Children of Time
Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky in 2015
Synopsis: Children of Time tells two stories on a collision course, each spanning thousands of years and beginning long after Earth civilization destroyed itself. One follows the last of humanity, who have deciphered enough of their predecessors’ technology to launch an aging starship and now drift in and out of cryostasis as they search for a new home. The other follows a derailed terraforming experiment on a distant planet and generation after generation of the sentient life and civilization that has developed there.
Review: Befitting the title, the way Tchaikovsky plays with time in this book is masterful. The main human character we follow is woken for a couple days at a time between centuries-long sleeps, and the author beautifully captures his growing emotional ache and vertigo as he loses external markers of time, and his strained relationship with a confidant who is kept awake longer and steadily grows older than him. Planet-side, where everyone is living normal-length lives, each part of the book picks up with a new generation. While individual characters thus only survive for a few chapters, the next part gives three new characters the same names, treating them as continuations of the same archetypes—the main characters are each generation’s leader, its sharpest scientist, and its most talented second-class citizen. These unique time-jumps were fun to follow, and switching between the two stories at pivotal moments meant I was constantly kept in suspense.
Everything about life on the new planet Tchaikovsky invented is fascinating. The individual character and societal developments also feel authentic, meaning this novel might rope you in even if you’ve been burned too many times by hard sci-fi historical exposition. The human group too is given time to change. By the time these two civilizations began their inevitable conflict, far later in the book than I’d expected, I didn’t know who would win, nor who I wanted to.
Strengths:
Dr. Avrana Kern. Both sets of characters are at the mercy of an entity whose dialogue is haunting.
The commander isn’t a flat character hellbent on the triumph of industry or power for its own sake!
Weaknesses:
After a certain point, I couldn’t understand or fully picture the ant computers. Admittedly, I have a similar upper limit on comprehending our computers.
I’m sick of the epilogue trope where a child descended from and named after the main characters marvels at how the new society has worked itself out.
Rating: 18/20 orbits of the Messenger
Ideal Setting: Read this somewhere with minimal chance of encountering a spider.
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