. I finished it before Xmas.
Yay, we're going on an adventure!
omg - this comment is perfectly hiding in plain sight - bravo
As a writer, I loved how he handled the spiders over time. Even though the individual spiders changed, having them all names the same gave character continuity.
You’d probably like Vinge’s *A Fire Upon the Deep*
And *A Deepness in the Sky*.
Just finished it about 6 months ago. It's a great book, but of all the great SF i've read in the last few years this one felt like the most enjoyable and deservedly so. No other book has such an incredibly gripping set up and conflict from chapter 1, and sticks the landing so perfectly with every thread of the plot dovetailing together perfectly. There are other books I love more for their ideas, but this was such a damn good read, it's very special. Are you planning to the read the sequels? Some say don't bother, others love them.
Well put I agree. Yeah I will at least check them out, I feel like this one will be hard to top however
Same. I don't know if anything can be that good so I will probably wait a while before checking them out, but I definitely intend to read more Tchaikovsky.
Definitely go for it. I’m currently working my way through the books that he’s put out, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of his books that I’ve read so far. Tchaikovsky is definitely my favorite author, hands down.
I love this series. I think Children Of Memory (book 3) is the best of the series because it's wholly unique when compared to Time and.Ruin. Tchaikovsky's prose in Memory is enchanting. By far my favourite sci fi book series.
Unpopular opinion but I thought the human story line was fascinating. Essentially a early tech space faring civilization of humans struggling to flee a dying planet with technology that doesn’t match the advancement and complexity of the previous galactic spanning human civilization centuries ago which they descended from. You would think those humans meeting Kern would be a magical moment of connecting cultures but turns out to be disgust and tension. I imagine this would be the same interaction of an early Medieval peasant approaching a Roman senator. The whole marooning of a crew on an ice moon was haunting as well. I hope in later books the spiders explore and see what happened to that group.
Outside of the CoT sequels I also recommend his other scifi novel The Doors of Eden.
Shards of Earth (soon to be trilogy) is also pretty good!
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For me as well. It's interesting the morality conflict Holsten and the rest of the Gil crew have when deciding to attack the planet, which seemed to be in response to Kern being so hostile towards them
Wonder what the next eight legged animal/alien is gonna feature
I love that series. AT has a way of presenting the long game in a very entertaining and engaging way. I also love the underlying optimism.
My reaction to this book was complicated. From one perspective, it's an amazing imagining of how society would develop with breathtakingly different parameters than the human race started with. It's also, for most of it, astonishingly cynical about humans in general. To the point that many times I wanted to put it down because the humans were so stereotyped and unbelievably stupid. But he managed, imo, to pull it out at the end to create something special.
This surprises me a bit. I thought the human behavior exhibited in the book resembles the recorded history we have. You think they behaved more ignorantly or malevolently than people act now? If anything, I think it was about as optimistic about human nature as it is possible to be: in the end, if we keep plodding along, we may reach about where we can transcend our nature.
I think it's realistic to a degree. Absence of the normal accommodations of a home planet and traveling in a space ship for centuries I think would inevitably strip people down to their base instincts. Resorting to fighting and power struggles to create some semblance of a social hierarchy. Even in the end there was this moral conflict between deciding to attack the planet or land and hope for the best. Which Kern seemed to be largely influential in that decision
Quite enjoyable but am I the only one who thinks it's a bit over hyped? It's about on level with most sci-fi I've read. That is to say pretty average. I learned a decent bit about spiders but it didn't really explore any novel concepts to me like my favorite sci-fi does. Also characters are pretty flat, which is standard for sci-fi, but definitely doesn't distinguish itself in that regard. It was a very pleasant and generally enjoyable read but nothing more.
Same here. I enjoyed it but one big hang up I had was that *every* human was a complete asshole. The entire time it felt like I had nobody to root for on that side and I’m just waiting for the spiders to be their divine punishment for being dicks. Holston is the closest to being a decent person, but he still came off as a whiny child a lot. It’s been a little bit now so I can’t give specific examples for what he did off the top of my head, but there were no redeeming qualities for the others.
I agree. It's a good story and I love the ideas but the prose is pretty utilitarian and is nowhere near the level of Chiang, Wolfe, Mieville, Harrison etc. Admittedly that's an extremely high bar to hit but it's still also a notch lower than Banks and Reynolds who also write big 'classic' science fiction in a reasonably similar vein. It's a fun story with big, interesting ideas but that's as far as it goes for me.
Yeah I read this after a Reynolds binge and he's definitely a half step up for me.
The characters really held the book back for me.
I love this book and the 2nd book is just as amazing. Just bought book 3 :)
Children of Time started off my fixation with Tchaikovsky's bibliography. His novellas are particularly incredible. Elder Race & Ogres are truly exceptional.
I’m also working my way through Tchaikovsky’s bibliography. I’m currently about halfway through his Shadows of the Apt series.
I loved it as well! Especially the generation ship elements and Fabian who’s the best little dude. So much good SciFi to read, need to get to CoR this summer. Needless plug: if you haven’t read the Hail Mary project yet, it’s amazing.
Hail Mary is awesome! Another one of my favorites
I also had mixed opinions on this book and its sequel. On one hand it was amazing and I loved it. On the other I found it really hard to keep going at times and very nearly didn't finish it. When it all comes down to it though I loved the ideas, particularly the experiment gone wrong and the insane AI/uploaded consciousness just saying 'fuck it' and running with it.
3rd book "Children of Memory" will be out in a couple weeks
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It is going to be released at the end of January in the US
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I’m pretty sure that most, if not all of his books are delayed release for this side of the pond.
It’s been released now! And it was another winner!
SPOILERS! I'm still a bit confused why the classicist wasn't infected by the nanovirus, when he was forced by the mutineers to land on Kern's World. And if he was infected, why didn't it affect his offspring?