Science Fiction: Children Of Time By Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

 (Drivebycuriosity) - I love science fiction and I have been reading the genre for decades. But I get often disappointed. Most of the so-called scifi books and movies tell just fantasy stories. It became increasingly challenging to find science fiction that deals with science and not just with dragons and princesses. But I just finished reading a novel which comes up to the classical masterpieces by Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark: "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky, which won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2016 (amazon).  The book is real (hard) science fiction. Like the classic masters of scifi the author used science as a basis and shapes it into a fascinating tale.

"Children" has 2 parallel running plots told in alternating chapters. Human scientists have terraformed a planet far away. They inserted a virus which fosters the growth of intelligence and supports positive social behavior in order to speed up the evolution of monkeys and other mammals. As often, the law of unintended consequences happened, instead of mammals a rather surprising species benefits most from the virus and - over many generations  - develops into highly intelligent & sophisticated beings.

During this time human civilization had broke down and the survivors travel in a huge space ship - a kind of Noah's Ark - to find a habitable planet. It turns out that only the terraformed planet is suitable which causes a conflict.

The plot is based on logic and on biology, evolution, economics & other sciences but also very entertaining. It is fascinating how sociology, psychology & technology on the terraformed planet develop. Tchaikovsky describes over more than 600 pages the steep rise of a species who´s society is getting more & more advanced plausible and with humor, a fascinating mix of real zoological facts with elaborated and sometimes funny ideas. The book reminds me somewhat of Hal Clement`s "Mission of Gravity" by convincing descriptions of a bizarre alien setting. The elaborate strategies & perfectly administrated military actions remind me also of the novel "Shogun", even though the plot is very different. And I cared about the characters in the novel, human & not-human.

Highly recommended!