Review: Children of Time

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one is only a few years old, but it feels as if it’s stepped out of what they call the “classic sci-fi” era of the 1950s and early 1960s.

I mean that mostly in a positive way. The characters are generally flat, and there’s a fundamental clumsiness to the way Tchaikovsky handles plot, but the bottom line is that this is a novel that’s exploring a big idea. In this case, that idea is what it means for us – for us as human beings – to declare a fundamental right to our planet.

The premise – the result of several contrived plot twists – is that the last of the human race is aboard a failing space ark and hoping to land on a planet that earlier generations terraformed. That new planet, however, is home to a species of intelligent spiders, shaped for the most part by the accident of a virus intended to speed up natural selection along human lines.

So, the fundamental ethical conflict is whether “we” as humans should have the right to claim an alien planet for ourselves or whether the spiders, who are also somewhat like “us,” should have the right to maintain the only home world they’ve known.

Intriguingly, Tchaikovsky doesn’t take sides. While the narrative strategy is awkward, the effect is spot on. Roughly half the chapters come from the perspective of the humans on the ark, humans who – thanks to cryogenic naps – wake up every few decades to get up to speed on recent changes. The other half come from spiders. In a clever sci-fi move, Tchaikovsky has those spiders recall what their ancestors learned. As a result, we have a version of the same protagonists from the time they first dimly sense that working together with a quasi-language will allow them to conquer up to the generations able to launch satellites. The same names recur, and the same general personality quirks predominate.

As a [SPOILER:] Tchaikovsky ultimately ducks the issue or, as it seems, sets up a sequel that defers some of the same questions. (He allows the surviving humans to become infected by the same virus which allows them to understand the mutual possibilities for life on the planet.)

I did enjoy this, more than I anticipated, and Tchaikovsky has many moments of real cleverness. A particular favorite of mine comes when they discover another terraforming experiment. Instead of becoming Earth-like, however, the planet has gradually evolved into the home of a single planet-sized fungus. I thought that was a striking way to imagine what we might do in our attempts to direct life.

I’m not sure I’m on board for what I see is the sequel, though. This is a book that contemplates evolution and its ethical implications in thoughtful ways. Much of sci-fi has evolved over the last forty years, though, and it’s done so for reasons that I generally admire: more psychologically grounded characters and more sophisticated narrative control. Like the planet at its center, this one has evolved in different and unexpected ways, and I think I’ll look for work written in what I recognize as stronger ways.


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