Give it a Read
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Time is a charismatic investigation of the far, far future.
The book is (a)symmetrical and multi-dimensional, reflected, rotated, and transformed across time and space and mind. There are two main mirror-myths playing against and across each other over millennia of history. One myth is about the millenia-long uplift of a terrestrial spider species seeded on a distant-from-Earth planet by humans at the end of human civilization, guarded by an all-too-human computer system. The other is about the millennia-long voyage of the last dregs of humanity, fleeing a poisoned and dying earth aboard a massive, magnificent, miraculous ark ship Gilgamesh destined for the Planet of the Spiders Kern’s World.
Tchaikovsky masterfully tells the history of the spider people in their own metaphors, so carefully considered that I fear Tchaikovsky is himself part spider. He employs rhetorical and narrative techniques with genius—placing humans into centuries-long suspension so they can return for the developments in centuries-later meat-space; naming individual spider characters after one of a small number of Main Character spider subspecies: Portia, Fabian, Bianca.
“The way he handles tragedy…” exhales recommender of this book Kendall Hardy.
The dance between AI, sentient spiders, thinking ant colonies, human remnants, and time itself is a delightful one, “tapped out” by Adrian, just as the spiders do. The symmetrical asymmetry of the conflicts and interactions (power reflected by powerlessness, knowledge reflected by ignorance, god reflected by mortal, time reflected by time) are spun just so into a “web” of magnificent elegance.
If you pick this one up, you’ll have a hard time putting it down. Like time, it just pulls you along for the ride. Give Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsy a read.