Adrian Tchaikovsky's New Children of Time
Adrian Tchaikovsky's latest addition to the *Children of Time* series launched this March and is recognized as one of the best new science fiction releases. It appears alongside a speculative *Moby-Dick* retelling and a revived out-of-print classic.
The new book is titled *Children of Strife* and is the fourth installment in the award-winning *Children of Time* series. The series as a whole received the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Series in 2023. The original 2015 novel, *Children of Time*, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2016. That story chronicled the rise of a civilization of intelligent spiders on a terraformed planet, the result of a nanovirus experiment gone differently than planned. Subsequent books, *Children of Ruin* (2019) and *Children of Memory* (2022), expanded the universe, exploring themes of artificial intelligence, alien consciousness, and inter-species communication. The series is known for its detailed world-building and exploration of non-human perspectives. *Children of Strife* follows a mixed crew of humans, spiders, and a mantis shrimp captain who rediscover a lost, terraformed world. The plot involves a mystery where most of the crew disappears after beginning to explore the planet, leaving a scientist named Alis, the captain, and the ship's AI to investigate. Author Adrian Tchaikovsky is a British author with a background in zoology and psychology, which influences his writing. He is known for his prolific output and for exploring complex themes of empathy, tyranny, and the nature of intelligence in his work.
