Title: Children of Time
Series: Children of Time, #1
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: June 4, 2015
Length: 600 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Purchased
Rating:
A race for survival among the stars… Humanity’s last survivors escaped earth’s ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age—a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
Children of Time is a big, detailed, complex work of science fiction. It requires focus and concentration… and is absolutely worth the effort.
In Children of Time, humanity’s time on Earth has come to an end. While expanding out beyond the solar system and exploring other worlds, factions at home and throughout Earth’s space colonies go from adversarial politics to all-out war. The few remnants of humans on Earth find ways to survive an ice age, only to discover, as the ice finally recedes, that the ice actually protected life from the toxins that now doom them all to extinction — unless they can recreate the ancient tech of their space-faring ancestors and journey to a new planet to start again.
Meanwhile, the earlier humans’ space exploration included an ambitious terraforming agenda, journeying to far-flung solar systems to seed likely planets with the potential for new homes for humanity. As we learn early on, though, even this undertaking comes to ruin due to the factionalism and wars that devastate life on Earth.
One scientist heading a terraforming project succeeds, however… in a way. The pioneer of a project known as exaltation, Dr. Avrana Kern’s mission is to seed a terraformed planet with monkeys and a nanovirus to speed their evolution — then have the humans remain in suspension for centuries until the monkeys have evolved enough to support human settlement on their planet. But thanks to the war between humans, something goes very, very wrong with her plans.
Without giving too much away, I’ll just say that the story of what happens on this planet is utterly fascinating. Essentially, an unintended species is infected by the nanovirus — and over the course of Children of Time, we see an intensely interesting version of human evolution as played out by another species entirely. Thanks to the relatively short life span of this species, many generations pass over the course of the decades and centuries that follow — and we see them evolved from basic hunting skills to complex reasoning, strategy, building, communication, religious ideology, and eventually, highly advanced biochemistry and technology.
Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, we see the final remnants of the human race aboard the ark ship Gilgamesh, following the star maps and recovered documents of the last space-exploring humans in a desperate search to locate the old terraformed planets. Because they mainly exist in suspension, millennia pass during the Gilgamesh’s journey. We see familiar characters as they come out of suspension, often after decades or centuries have passed, in order to deal with new threats or discoveries. The concepts of time and what constitutes a life span are investigated in strange and wonderful new ways.
I don’t want to go too far into specifics, as there’s a real joy in seeing just how inventively the author spins out this story. The chapters alternate between life on the Gilgamesh and life on the planet, and it’s done so well that by the time the inevitable conflict between the two arrives near the end of the book, it’s impossible for a reader to favor one side over the other.
I’m thrilled that I’ve finally read Children of Time. Despite the book’s length, it’s so engrossing that the pages just fly by. For science fiction fans, this book is a must!
There are two more volumes in the series currently available, with a fourth set for publication in early 2026. On the one hand, Children of Time does wrap up very well, so I’d say it’s perfectly fine and satisfying to approach it as a single-volume stand-alone. On the other hand, I enjoyed Children of Time so much that I’m eager to read more set in this sci-fi universe!
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