Children of Time 3-Book Set by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Children of Time, Children of Ruin, Children of Memory)

A brilliant expansion of the previous books themes and plot, with some fantastic new additions. Thoroughly entertaining high-concept space opera. It's fun to think about trying to explain this book to someone who has never read science fiction.

The only criticism you could make is that the section where the original crew land on Nod and slowly discover what is happening there is one of the most thrilling and thought-provoking pieces of sci-fi horror ever written. Even though the rest is still great, it’s impossible for any book to match the perfection of that section.

Octopi. In. Space!

I love it when science fiction authors bring their expertise to bear to reveal fascinating depths. Adrian Tchaikovsky, quickly becoming one of my favorite science fiction authors, is a zoologist (the section of biology dedicated to animals), and his expertise really shines through. In the book prior in this series, he explores what it would look like to have sentient arthropods (spiders), and it was fascinating, if a little more squeamishness-inducing. Children of Time, the second book in this series, could easily be read as a standalone book, for those who feel the need to skip over reading about spiders in depth. But anyways.

I love the premise of this book. What if there was a sentient alien species that were cephalopods (octopus-like)? It’s obvious he has done a ton of worldbuilding work here, but he also has structured the book so you don’t get infodumped on too much at once. Instead you get to discover cephalopod society throughout the plot unraveling. The conflicts are driven largely by misunderstandings between four different types of species: one hominid, one arthropod, one cephalopod, and one…one which is crazy, and I’ll get to later.

So basically, humans are terraforming a planet that is 90% water. With so little land available for humans to live on, it makes sense that the terraforming process is mostly going to focus on building up life in the (currently lifeless) ocean. They start with micro-organisms and work their way up. One man, a marine biologist named Senkovi, ends up being separated from the rest of his crew and, long story short, is able to take on the terraforming process of this planet at his own discretion. Because of this he is able to introduce his pet project to the planet: uplifted octopi.

Uplifting is a concept explored elsewhere in science fiction literature, whereby an existing species is made more intelligent through scientific processes, and we can explore the concept of what a sentient species would look like if it had the evolutionary background of some type of animal other than hominids. This is exactly what Senkovi does for his octopi. The thing is, he develops them in space, and (spoilers ahead)…

His experiment works too well. With a little help, his cephalopods become so intelligent that they are breaking outside of the environments he designed for them and taking over the space station he lives on.

Side note, octopi are known to figure out all kinds of things on their own. In the ocean, they pry open clam shells to eat the meat. The intelligence that allows them to do that has been sufficient for them to figure out how to unscrew jar lids, disassemble all kinds of devices, escape from aquariums over and over…it’s really not recommended to have an octopus as a pet, much as people think it sounds like a good idea, for this reason. Also for the reason that, because they are so intelligent, they experience what only a few species on the planet are intelligent enough to experience: boredom. Octopi get quickly bored if confined in a glass box with very little to keep them entertained. They appear to get depressed over time. Of course, it’s impossible to know exactly what octopi really feel, but the symptoms are relatable.

So anyway, these uplifted octopi escape from the lab in space, and quickly adapt and evolve to space. Turns out, they are actually much more well-adapted to space than humans are, since they are used to operating in a three dimensional environment. They populate the water world and mine it for resources, but they also expand outwards to the stars, designing their own kind of spacecraft, which, naturally, are filled with water instead of air.

Tchaikovsky explores the implications of having spacecraft that are designed to be filled with water instead of air. The craft take a lot longer to accelerate because of their weight, but this the water also provides cushioning that helps them survive higher rates of acceleration. Their craft are designed to be spherical in shape. Also, their battles in space are interesting because when a projectile punctures the shell, the water squirts out into space, instantly freezing into ice.

But this isn’t the only thing Tchaikovsky explores. He explores how their language would be different, how their modes of communication would be different, how their different thought patterns would effect the building up of civilization at a large scale, how their politics would be different, their warfare, how their natural curiosity affects EVERYTHING…

There’s too much in this book for me to succinctly summarize, but one of the most interesting things that factors in is their nervous system. Basically, cephalopods have two “brains”—if by brains you mean centers of neurons that (it is believed) do computations. One is in their cranium, just like for humans. but the other is actually in their tentacles, an organ of neurons dispersed throughout them in high concentrations that Tchaikovsky calls, in this book, their “reach.” (Some biologists go so far as to say that it’s like octopi have nine brains—one in their skull, and one in each tentacle.)

In addition, in this book when two octopi struggle with each other, something happens in that swirling of tentacles grasping each other. Information is passed along. I wasn’t able to find scholarly literature that proves this phenomena happens currently, but hey, who knows? It would explain some of their interesting behavior, such as when octopi fight with each other and then suddenly break apart, one of them changing its mind and now supporting the other as the new alpha.

Tchaikovsky is theorizing in the worldbuilding of this book about what cephalopod consciousness is like. He theorizes that, essentially, it would be like having a massive subconscious capable of doing complex calculations, which all happens without you thinking about it or knowing how it works—it just does. The implications of this are profound, and lets their technological development advance at a prodigious rate in some areas—but, with a key difference from how scientific advancement happened in human’s history. For cephalopods, it progresses without their scientists consciously understanding HOW they are doing some of the things that they do. And there’s a lot of implications to that too.

Anyway, I know I’m nerding out pretty hard on this, but the point is, if you’ve ever wondered how cephalopod civilization could differ from ours, this book is amazing.

And I haven’t even touched on another major component of this book, and that explores another alien planet with a life form that did NOT originate even remotely from Earth. Right from the get-go, the explorers discovering this planet are intrigued. It has all of these floating creatures in the air, which are able to, in this thick atmosphere, propel themselves like jellyfish do in water. There are other creatures which appears to drift with the winds, kind of like blimps. And on the ground, there are all kinds of other living things.

The planet has an entire ecosystem built up on fundamentally different building blocks at the cellular level. I don’t understand all the technical details, but essentially, these species don’t have DNA, but they do have something akin to RNA. And, among other things, one of the other differences on this planet’s ecosystem is that they don’t have hard and fast plant-animal distinctions. They have a lot of creatures that float about similarly to blimps, and they may have a migration phase, followed by a rooted phase where they dig into the soil in one location and gather nutrients and reproduce.

But the craziest life form on this planet is not at all visible. Not at first. I told you there would be spoilers right? Major ones coming…

The most fascinating species in this book (even rivaling the cephalopods) can be best thought of as a viral hive mind. This idea of his is phenomenally cool. And terrifying. But essentially, what if an alien species could infect all kinds of different species virally, and also had a distributed consciousness? When it infects a new host, of course, this part of itself is not able to directly communicate with the rest of the species. But the different colonies find ways of communicating with each other because the way they infect their hosts is subtle, as if it slips in between all the cells that exist already…it retains the intelligence, memories, everything of the infected host. And then it comes into psychic union with its host: meaning, the two minds merge.

The implications of this are far-reaching as well, but I’ve already spoiled enough of this book for you. Seriously, go and read this book immediately if these concepts interest you at all. The chapters written from the perspective of the viral hive mind are fascinating. And weird. But gradually, its ways of thinking become more and more comprehensible.

And the cool thing is, unlike so many other sci fi books that have explored parasitic aliens, in this one he actually moves beyond mere horror—although there’s a bit of that as well—but he eventually moves into another phase in the book of de-monstrifying the other, meaning: what if a species like this wasn’t just some awful predatory species? What if it was the hero of its own story? What if it didn’t view what it was doing as bad, because, after all, after it infects hosts, those hosts are always glad that they were infected in hindsight? Never mind that their thinking is changed by being infected, lol…but in its view, it helps its hosts achieve enlightenment, a greater consciousness of the universe which extends through all the physical realms all the way from the cellular level up to scale that humans are aware of.

I loved this book, and iImmediately ordered the next.

*Technically the correct plural of octopus is octopuses, but Adrian chooses to use octopi because he argues it sounds way more awesome, and I agree. All language is made up anyway.

If you liked children of time, especially the latter half, you're probably going to like this book as well.

I was about to give up half way. I'm glad I didn't. The last thing I expected was a happy end though the first book should have been a hint that one is there. I really like the end, the way the species complete and improve each other. It should be a lesson for us as the human race who still can't agree on skin color and ethnicity.

I approached Children of Ruin with caution. When an author decides to turn a stand alone book into a series after landing a movie deal...

It feels like he was pressured into it by the publisher and didn't really have a good idea on how to continue the story.

This is not the case.

Tchaikovsky delivers a brilliant successor to the already masterful Children of Time.

Are you ready for an uplifting, action packed and suspenseful first, second, third and fourth contact story?

Buckle up, we are going on an adventure.

It took me some chapters to get into this book. It was recommended to me by some friends on my forum. I'd previously tried to read books from this author, but always put them down after the first pages: just couldn't get into the anthropomorphism of the insects.
However, I trusted these friends in their recommendation to me, so I persevered. And boy, am I glad that I did.
Now, you should know I'm suffering from arachnaphobia. It's getting better now, but I'm still not happy with spiders around me, least of all in my head. But this book...
I love how the writer takes the insects and translates their way of communicating and living into a relatable story for humans, without humanizing the spiders too much. It didn't take long for the spider-part to disappear from my mental eye. They became persons.

I have a particular fondness for 'generation' stories: stories that span generations of people, all interlinked, all evolving. This story ticked that box and I loved the use of the Portia's, Bianca's and the Fabians.

The humans were a different story all together. I liked how the two groups developped so contrary to each other. The spiders evolved from animal barbarism into the space age, while humans devolved into a form of barbarism.
Usually when reading of watching a story about huge mutant spiders vs the last of humankind, one roots for the humans. Not here, not me, not in this particular story. Which felt very weird.

The end was cathartic, and everything I would have wanted it to be.

I will give his other books another chance now. Who knows, I might come to like the wasps as well ;-)