I adore the first contact with aliens trope so when I heard this was essentially the remanent of humanity vs intelligent spiders I jumped on it. Very unique and the ending took me pleasantly by surprise.I never thought I would end up rooting for spiders... but I did! A must read!

“Children of Time: Winner of the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award”. Most cumbersome book title ever (this is the full title of the edition I bought). Why did the publisher have to tag the award thing on the book’s original title? Fortunately, on the bright side, this is my only complaint about this book!This book takes David Brin’s “uplift” concept and really runs with it. In Brin’s popular Uplift series, humanity have used technology to boost the intellect of selected species of animals to sentienc...

Smart and imaginative, highly recommended for everyone who loves Sci-Fi and not recommended for anyone with arachnophobia.Children of Time is Adrian Tchaikovsky’s first Sci-Fi and also my first experience with his work. This is a highly praised book, it won Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel in 2016 and most likely, will be 5 stars read for anyone who has never read anything like it. Plus, for even more praise, the film rights to the book has also been sold to Lionsgate. It’s a great story. T...

Hard science fiction = a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy or technical detail or both. Just to be sure what are we talking about.The detailed info about Portia, the jumping spider and Scytodes, the spitting spider are as accurate as they can be, no doubt here. In fact, there is an entire chapter at the beginning with characterizations of both species, which is, after all, fascinating, but non-fiction. So, nothing new. (BTW, all this info about the s...

I received a review copy of Children of Time in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Adrian Tchaikovsky and Pan Macmillan for the opportunity. Children of Time is 600-pages of extraordinary, evolution-based science fiction that features quality storytelling and worldbuilding that is rarely seen in this generation. This narrative is set over 1000's of years. We first see Doctor Kern and her scientific team of 19 as they wish to experiment with monkeys and a nanovirus on what some individua...

“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”Professor Stephen Hawking“What have you done with my monkeys?”Doctor Avrana KernI do not sci-fi that much but when I do, I do it only with books that make me cheer for spiders.Adrian Tchaikovsky is famous for infusing his books with themes and motives related to his interests. He studied zoology and psychology. He is also interested in natu...

What a beautiful book. Six hundred totally absorbing pages. One of the best Science Fiction books I have ever read. Not being particularly coherent here but let me say again it is very, very good.It shows mankind at its worst - I would not have cared if the last human being in the universe had died at the end. I hate spiders but was converted to the sentient kind and I was cheering them on as they grew smarter and smarter. I could not imagine how it was going to end but Adrian Tchaikovsky is som...

5 of 5 stars at The BiblioSanctum https://bibliosanctum.com/2017/06/12/...Children of Time was my first novel by this author, and wow, what a way to start my initiation into the Adrian Tchaikovsky fan club! I have never read anything quite like this book before, and I have to say the praise it’s gotten has been well deserved. I just loved this.First of all we have this incredible story, which has everything in place for a space opera of the grandest proportions. Long ago, when Earth was on its l...

I wasn't ready for this book. WOWI mean, this was awesome! It took me one month into the year to finally rate my first 5* book of 2019.I don't want to say a lot about this book, but:Earth is dying. Humans leave Earth. Humans find a world terraformed prepared for life, WITH SPIDERS.Don't go into this book thinking that this is an action book with a lot of "Humans killing Spiders". It is so much more than that.The scope of this story is unbelievably huge and it addresses some unexpected themes.The...

I have really struggled with this book. Really the only science fiction I tend to like is character driven so I was up against it from the start! I've always thought that insect and deep sea creatures have much potential as horror/ monster elements in a story. The look of them close up is just as awful as anything fictitious- it's only that, in the case of insects, they're small and in the case of deep- sea creatures, far down and away, that saves us. So I was interested to read about Portia and...

Once we get the whole space-travel thing going, what is the best idea that we should prioritize, as a species? Well, it turns out that future-us thinks that we need to set-up a new planet with super-intelligent monkeys ruling it. Because, apparently, future-us never saw a movie. Or are such dumbasses that we took the worst idea possible and decided to run with that.See? Now, this is a good idea. There's a big difference.But, luckily someone realized that maybe they didn't want to doom us all to

Well, it finally happened.  Earth can no longer sustain life, having frozen over, then morphing into an oozing toxic thaw.  The possibility of mankind becoming extinct is all too real, and plans have been in place for a relocation to a more welcoming sphere.  It should have been ready when the spaceship arrived with its precious cargo of humans.  But where have all the monkeys gone?  This planet is host to evolutionized spiders.  So many eyes, so many legs.  Striking parallels are spun, the diff...

I have been avoiding this because spiders. More fool me. This is an incredible (spider-filled) book, with brilliant imaginative sweep, terrible inexorable logic, spiders, incredibly high stakes, a fascinating look at alien minds, a depressing look at human ones, and a highly satisfying bit of play with gender roles and sexism. And spiders. So many spiders. Aargh, spider. In fact possibly what's most impressive about this book is that by the end, despite SPIDERS, I was actually rooting for the ei...

As humanity's fortunes fade, an engineered nanovirus, not finding the monkeys it expected, begins elevating the insects and spiders of an earth-like world. Will it be the humans aboard the space ark Gilgamesh or the spiders of the green planet inherit the universe as... The Children of Time?One of the lunch talkers was gushing over this book a few days ago, the rare interruption of my reading I can tolerate. Fortunately, I already had this on my kindle despite no memory of buying it. Anyway, I d...