Adrian Tchaikovsky's New Sci-Fi

The upcoming fourth installment in Adrian Tchaikovsky's *Children of Time* series is titled *Children of Strife*. The new story follows a motley crew of humans, intelligent spiders, and a mantis shrimp captain who stumble upon a lost terraformed world and a forgotten ark ship. The plot kicks off when a human crewmember, Alis, awakens to find most of her shipmates have vanished after venturing to the planet and the mysterious ark. The *Children of Time* series has garnered significant critical acclaim, with the first book winning the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016. Tchaikovsky's series is known for its grand scale and exploration of themes like artificial intelligence, evolution, and first contact. The space-faring take on *Moby-Dick* is titled *Hell's Heart* and is penned by Alexis Hall. This speculative retelling is set in a future where Earth is uninhabitable, and humanity survives by harvesting a psychoactive fluid from the brains of giant, Leviathan-like creatures in Jupiter's atmosphere. The narrative follows a protagonist who joins the crew of a hunter-ship, the Pequod, and falls under the sway of its obsessive Captain A. *Hell's Heart* reimagines the classic tale with a queer perspective, exploring themes of obsession and survival in a high-stakes, deep-space setting. The novel has been described as a dazzling and ambitious pivot for Hall, known for his work in other genres.