Adrian Tchaikovsky: Children of Time (Children of Time #1)

 

An almost classic that I hadn’t read yet. Humans have spread to other planets. There is a terraforming project in the works; a group of scientists had planned to seed the planet with chimpanzees and then spread a virus that would uplift the apes but, unfortunately, a civil war starts when anti-science groups destroy the ship transporting the chimpanzees. Everything seems to fall apart everywhere, and human civilization apparently collapses. The leader of the terraforming and uplifting project is left on a spaceship orbiting the planet as an uploaded computer AI, which doesn’t always work perfectly.

As there are no chimpanzees on the planet (I wonder why the chimps were not directly infected with the virus?), the virus finds a new host – a species of spiders. Other lower life forms are also affected, but not as much. Only ants manage to threaten the spiders' rise to the dominant species on the planet, but the spiders manage to transform the ants into a multipurpose workforce and eventually biological computers.

At the same time, remnants of humanity are seeking a new home, as Earth has become inhabitable after a series of ecocatastrophes. They have been living on a generation ship for generations, carrying a cargo with thousands of people in bio-sleep chambers. After a foray into a terraforming effort fails, they return to the spider’s planet ready to take over it, as the survival of humanity is in question.

The book was pretty good, especially the spider parts. The human parts were very dull, much less interesting and human characters were more irritating than the spiders were. The evolution of spiders and their technology was fascinating, and the tech they created was interestingly different and more organic than human technology. The book had a real end but left a lot of room for continuing the story, and apparently, there are sequels. At some point, I will read them also.

Irritating small errors: In the future, space-faring humans have apparently reverted to analog signals, as their video and audio transmissions have static; digital transmissions should not contain it.

609 pp-