21st Century Literature discussion
4/22 Children of Time
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Children of Time - Discussion
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Nadine in California
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Apr 15, 2022 10:10AM
To get us started ....... who's out there? Only three of us voted in the poll, but perhaps more will join in. If not, I've been in some wonderful and spirited 3 person book discussions online! I am excited to read this book!
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I read this last year and enjoyed it very much! Really imaginative, and full of surprises, yet a consistent world. I'll follow the discussion.
I'm in! (Just finished it, actually. A magnetic reading experience.)
I am in! I finished the book last night and found it fascinating! Looking forward to the discussion!
Well, your moderator here hasn't even started it yet! I thought we were going to start around 4/15, and read it over the course of a month. Is there anyone else out there who hasn't started yet? If not, I am more than happy to power through it as fast as I can to catch up with you guys.Also, I'm a little confused about the timing.... the homepage says this discussion is 4/15-5/515, but the heading for the discussion folder says 4/22? If we start on 4/22, I should be close to finished. Or does 4/22 apply to something other than date?
Mod
The 4/22 means April, 2022. I was completely confused by this when I first joined the group as well.
The reason you may be a little confused by so many people having already finished is that discussions in this group are usually not "read along" types, but discussions of the entire book, or, in the case of longer books, entire sections at a time.
I read this book about 1 1/2 years ago and loved it. Looking forward to the discussion, but may just check in at the end.
Your addled moderator, here ;) I've changed the title of this thread from 'Planning' to 'Discussion'. (I tried to create a new topic thread for the discussion, but GR wouldn't let me!) I'll be reading up a storm and will finish at least the approximate first half (i.e. sections 1-3) within 4 days or so. But feel free to start without me! I'll be checking in on this thread (while attempting to avert my eyes from spoilers) a little bit until then, but my full-throated participation will start shortly. Thanks!
Mod
Nadine, Well, when I called it "magnetic," I meant that I, at times, literally couldn't put it down. I don't think you'll have much trouble finishing it! -- the author does a couple of clever things right off the bat that keep the story going. A large part of the story is about an alien species; however the "root" ancestor is OF Earth, so many of the problems of describing an alien are bypassed. Second, by using a standard set of personal names for the alien through amazing generations, there is a reader comfort of knowing that character, even if the actual individual involved is many generations removed. Third, the spans of time covered between beats of the plot are unimaginably long, facilitated by a few basically specified mcGuffins: the guiding virus on the green planet, and the sleep tech on the Gilgamesh.
Mark wrote: "Nadine, Well, when I called it "magnetic," I meant that I, at times, literally couldn't put it down. I don't think you'll have much trouble finishing it! -- the author does a couple of clever thing..."I'm about 75 pages in, and I'm seeing everything you're saying, Mark. The book IS magnetized ;) I'm glad I had the impulse to buy a copy - something I don't usually do. I'm loving it - I'm sitting on the edge of my chair on every page, yet it doesn't feel exhausting or overdone. I love the way "Portia" is not a single generation being, as you mentioned. I'm a little puzzled about what happened to Earth/Humanity between the time the Brin blew up and the Gilgamesh began it's journey (vaguely aware of an ice age and a toxic thawing) but I'll wait with my questions to see if further reading clarifies that.
Yes, the civilization of the Brin is tens of millennia removed from the Gilgamesh. That's a timespan that dramatically exceeds MY abilities to really visualize, certainly. It also points out the preternatural reliability of the tech that bridges between plot events. Even the time intervals in the later parts of the book are measured in multiple generations. Thinking of the changes in our civilization between, say, 1400 and today gives a little perspective on the scale of the plot.
Glad to hear other reader's observations on what interested them in the book. I liked Tchaikovsky's use of arachnids as a species for enhanced sociability. We usually think of spiders as creepy and much of that is due to their antisocial behavior combined with their predatory and often cannibalistic nature. Actually, some arachnids show examples of sociability as this article explains. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
Tchaikovsky really gets some distance out of using an unexpected but plausible creature for enhanced sociability plus gets an added perk to exploit gender reversal since most of us accept the concept of female dominant gender in arachnids and are familiar with stories where females kill an eat their mates. The whole sociability theme prompts a comparison of E.O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler's Pulitzer winning The Ants
I did not much enjoy the human component and kind of accepted it as a science fiction genre trope necessity for the fans, but it did not take away from my enjoyment.
Just cracked the 200 page mark (I swear to myself every day that I will read 100 pages in a day - I'm still determined....) and I was kinda hoping that the spiders/ants would be a brief moment in the evolution of the planet, but now I am completely on board with them. There is just enough of a human element to them to make their culture understandable to me, while still remaining near totally alien. I'm especially thinking of the way the spiders and ants (as of page 200) have built a sort of religious meaning around the Habitat's communication beams, which they sense through the crystal. This is making me think of a book I have on my Kindle but haven't read yet -Laline Pauli's The Bees. Anyone read it? Any similarities?I'm also impressed with the writing, which doesn't call attention to itself, but is much more than utilitarian. Here's an example I just read, when the shuttle lands on the green planet:
"When it strikes the ground, well within the ant colony's scouting range, it has lost a great deal of its speed, but the impact still resonates through their sensitive feet as though the whole world has just cried out some vast, secret word."
Hey everyone, just jumping in to say i'm about 2/3 through the book and looking forward to the discussion! I'll be back soon to catch up and dive in!
Yes, I like the language choices Tchaikovsky uses in his descriptive passages for our spider civilization. One I noticed was "arachnomorphic" conceptions of their world (sorry, no page reference). Later on, they invented TV, where the scan line is spiral (a web, get it?). I wonder whether our TV system (and books before that) was conditioned on our facility with left-right movement. TV might have been different if first invented in Japan or Iran.
I just read the description of the book and as I am just making it to a point in my life where I really feel like my reading choices are my own again (graduated college recently) I was quite excited by the description as it threw me back to a long lost love in such a topic as this book has…I am sad to see I missed the reverie and excitement while you all read it this month…I will have to add my thoughts when I finish as I am inclined to indulge anyway even though the proverbial ship has sailed…
DaCane, we just started the discussion! Please join in!Mark, you mention the aliens - are those the spiders? My impressions were the planet was terraformed to be an Earth-like planet pre-Brin and Gil, and was pre-populated with insects. And then the nanovirus that was intended for the monkeys ended up in the spiders. So I guess that still makes them aliens, but a little different since they were intentionally supposed to be human-like. Is that other people's take?
I'm loving the pace of the book even though it's long - I like the back and forth between the humans and the spiders. Can't wait for them to converge!
DaCane wrote: "I just read the description of the book and as I am just making it to a point in my life where I really feel like my reading choices are my own again (graduated college recently) I was quite excite..."Hi DaCane - the discussion is ongoing through May 15, and we've just barely got started! I'm only half way through, so you've got time to catch up.
I appreciate that no one has dropped any big spoilers - well, just one spoiler that I've seen in the discussion ;) I know this group usually reads the book before the discussion starts, but since there's at least 3 of us still reading, shall we hide any possible spoilers behind spoiler tags for another week or two? As an alternative, we can discuss just the first half of the book, but it would be hard for people who read it a while ago to remember what events and ideas came up in the first half, and which in the 2nd half.....
DaCane wrote: "I will have to add my thoughts when I finish as I am inclined to indulge anyway even though the proverbial ship has sailed."Sailing ship metaphors work well with this book, ha ha ;) Out of curiosity I checked the IMDB website and a sci fi project titled "Children of Time" is in development, but the free version won't let me see any more info.
That works for me Nadine! Do you remember roughly what's happened around halfway? I thought the literal barrel of monkeys at the beginning was hilarious and an interesting way to start the book, with the experiment going wrong right away. The first mention of the spiders was a weird shift and I wasn't sure what was going on, but so interesting.
Bretnie, yes, the "aliens" in this novel are actually (and distantly) Earth-based. This has some salutary effects on the story. We know a lot about Earth-based life, so there is a lot of factual fabric to fill out the story. --- Ooof, I didn't even register that there was a barrel of monkeys in the first chapter. It may be that very quiet humor that makes this book so easy to like.--- About spoilers: Sections 5, Schism, occurs a little after halfway through the book, so any mention I make of events after that will be under a spoiler cloud. (Note, the Goodreads Android app doesn't register or apply HTML tags, as opposed to the desktop website view.) --- Speaking of which, (view spoiler)
I loved the level of detail in the depiction/imagining of the "alien" species and the ways in which their different generations linked together. It also cured me of my arachnophobia. I always catch spiders and release them in the garden but used to freak out. I don't have that response anymore. So, I thought the novel did an excellent job of portraying difference and prejudice in relation to responses to the form the planet's inhabitants take, that actually had a direct impact on my attitudes/ability to empathise. I found the sections with the humans less engaging though, and I wasn't that keen on the author's writing style, the prose is quite clunky and doesn't flow that well, imo anyway.
Nadine, Well, I checked out Bees. I'm just a few pages in, but so far, Tchaikovsky does a better job of portraying a non-human character than Paull. So far, her characters are people in bee suits. Another portrayal of non-human worldview is White's Once and Future King. Art's view into the ant is largely parallel to Tchaikovsky's. --- oh yes, the HTML < spoiler> tag doesn't do anything in the Android app. Sigh.
Mark wrote: " (Note, the Goodreads Android app doesn't register or apply HTML tags, as opposed to the desktop website view.).."That is so frustrating. I can't imagine that Amazon will ever do anything about software frustrations in the Amazon backwater that is Goodreads.
I'm at 85% and hoping to finish in the next couple of days.You all mentioned how mind-bending it is to read about things happening over thousands of years and that's one of my main brain blocks reading this. Usually I let go of things being "realistic" in a book like this, but is Portia really supposed to be 1000-year old spider? And the Gilgamesh and all of its people survived this long? They talk about the ship starting to break, but how do they make it this long without any new resources?
I've been loving the book, though, so trying to not let logistics slow me down. :)
Bretnie wrote: "I'm at 85% and hoping to finish in the next couple of days.You all mentioned how mind-bending it is to read about things happening over thousands of years and that's one of my main brain blocks r..."
Finished yesterday! Five stars! Here's the answers to your brain blocks, as I understand them - if others have figured out different answers, please chime in! I've put spoiler tags around stuff that I think comes from the 2nd half of the book:
It is not literally the same Portia or Bianca or Fabian, etc. throughout the years. The Spiders can literally pass on their 'Understandings" and experiences to their eggs, and later (view spoiler), so a spider of a later generation can literally take over as a previous spider. Early in the novel the narrator says something like "let's call her Portia" to introduce a next generation 'Portia'. The names signify roles to me, rather than personalities. Portia = Warrior, Bianca = Scientist, Fabian = (view spoiler), etc. Or maybe like ur-Portias, etc. But the question that was never answered for me is what is the lifespan of an individual spider? How long is a generation in spider civilization?
The people on the Gilgamesh survived because they each individually spent thousands of years in suspended animation. There are hundreds of thousands of humans who will never leave suspended animation, (i.e. "the cargo") until they find a habitable planet. The Key Crew (I'm guessing as few as 25 people) go in and out of suspended animation as their skills are required, so they only age when they are out, which means they can "live" for thousands of years. Although they do age, some quite a lot.
The Gilgamesh itself survives because (view spoiler)
Bernie, on the human side Tchaikovsky posits nearly god-level tech. It is almost ludicrous how casually the crew deals with the suspension chambers, treating. their use as casually as looking for fresh sheets on a bed. On the other hand, he lays out the rationale for the changes on Kern's world pretty carefully. Karen's virus establishes a bias toward intelligence in all species. The original Portia is described in chapter 1.2, "Brave Little Huntress". Her distant offspring is described in chapter 2.2, "Earth's Other Children." Since many of he species' qualities play into the qualities needed for advancement, her culture is reminiscent of stone age humans. Keeping the same name for the "breakthrough" individual is clever, as though naming the hominid that discovered fire "Edison."
Thank you Nadine and Mark! I had an inkling that the spiders (Fabian for sure) weren't literally the same throughout the generations, but it hadn't sunk in that that was true for all of them. That makes sense!I got how the humans survived through hibernation, but not the Gilgamesh itself, so I'll look forward to reading your spoiler once I finish (or finding the answer myself!).
Mark wrote: "Bernie, on the human side Tchaikovsky posits nearly god-level tech. It is almost ludicrous how casually the crew deals with the suspension chambers, treating. their use as casually as looking for fresh sheets on a bed...."You've got a point there, Mark - I forgave the casualness about the, as you say, almost ludicrously advanced human tech by thinking that they are so far in our future that maybe their tech is really that advanced. So along those lines, now I have to admit that the ability of the crew of the Gilgamesh (and an absurdly small number of crewmembers, at that) to easily work with the super-advanced tech of the Old Empire that should be beyond their understanding, is a stretch too. At least we can be thankful that they didn't still have the option to order parts from Amazon!!
Mark wrote: "Keeping the same name for the "breakthrough" individual is clever, as though naming the hominid that discovered fire "Edison."Ha! Good one! And the hominid that invented the wheel could be "Ford"?
Finished last night, whew what an ending! Am I the last to finish besides maybe DaCane? Are we good to discuss the book as a whole?
Bretnie wrote: "Finished last night, whew what an ending! Am I the last to finish besides maybe DaCane? Are we good to discuss the book as a whole?"I also loved the ending! I see that there is a published sequel, and one in the works. I'm almost afraid to try a sequel, although the GR stars ratings are high.
I know, sequels tend to let me down! But I'm definitely interested in reading more of his work.If we want to keep the ending spoiler free for a bit longer, I'd love to talk a little about Fabian's (view spoiler)
Bretnie, Tchaikovsky points out that several Earth species were able to take advantage of the virus' pressure, both on land and sea. The ants couldn't change their basic hive mind and chemical communication nature though. The lower gravity and higher O2 levels helped facilitate the gigantism of both spiders and ants.
Mark wrote: "The ants couldn't change their basic hive mind and chemical communication nature though.."Maybe this will be revisited in sequels - how would self-awareness and recognition of the self in others work in a 'hive mind' species? Is this kind of thinking possible only for individualistic species? Maybe a new sense of communalism would evolve to be a combo of both?
It was uncomfortable to think of the ants as basically AI or computers for the spiders. The spiders didn't see them as sentient, but they also doubted that the captured human was sentient. Although to be 'fair', the human was captured by a fairly early generation of spiders - maybe the later generations would have understood her better.
I think I will actually I am a pretty quick reader and working through a few books right now with the Island of the Sea women being one of them…and I keep thinking of this book so I will join in thanks for you guys coming in and commenting as I kept seeing it as an active discussion so I was like I might as well because I can read it before the well dries up (lol another proverbial expression for you) ;)
Yes please join DaCane!Thanks Mark and Nadine for weighing in on the ants. I was finding all the attention on the male spiders ironic while they controlled these other beings to do their will and literally die for the spiders.
I see it a little like being meat-eating humans. We justify eating animals in different ways, and you can make strong cases for some things being "available" for us, or the opposite case that all animals deserve to live.
aand... that's one place the sequel goes, according to Goodreads. And there's another unitary identity floating around: Dr. Kern.
Ah interesting Mark!So, wanna talk about that ending? Did you see that coming at all? I thought the spiders' solution was super interesting!
Hee hee, yes, the ending was startling, with a one, two, three punch. First, the Portiids casually overwhelmed the human defenses; not too surprising, considering their practice in dealing with competing separate species. Then, the venom they injected turns out to be beneficent rather than annihilating. Again, the background for a positive chemical attack was well prepared in showing the chemical "interventions" the Portiids used to align the ants to their needs.
... and then the planet (Kern?) comes into view... surrounded by a web with space elevator filaments connecting it to the ground!The jump in tech is unbelievable at first glance. On further reading however, it parallels the technical explosion we've seen since 1950. I can remember wondering in the late 50's if we could ever walk on the moon. Today, it is casually accepted that pairs of rocket boosters can land ~in formation~ after boosting cargoes to orbit. The parallel between a spider's thread and the needs of a space elevator is clever, much like the orb-like conceptual design of their television rather than a human left-right organization. Wikipedia mentions a discussion of the concept in Science titled "Ariadne."
Mark, thanks for the picture. :) I loved that the spiders' solution was empathy + make them useful! So much of the book felt like the spiders learning the history of humanity the hard way by going through the same war & revolution cycles, so I was pleased to see the spiders diverge from that path.
I loved the idea that Kern accidentally gave the spiders the nanovirus to fast track evolution on another planet, and that it took some expected courses, but definitely some innovative ones.
The ending made me so happy - to think of a benevolent chemical attack! Assuming of course it wasn't the first step in an attempt to turn humans into another version of the ants. It seems like trait of self-awareness in humans would make that impossible, but we don't know what technological shenanigans the spiders have been up to, along with those web elevators.So how can we slip Putin a loving kindness venom? Maybe in the scratch-and-sniff perfume advertisement in his next issue of Vogue?
Mark - I completely missed that the orbs were a television - that they had a visual element. I pictured them as a 2-way radio. I hope the second book in the series goes into more detail on spider technology than this one did. I am definitely buying it!Although, come to think of it, the spiders didn't have sound-speech, so I wonder how a 2 way radio would work using just vibration? Or a TV for that matter?
I have recently begun to read this. I am enjoying it. I did read a little in the thread, I thought is was easy to understand that Portia, was not the same, but her offspring over time. Portia has (view spoiler)
I like the idea if other species becoming more sentient. I think the author has done a great job so far.
I found Kearn (view spoiler)
I thought the barrel full of monkeys to be a nudge nudge wink wink kinda moment.
I mentioned earlier that I sailed right past the "barrel of monkeys" in the blooming, buzzing confusion of the beginning setup. In retrospect, it emphasizes Kern's humanity (and humor) at the beginning.
Jennifer wrote: "I have recently begun to read this. I am enjoying it. I did read a little in the thread, I thought is was easy to understand that Portia, was not the same, but her offspring over time. Portia has..."
I finished this book a few months ago and Jennifer, your comments remind me of how much I enjoyed the experience of reading it, watching the story unfold and not knowing where it would go. I'll only say that my experience of reading it was great from the beginning and got even better as it went along :)
I finished reading this book a few weeks ago. I really enjoyed it as well. I found the concept of a God to be fascinating. The treatment of this subject, although through a sci-go lens, touched upon many human sociological and psychological constructs. I also missed the “barrel of monkeys” and am so glad it was brought up here. How fun!
Glad people are weighing in! I just put the second book on hold at the library - good reminder to read the next one while the first is still somewhat in my brain!
21st Century Literature
Books mentioned in this topic
An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (other topics)The Bees (other topics)
The Ants (other topics)
