In this sequel, we jump back and forth across time and watch the beginnings of new sentience both planned and unplanned by humans and its inevitable fallout discovered aeons later by the first book’s descendents. And true to how things always go awry, nothing is ever what humans (or any sentient species) plan to begin with and that’s what saves us in the end. Tchaikovsky will ultimately assure us this inability to be totally in charge of our destiny is a good thing, though no […]

I was raised on the optimistic technology sci fi of Arthur C. Clarke who believed our future was in the stars and that technology was our only way there. But he often threaded his optimism with warning of our hubris and innate inability to understand a mind truly alien to ours. I’ve waited to read a successor that expanded on these twin stars of hope and wariness. Children of Time succeeds and then carries it into realms I couldn’t conceive, ones I can’t even fully understand […]