Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The whole point of civilization is that we exceed the limits of nature, you tedious little primitives.

even the die-hard religious—who looked at progress and said that enough was enough.

A new category appears that expands her options a hundredfold: ally.

Beyond Earth, mankind was terribly, terribly reliant on its technology, on its computers.

“Even if there’s no one—and almost certainly there’s no one—there will be tech, functioning tech. Something waiting there for us for thousands of years. Just for us.”

False confidence?

honeydew is subsistence stuff, nourishing without the satisfaction of taking real prey.

Manna!

For this reason, they have a culture that shies away from actual violence because of the risks inherent in any clash. The danger they pose to one another has been a great civilizing influence,

the reassurance that there is a logic to the world, extending beyond the mere chaos of the physical.

After all, using the same orifice for eating and communication was manifestly too inefficient.

It was inevitable that the hothouse flower of heresy would end up nurtured by those very guardians of the orthodox.

They had mostly stayed behind, holding to their corroding faith that some great power would weigh in on their behalf if only things became so very bad. Perhaps it had:

unless it was that he had long made a profession out of disagreeing with just about every proposition put in front of him.

Mankind brooks no competitors, She has explained to them—not even its own reflection.