Children of Time by Adrian TchaikovskyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Once in a decade or so a book comes along that grabs me by the cojones, gets my rapt attention and fills me with awe. I have woken with night sweats thinking about giant spiders that have the UNDERSTANDING. And all because Adrian Tchaikovsky has an imagination that is boundless, who tells a story that spans millennia, a story that makes you believe it is…. feasible. How can we predict where the human race will be in 2,000 years time…..?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home. Following their ancestors’ star maps they discovered the greatest treasure of a past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life. But, oh dear. Something has gone terrifyingly wrong. The terraforming project included the seeding of life on this new Eden with a nanovirus, designed to accelerate the evolutionary process. But it picked on the wrong species as our travellers were to find out, humans who had travelled for centuries in suspension chambers and awoken at strategic times. The ‘Gilgamesh’ space cargo-ship (the cargo being the last remnants of the human race) has been travelling for 2,000+ years at just below the speed of light (nice touch - avoids the argument about travelling at warp factors!) when this new Eden approaches….
Children of Time is 600 pages of extraordinary science fiction with believable characters and some surprisingly likeable aliens. Give them names like Portia and Fabian and you cannot help but develop a certain empathy with them…
Not at all surprising then that Adrian Tchaikovsky has been awarded the 30th Arthur C Clarke Award for best SF. Highly recommended.
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