From the Bookshelf: Children of Time
Apr. 24th, 2026 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerNot that long ago I was in the bookstore in my city’s big mall, passing by a table with “fantasy and science fiction” books laid out on it. From a glance I was conscious there were more obvious “fantasy” novels than “science fiction” there, only somewhat of a newer twist on that constant nagging thought that I don’t have as much of a connection to “new SF in print” as I once did.
One cover, though, did manage to catch my attention. I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, turned it over to read the blurb on the back, and carried it with me to the checkout. While a note on the cover about it being a “10th Anniversary Edition” was somehow a bit of a reproach, I wound up doing more than buying it in beginning to read it not that long after the purchase.
While the back-cover blurb had nudged me to buy the book I did become aware it didn’t reveal every detail. Before “the last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth” the book had set up how the extrasolar world they were heading for had been terraformed. Conscious as I am of all the warnings of the unlikely dubiousness of “going somewhere else after messing things up here,” it still got my attention that the escape attempt followed an apocalyptic war over whether or not to allow interstellar “transhumanism” and other efforts at “enlightened evolution,” the collapse of civilization, a new ice age, efforts at rebuilding, and a thaw that only made the environment more toxic. That seemed at least a bit of a change from certain gloomy assumptions of what science fiction was stuck dwelling on. It also helped establish a viewpoint character identified as a “classicist,” who attempts to sort out connections to the vanished utopian past.
As for the world the humans are heading for, after the effort to seed a new form of intelligent life on it went awry as the war broke out enhanced evolution still managed to take effect on unlikely material, and things got a good deal stranger on the surface than I’d quite imagined at first even if the story of civilization might feel a bit more familiar on an intellectual level. There’s a certain amount of “(bio)technological breakthroughs at the last moment,” and the two parts of the novel don’t meet to any extent quite as soon as I’d imagined partway through. This leads to things going further awry for the humans on their protracted voyage, and I did get to thinking I was being invited to imagine “who should really go on from here” from a necessarily broader perspective. In the end, though, there’s a sort of gift offered; I have to admit to trying to winkle out even a fragment of suggestion the merely human might be capable of enlightened understanding themselves.
This was just one science fiction novel, but it seemed quite satisfying, nourishing a part of my imagination I suppose I’ve had to supply with thin substitutes and desiccated leftovers for some time. The “tenth anniversary material” suggested the universe set up in the novel offers further stories, and indeed follow-up volumes were advertised in its last pages.
One cover, though, did manage to catch my attention. I picked up Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time, turned it over to read the blurb on the back, and carried it with me to the checkout. While a note on the cover about it being a “10th Anniversary Edition” was somehow a bit of a reproach, I wound up doing more than buying it in beginning to read it not that long after the purchase.
While the back-cover blurb had nudged me to buy the book I did become aware it didn’t reveal every detail. Before “the last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth” the book had set up how the extrasolar world they were heading for had been terraformed. Conscious as I am of all the warnings of the unlikely dubiousness of “going somewhere else after messing things up here,” it still got my attention that the escape attempt followed an apocalyptic war over whether or not to allow interstellar “transhumanism” and other efforts at “enlightened evolution,” the collapse of civilization, a new ice age, efforts at rebuilding, and a thaw that only made the environment more toxic. That seemed at least a bit of a change from certain gloomy assumptions of what science fiction was stuck dwelling on. It also helped establish a viewpoint character identified as a “classicist,” who attempts to sort out connections to the vanished utopian past.
As for the world the humans are heading for, after the effort to seed a new form of intelligent life on it went awry as the war broke out enhanced evolution still managed to take effect on unlikely material, and things got a good deal stranger on the surface than I’d quite imagined at first even if the story of civilization might feel a bit more familiar on an intellectual level. There’s a certain amount of “(bio)technological breakthroughs at the last moment,” and the two parts of the novel don’t meet to any extent quite as soon as I’d imagined partway through. This leads to things going further awry for the humans on their protracted voyage, and I did get to thinking I was being invited to imagine “who should really go on from here” from a necessarily broader perspective. In the end, though, there’s a sort of gift offered; I have to admit to trying to winkle out even a fragment of suggestion the merely human might be capable of enlightened understanding themselves.
This was just one science fiction novel, but it seemed quite satisfying, nourishing a part of my imagination I suppose I’ve had to supply with thin substitutes and desiccated leftovers for some time. The “tenth anniversary material” suggested the universe set up in the novel offers further stories, and indeed follow-up volumes were advertised in its last pages.