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Review: Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time (2015)
This was a science fiction novel focused on civilizations. Actually, I found a lot of similarities in themes between this novel and that of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past Trilogy (i.e. The Three Body Problem Trilogy) but this novel took a more focused approach. I think this novel would be enjoyed by people who enjoy those themes of big questions regarding civilization.
Spoilers.
Story
The novel began focused on Dr. Avrana Kern, a scientist who wanted to kickstart her own civilization. She developed a virus that would help along evolution in monkeys that she would transport to another planet. However, her project was sabotaged and the monkeys were killed. The virus landed on the planet but began infecting other species. One such species were the spiders.
The novel then split into two story lines. One was focused on spiders and one was focused on humans.
The spider story line was about their evolution, from the more primitive biological society that we observed from the spiders, to a more advanced society akin to mankind. They developed a society with leaders. This society was matriarchal as the females were larger and stronger, and commonly ate their mates after mating. As time went on, the societies grew more intelligent, developing their own technology, including ways to communicate with the messenger, which was Avrana Kern who was in a pod orbiting the planet. Eventually, the male part of the spider population fought back against gender inequality, leading to a society where female and male spiders were equal. The spiders’ technology evolved to a point where they were able to travel to space to meet Avrana Kern. She was shocked that the beings she had communicated with were spiders, but she quickly focused and recognized them as her children. She warned them against humanity, saying that they would eventually come and attack them, and they should protect themselves. While the spiders used to see Kern as a god, they slowly began to see her more as an advisor, as they took on their own beliefs.
The human story line took place on the ship Gilgamesh, which contained the last of humanity. Most humans were frozen, until they could find an appropriate place to land. When they first came to Kern’s World, Avrana Kern as a human and Eliza Kerns, her AI, communicated to the humans. However, they both insisted that the Gilgamesh travel to the nearest planet to keep their experiment intact. I’ll be honest, I forgot a lot of what happened in the human story line as I found the characters less memorable. Where I started recognizing characters was when Guyen became the leader of the ship. He had turned the living society on the ship into something of a cult with him as the leader and god. He was focused on uploading his consciousness to the ship. I think it was Guyen who wanted to land on the planet, and his actions of waking much of the cargo of humans created a situation in which they would not be able to survive going to another planet and they would have to land on Kern’s world. While Guyen was able to upload his consciousness, it wasn’t super successful or coherent. Afterwards, Lain kind of became the de facto commander, though she preferred not to command and asked the others not to wake her unless they had succeeded in landing.
Eventually, the spiders and humans engaged in battle. The spiders hopped onto the Gilgamesh and circulated a biological weapon through their vents. It was revealed that the weapon was not to kill the humans, but rather it chemically altered their brains so that the humans would see spiders as one of them. In the end, spiders and humans lived in harmony on the planet, and the epilogue showed Lain and Mason’s descendant travelling to space with one of the original leaders of the spider world.
I definitely appreciate what Tchaikovsky was communicating in his book. However, I have to say I found the spider story line much more interesting than the human story line and that did hamper my enjoyment. While the spider story line was constantly moving, it felt like the human story line was more gruelling and stalling and it made the book feel a bit like it was dragging at times.
As I mentioned, I found a lot of the human characters a bit hard to remember particularly at the beginning. I really only started remembering the characters during Guyen’s rise. I would have preferred for Tchaikovsky to have introduced fewer human characters as he did with spiders, but I guess the point was to show the spider civilization from a more high level perspective, and to show the human civilization with more up close relationships.
Writing
The writing was fine, but I found the spider story line more compelling due to the ways that Tchaikovsky was framing the spider civilization encountering new milestones. In contrast, the human civilization didn’t feel like anything new, nothing wondrous or exciting as it played on scifi tropes that I would have seen in other media.
That being said, I really did appreciate Tchaikovsky’s way of showing us various scifi concepts that might otherwise be difficult to explain. One that I thought was interesting was the juxtaposition between Avrana Kern and Eliza Kerns’ messages when communicating the Gilgamesh. They were enmeshed, but how does one show it? It makes sense that he would leave it up to the Classicist (something like a linguist) to be able to show it to us in a way that is digestible.
Characters
Avrana Kern
Avrana Kern first struck me as something of a mad scientist, the way she was so intent on becoming a god to a better, superior civilization than mankind. After the sabotage, she was stuck in a pod orbiting Kern’s World, with her pod’s AI, Eliza Kerns, handling things for her.
When the Gilgamesh requested access to land, Avrana Kern denied them access, instead directing them to go to the next closest planet. When Mason analyzed the incoming communications, he found the polite administrative messages from Eliza were simultaneously laced mad ramblings from Avrana that wanted humanity to leave the planet and leave her monkeys alone.
Avrana continually made contact with her beings, though they were not able to discern her message at first. Their turning point was when the spiders travelled to space to see her. During that journey, the spiders sent a picture of them to Avrana and that was when Avrana realized that she had been speaking to spiders all along, not monkeys or apes. It shocked her, but she very soon understood that they were her children, and she would continue to give them guidance as she had initially intended her monkeys.
When they first met, the spiders did treat Avrana like a god, and they asked her their purpose, which she communicated to them was to survive. She also told them of the nature of humanity, that they wished to destroy, and told them that they had to be prepared. However, as we found out by the end of the novel, destruction was perhaps a human inclination, and the spiders did not see this as effective. They ignored Avrana’s advice to prepare for a fight and instead they developed a weapon that would harmonize the species.
As a side note, it seemed that Avrana had struck up a friendship with Fabian, who had been the leader of the male spiders’ movement. Avrana didn’t like to be referred to as god, and Fabian treated her more like a peer.
I’m not sure what happened to Avrana Kern in the end, after humanity joined forces with the spiders. Maybe she’s still out their orbiting.
Holsten Mason
Mason was a classicist on the Gilgamesh. He was basically a linguist, and he knew the language of Imperial C, which was the language of the old Empire. When the Gilgamesh first made contact with Avrana Kern, the messages were in Imperial C and Mason had to translate them.
However, for much of the novel, Mason felt more like a simple point of view character. As a part of the core personnel that kept the ship running, he was involved in the politics at the beginning, being taken hostage as such. However, I felt that he had limited pull as his skills were mostly related to communicating with Kern and trying to read between the lines, but he had little knowledge in running the ship or running a civilization.
Later on, when Guyen became a cult leader, that was when I really felt like Mason was just a pov character who was telling us what was happening. I’ll be honest, I completely missed his romantic relationship with Lain until I found out they had a baby embryo together.
Mason’s skills became relevant towards the final battle when he was analyzing the spiders’ communications, finding that they were too complex to be simple commands and that they had to have been communicating with each other as humans do. However, it was already too late as the spiders were closing in, and he could only try to protect himself and Lain. That being said, they did not die as the spiders came in peace, and presumably it was him who accompanied Lain as she lay dying.
As a plot device, Mason was fine. As a character, I was very neutral about him.
Isa Lain
Lain was a member of the crew but honestly I didn’t remember her until she started launching her anti-Guyen mission. That was when she expressed that she considered Mason a friend and was going to save him. Mason expressed that Lain was a reluctant commander, and it showed. She got things done, but preferred not to be the one to have to have done it lol.
Lain was supposed to be a snarky woman, which was fine I guess. It wasn’t overdone. When Lain showed Mason their embryo, she expressed that it wasn’t a big deal, that they weren’t tragic lovers or anything. But I don’t think it meant that Lain had no feelings. It was just that she knew they had more important things to worry about for the time being.
In her old age, Lain had preferred not to be woken until the Gilgamesh had finally landed. However, as they were preparing to defend, she was called on as probably the most capable leader the Gilgamesh had known. Unfortunately the Gilgamesh were not successful in defending against the spiders, even if they weren’t actually killed. Lain died, but I think it was meant to be a good ending for her as she had finally arrived on the planet, and there would be hope for the new generation.
Vrie Guyen
Guyen was the authoritarian leader on the ship. Again, I didn’t really start recognizing him until he rose to cult leader status. I remember it being portrayed as him posing himself as god to the humans, and that after he went to sleep and awoke again, the humans would call him god, and the cycle would perpetuate to the point that he would believe it himself.
Guyen wanted to lead the Gilgamesh back to Kern’s world, and on the way, he decided he was going to upload his consciousness to the Gilgamesh’s software as a way of immortality. However, the operation was only partially successful as his voice was heard on the system, but he could only speak simply, expressing his deepest values (mostly egotistical).
Portia
Portia was one of the most important leaders of the spider civilization. She was one of the strongest and smartest. Towards the beginning, she was often negotiating with other clans. One of her first major feats was to steal a jewel from a colony of ants and I think that cemented her as a hero. As civilization developed, she became one of the strongest priestesses who communicated with the Messenger.
One of the first times we saw Portia falter was in her relationship with Fabian, her favourite male. Fabian wanted equal rights for his brothers and Portia thought he was asking for too much. He eventually escaped, and I believe he had his new clan attack Portia’s (though my memory is hazy on this).
I don’t think Portia’s status suffered too much from this though. Portia continued to be a strong leader among the spiders. She still had male concubines, though she had a favourite, also called Fabian (named after the Fabian). She also found herself leaning towards monogamy, only accepting courting from this Fabian.
Portia and the second Fabian were eventually the first two spiders to see Avrana in space. It was Portia who asked Avrana for guidance for their species. And it was Portia who eventually led the ambush on the humans.
At the end of the novel, Portia was travelling to space with the descendant of Lain and Mason. I wonder if this implies that Portia has had an incredibly long life, or if this was another descendent of Portia.
I thought Portia was a pretty interesting character. I thought the way that she showed her intelligence in negotiation and action was very interesting, and whenever she did falter or make mistakes, it did not detract from her strength and wits.
Bianca
Bianca was another strong female, though she was often second to Portia. They mostly had an amicable relationship in the beginning. They respected one another.
Their relationship changed when Bianca began to interpret the Messenger’s messages differently. Bianca was labelled something of a heretic. Bianca was locked up in jail. Due to her friendship with Portia, Portia had offered to release her if she denounced her views, but Bianca refused.
Eventually, Fabian came to see Bianca. They struck up a partnership and Fabian got them both out. Bianca and Fabian lived in their new society and Bianca remained high in social status. Like Portia, Bianca remained a leader in the spider community and spider operation to attack the humans.
Fabian
Fabian was originally one of Portia’s favourite males. He was very smart, and eventually he had come to develop a way to program ants to do their bidding. He told Portia that he would only pass on this knowledge to her if she granted equal rights to male spiders. Currently, female death was punishable by law, while male death was seen as normal (for this species of leaping spider, the females tended to eat the males after mating). Portia refused, and Fabian went to Bianca to escape together.
With his new clan, Fabian demanded equal rights, though realistically all he asked from the females was to let him do his thing. He programmed ants to attack his old clan and they succeeded with few casualties. Fabian was later known in history as the Great Liberator.
Later on, Fabian remained a leader, and he was also a friend to Avrana Kern.
Themes
Civilization
This book was focused on two civilization, the spiders and the humans. Humans were portrayed as hateful and destructive. The reason why all of humanity was on the Gilgamesh was because they had poisoned their home. That was why Avrana Kern looked down on humanity and wanted to start her own civilization that would not be so destructive. As we saw in this novel, the spiders were better than humanity in that they always sought to cooperate rather than to destroy. They were able to program the ants to do their bidding, and they later programmed the humans to see them as equal collaborators. I personally think it’s a bit idealistic. I think people are people everywhere, but I appreciate that spiders being more peaceful led to a more peaceful solution where both civilizations could live.
A lot of points Tchaikovsky made about civilization in Children of Time reminded me of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin. The prisoners’ dilemma was brought up several times in regards to whether humanity and the spiders would attack one another. And the conclusion was that it was safer for both parties to attack to protect themselves.
I forgot when this came up, but I believe it was during the spider story line. At one point, someone had mentioned that society is unnatural. After all, the natural state for the leaping spiders was for the females to eat the males after mating. For females to keep male favourites the way that Portia and her peers did was already natural. Portia might have thought that Fabian demanding equality for males was unnatural but Portia having favourites was already unnatural. We see this unnatural behaviour in humanity as well.
On the Gilgamesh, civilization was more dire and we saw people taking advantage of the situation, particularly Guyen. He presented himself as a leader, a god among men. For the humans that were awake, perhaps they truly believed it because that was all they knew. Perhaps they believed it because they felt that humanity had no other option but to follow the few options they had.
Gender
I felt that there was a big focus on gender with all of the female leaders in this novel. First we had Avrana Kern the mad scientist, then we had Portia the strongest leaping spider, and then we had Lain the reluctant commander. I thought it was interesting to have women as the leaders to show that women, like men, can have very different leadership styles. Who would have thought?
Fabian fighting for gender equality was definitely a big development in spider civilization. Perhaps it is “unnatural” as he said it, but to us as humans, we likely see gender equality as a sign of evolved civilization, where all members are valued. That being said, while female spiders became more powerful while using males, Fabian became more powerful while using ants. His big secret was being able to reprogram ants to do their bidding. I’m not saying that he’s wrong for demanding equality, but to humans this would look like slave labour whereas for the spiders they may just see it as cooperation.
Aging
It’s probably very disorienting to be waken and put back countless times. That certainly seems the case for Mason, especially towards the end when he hated being in the dark while constantly being awoken by people he didn’t know. He was technically the oldest person, having been born the earliest, but due to being put to sleep, Lain eventually became an older woman than him.
There was this discussion in the Dark Forest, the second book in the Remembrance of Earth’s past, where an older person never really lost their “older perspective,” on account of being born in a different time. I think a similar sentiment would have taken place on the Gilgamesh. Despite Lain and Mason having been lovers, Lain calls Mason an old man; I know it’s meant to be lighthearted, but I do think she still recognizes him as a person from an earlier time, more than she does a man that is physically younger than her.
Overall
An interesting book with some great ideas. However, I have to admit that the differences in pacing between the two story lines made it a bit gruelling to read at times. As such, I likely won’t be picking up the sequel any time soon.
Spoilers.
Story
The novel began focused on Dr. Avrana Kern, a scientist who wanted to kickstart her own civilization. She developed a virus that would help along evolution in monkeys that she would transport to another planet. However, her project was sabotaged and the monkeys were killed. The virus landed on the planet but began infecting other species. One such species were the spiders.
The novel then split into two story lines. One was focused on spiders and one was focused on humans.
The spider story line was about their evolution, from the more primitive biological society that we observed from the spiders, to a more advanced society akin to mankind. They developed a society with leaders. This society was matriarchal as the females were larger and stronger, and commonly ate their mates after mating. As time went on, the societies grew more intelligent, developing their own technology, including ways to communicate with the messenger, which was Avrana Kern who was in a pod orbiting the planet. Eventually, the male part of the spider population fought back against gender inequality, leading to a society where female and male spiders were equal. The spiders’ technology evolved to a point where they were able to travel to space to meet Avrana Kern. She was shocked that the beings she had communicated with were spiders, but she quickly focused and recognized them as her children. She warned them against humanity, saying that they would eventually come and attack them, and they should protect themselves. While the spiders used to see Kern as a god, they slowly began to see her more as an advisor, as they took on their own beliefs.
The human story line took place on the ship Gilgamesh, which contained the last of humanity. Most humans were frozen, until they could find an appropriate place to land. When they first came to Kern’s World, Avrana Kern as a human and Eliza Kerns, her AI, communicated to the humans. However, they both insisted that the Gilgamesh travel to the nearest planet to keep their experiment intact. I’ll be honest, I forgot a lot of what happened in the human story line as I found the characters less memorable. Where I started recognizing characters was when Guyen became the leader of the ship. He had turned the living society on the ship into something of a cult with him as the leader and god. He was focused on uploading his consciousness to the ship. I think it was Guyen who wanted to land on the planet, and his actions of waking much of the cargo of humans created a situation in which they would not be able to survive going to another planet and they would have to land on Kern’s world. While Guyen was able to upload his consciousness, it wasn’t super successful or coherent. Afterwards, Lain kind of became the de facto commander, though she preferred not to command and asked the others not to wake her unless they had succeeded in landing.
Eventually, the spiders and humans engaged in battle. The spiders hopped onto the Gilgamesh and circulated a biological weapon through their vents. It was revealed that the weapon was not to kill the humans, but rather it chemically altered their brains so that the humans would see spiders as one of them. In the end, spiders and humans lived in harmony on the planet, and the epilogue showed Lain and Mason’s descendant travelling to space with one of the original leaders of the spider world.
I definitely appreciate what Tchaikovsky was communicating in his book. However, I have to say I found the spider story line much more interesting than the human story line and that did hamper my enjoyment. While the spider story line was constantly moving, it felt like the human story line was more gruelling and stalling and it made the book feel a bit like it was dragging at times.
As I mentioned, I found a lot of the human characters a bit hard to remember particularly at the beginning. I really only started remembering the characters during Guyen’s rise. I would have preferred for Tchaikovsky to have introduced fewer human characters as he did with spiders, but I guess the point was to show the spider civilization from a more high level perspective, and to show the human civilization with more up close relationships.
Writing
The writing was fine, but I found the spider story line more compelling due to the ways that Tchaikovsky was framing the spider civilization encountering new milestones. In contrast, the human civilization didn’t feel like anything new, nothing wondrous or exciting as it played on scifi tropes that I would have seen in other media.
That being said, I really did appreciate Tchaikovsky’s way of showing us various scifi concepts that might otherwise be difficult to explain. One that I thought was interesting was the juxtaposition between Avrana Kern and Eliza Kerns’ messages when communicating the Gilgamesh. They were enmeshed, but how does one show it? It makes sense that he would leave it up to the Classicist (something like a linguist) to be able to show it to us in a way that is digestible.
Characters
Avrana Kern
Avrana Kern first struck me as something of a mad scientist, the way she was so intent on becoming a god to a better, superior civilization than mankind. After the sabotage, she was stuck in a pod orbiting Kern’s World, with her pod’s AI, Eliza Kerns, handling things for her.
When the Gilgamesh requested access to land, Avrana Kern denied them access, instead directing them to go to the next closest planet. When Mason analyzed the incoming communications, he found the polite administrative messages from Eliza were simultaneously laced mad ramblings from Avrana that wanted humanity to leave the planet and leave her monkeys alone.
Avrana continually made contact with her beings, though they were not able to discern her message at first. Their turning point was when the spiders travelled to space to see her. During that journey, the spiders sent a picture of them to Avrana and that was when Avrana realized that she had been speaking to spiders all along, not monkeys or apes. It shocked her, but she very soon understood that they were her children, and she would continue to give them guidance as she had initially intended her monkeys.
When they first met, the spiders did treat Avrana like a god, and they asked her their purpose, which she communicated to them was to survive. She also told them of the nature of humanity, that they wished to destroy, and told them that they had to be prepared. However, as we found out by the end of the novel, destruction was perhaps a human inclination, and the spiders did not see this as effective. They ignored Avrana’s advice to prepare for a fight and instead they developed a weapon that would harmonize the species.
As a side note, it seemed that Avrana had struck up a friendship with Fabian, who had been the leader of the male spiders’ movement. Avrana didn’t like to be referred to as god, and Fabian treated her more like a peer.
I’m not sure what happened to Avrana Kern in the end, after humanity joined forces with the spiders. Maybe she’s still out their orbiting.
Holsten Mason
Mason was a classicist on the Gilgamesh. He was basically a linguist, and he knew the language of Imperial C, which was the language of the old Empire. When the Gilgamesh first made contact with Avrana Kern, the messages were in Imperial C and Mason had to translate them.
However, for much of the novel, Mason felt more like a simple point of view character. As a part of the core personnel that kept the ship running, he was involved in the politics at the beginning, being taken hostage as such. However, I felt that he had limited pull as his skills were mostly related to communicating with Kern and trying to read between the lines, but he had little knowledge in running the ship or running a civilization.
Later on, when Guyen became a cult leader, that was when I really felt like Mason was just a pov character who was telling us what was happening. I’ll be honest, I completely missed his romantic relationship with Lain until I found out they had a baby embryo together.
Mason’s skills became relevant towards the final battle when he was analyzing the spiders’ communications, finding that they were too complex to be simple commands and that they had to have been communicating with each other as humans do. However, it was already too late as the spiders were closing in, and he could only try to protect himself and Lain. That being said, they did not die as the spiders came in peace, and presumably it was him who accompanied Lain as she lay dying.
As a plot device, Mason was fine. As a character, I was very neutral about him.
Isa Lain
Lain was a member of the crew but honestly I didn’t remember her until she started launching her anti-Guyen mission. That was when she expressed that she considered Mason a friend and was going to save him. Mason expressed that Lain was a reluctant commander, and it showed. She got things done, but preferred not to be the one to have to have done it lol.
Lain was supposed to be a snarky woman, which was fine I guess. It wasn’t overdone. When Lain showed Mason their embryo, she expressed that it wasn’t a big deal, that they weren’t tragic lovers or anything. But I don’t think it meant that Lain had no feelings. It was just that she knew they had more important things to worry about for the time being.
In her old age, Lain had preferred not to be woken until the Gilgamesh had finally landed. However, as they were preparing to defend, she was called on as probably the most capable leader the Gilgamesh had known. Unfortunately the Gilgamesh were not successful in defending against the spiders, even if they weren’t actually killed. Lain died, but I think it was meant to be a good ending for her as she had finally arrived on the planet, and there would be hope for the new generation.
Vrie Guyen
Guyen was the authoritarian leader on the ship. Again, I didn’t really start recognizing him until he rose to cult leader status. I remember it being portrayed as him posing himself as god to the humans, and that after he went to sleep and awoke again, the humans would call him god, and the cycle would perpetuate to the point that he would believe it himself.
Guyen wanted to lead the Gilgamesh back to Kern’s world, and on the way, he decided he was going to upload his consciousness to the Gilgamesh’s software as a way of immortality. However, the operation was only partially successful as his voice was heard on the system, but he could only speak simply, expressing his deepest values (mostly egotistical).
Portia
Portia was one of the most important leaders of the spider civilization. She was one of the strongest and smartest. Towards the beginning, she was often negotiating with other clans. One of her first major feats was to steal a jewel from a colony of ants and I think that cemented her as a hero. As civilization developed, she became one of the strongest priestesses who communicated with the Messenger.
One of the first times we saw Portia falter was in her relationship with Fabian, her favourite male. Fabian wanted equal rights for his brothers and Portia thought he was asking for too much. He eventually escaped, and I believe he had his new clan attack Portia’s (though my memory is hazy on this).
I don’t think Portia’s status suffered too much from this though. Portia continued to be a strong leader among the spiders. She still had male concubines, though she had a favourite, also called Fabian (named after the Fabian). She also found herself leaning towards monogamy, only accepting courting from this Fabian.
Portia and the second Fabian were eventually the first two spiders to see Avrana in space. It was Portia who asked Avrana for guidance for their species. And it was Portia who eventually led the ambush on the humans.
At the end of the novel, Portia was travelling to space with the descendant of Lain and Mason. I wonder if this implies that Portia has had an incredibly long life, or if this was another descendent of Portia.
I thought Portia was a pretty interesting character. I thought the way that she showed her intelligence in negotiation and action was very interesting, and whenever she did falter or make mistakes, it did not detract from her strength and wits.
Bianca
Bianca was another strong female, though she was often second to Portia. They mostly had an amicable relationship in the beginning. They respected one another.
Their relationship changed when Bianca began to interpret the Messenger’s messages differently. Bianca was labelled something of a heretic. Bianca was locked up in jail. Due to her friendship with Portia, Portia had offered to release her if she denounced her views, but Bianca refused.
Eventually, Fabian came to see Bianca. They struck up a partnership and Fabian got them both out. Bianca and Fabian lived in their new society and Bianca remained high in social status. Like Portia, Bianca remained a leader in the spider community and spider operation to attack the humans.
Fabian
Fabian was originally one of Portia’s favourite males. He was very smart, and eventually he had come to develop a way to program ants to do their bidding. He told Portia that he would only pass on this knowledge to her if she granted equal rights to male spiders. Currently, female death was punishable by law, while male death was seen as normal (for this species of leaping spider, the females tended to eat the males after mating). Portia refused, and Fabian went to Bianca to escape together.
With his new clan, Fabian demanded equal rights, though realistically all he asked from the females was to let him do his thing. He programmed ants to attack his old clan and they succeeded with few casualties. Fabian was later known in history as the Great Liberator.
Later on, Fabian remained a leader, and he was also a friend to Avrana Kern.
Themes
Civilization
This book was focused on two civilization, the spiders and the humans. Humans were portrayed as hateful and destructive. The reason why all of humanity was on the Gilgamesh was because they had poisoned their home. That was why Avrana Kern looked down on humanity and wanted to start her own civilization that would not be so destructive. As we saw in this novel, the spiders were better than humanity in that they always sought to cooperate rather than to destroy. They were able to program the ants to do their bidding, and they later programmed the humans to see them as equal collaborators. I personally think it’s a bit idealistic. I think people are people everywhere, but I appreciate that spiders being more peaceful led to a more peaceful solution where both civilizations could live.
A lot of points Tchaikovsky made about civilization in Children of Time reminded me of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin. The prisoners’ dilemma was brought up several times in regards to whether humanity and the spiders would attack one another. And the conclusion was that it was safer for both parties to attack to protect themselves.
I forgot when this came up, but I believe it was during the spider story line. At one point, someone had mentioned that society is unnatural. After all, the natural state for the leaping spiders was for the females to eat the males after mating. For females to keep male favourites the way that Portia and her peers did was already natural. Portia might have thought that Fabian demanding equality for males was unnatural but Portia having favourites was already unnatural. We see this unnatural behaviour in humanity as well.
On the Gilgamesh, civilization was more dire and we saw people taking advantage of the situation, particularly Guyen. He presented himself as a leader, a god among men. For the humans that were awake, perhaps they truly believed it because that was all they knew. Perhaps they believed it because they felt that humanity had no other option but to follow the few options they had.
Gender
I felt that there was a big focus on gender with all of the female leaders in this novel. First we had Avrana Kern the mad scientist, then we had Portia the strongest leaping spider, and then we had Lain the reluctant commander. I thought it was interesting to have women as the leaders to show that women, like men, can have very different leadership styles. Who would have thought?
Fabian fighting for gender equality was definitely a big development in spider civilization. Perhaps it is “unnatural” as he said it, but to us as humans, we likely see gender equality as a sign of evolved civilization, where all members are valued. That being said, while female spiders became more powerful while using males, Fabian became more powerful while using ants. His big secret was being able to reprogram ants to do their bidding. I’m not saying that he’s wrong for demanding equality, but to humans this would look like slave labour whereas for the spiders they may just see it as cooperation.
Aging
It’s probably very disorienting to be waken and put back countless times. That certainly seems the case for Mason, especially towards the end when he hated being in the dark while constantly being awoken by people he didn’t know. He was technically the oldest person, having been born the earliest, but due to being put to sleep, Lain eventually became an older woman than him.
There was this discussion in the Dark Forest, the second book in the Remembrance of Earth’s past, where an older person never really lost their “older perspective,” on account of being born in a different time. I think a similar sentiment would have taken place on the Gilgamesh. Despite Lain and Mason having been lovers, Lain calls Mason an old man; I know it’s meant to be lighthearted, but I do think she still recognizes him as a person from an earlier time, more than she does a man that is physically younger than her.
Overall
An interesting book with some great ideas. However, I have to admit that the differences in pacing between the two story lines made it a bit gruelling to read at times. As such, I likely won’t be picking up the sequel any time soon.