Children of Time

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · 2015

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel is an epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet. The last remnants of the human race flee a dying Earth, seeking a new home among the stars. They discover a world terraformed and prepared for them—but it is already inhabited by a civilization of genetically modified jumping spiders, whose evolution has been accelerated by a nanovirus. Spanning thousands of years, the novel interweaves the rise of a spider society with the desperate journey of the human ark ship, exploring themes of intelligence, alienness, and what it truly means to be human. A masterful rethinking of the first-contact story, it is both a thrilling space opera and a profound meditation on evolution and consciousness.