11 ms·

The Children of (insert adjective) series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is really, really good, especially the second in the series. Good science fiction where the alie

by iroddis 8mo ago

The Children of (insert adjective) series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is really, really good, especially the second in the series. Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by.

idopmstuff 8mo ago
It'd be (insert noun) and the first one is far and away the best but on the big picture you are absolutely correct that it is fantastic. Children of Time (first one) is maybe my favorite book ever.
- cududa 8mo ago
  I just get all excited whenever anyone brings these books up, remembering the first time I read them.
- danielbln 8mo ago
  Children of Time so very good, it is in the top 5 of my favorite books of all time. I enjoyed the second one as well, and found the third one to be a bit inconsequential and I didn't re-read it when I re-read part 1 and 2.
  - aduwah 8mo ago
    If you've enjoyed these, give a go for Dogs of War too.
- james-bcn 8mo ago
  Yes Children of Time is very good. Tchaikovsky is excellent at portraying alien/non-human minds. You can tell he studied zoology and psychology at university.
roughly 8mo ago
Alien Clay is also fantastic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it gives the best intuition I’ve seen for a scientific concept that can be difficult to really grok otherwise.
- nozzlegear 8mo ago
  The elephant's dad was such a fascinating creature, and the way he described it keening in the distance at night reminded me of the amalgamation creatures from Annihilation. I loved Alien Clay – I hope we get a sequel because the world was so interesting.
- kmarc 8mo ago
  Just finished it, and while I loved the whole plot, the adventurous expeditions away from the base, somehow this one with the waaay too long paragraphs seemed... Unnecessarily boring? My first Tchaikovsky was children of time and TBH none of the sequels nor his other space operas were as captivating as that one for me. Yet, I will read this one too. I believe that his ideas and stories are great in books and would never be able to make them into movies. So unique.
lelandfe 8mo ago
Children of Time sparked more comments from strangers in NYC than anything else I’ve read. I came almost to expect them when reading it.
nosianu 8mo ago
> Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by. Apart from "Solaris", which many probably know because there's been a reasonably well-known movie, I recommend "Fiasco" by the same author, Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by Stanisław Lem. Spoiler: It does not end well. The aliens are too alien, and the humans do what humans often do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel)
- thom 8mo ago
  Wang’s Carpets usually comes up alongside Solaris as another example of deliberately alien aliens.
- bear8642 8mo ago
  > Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by I feel this is one of the reasons I liked Fire upon the Deep with the group mind based Tines
- nemosaltat 8mo ago
  In Shroud, Tchaikovsky does very alien (“real” aliens, not “uplifts”) very well. Anthropocentrically, it does not “end well.” Literarily, it vies for my favorite SciFi read of ‘25. Technically, I read “There Is No Antimemetics Division” last year, but I’d already kind of read it... or at least I think I thought I had. uh uh, uh
- SuzukiBrian 8mo ago
  Roadside Picnic I believe would also fall into this category. Though the aliens are just theoretical in the book and the characters deal with what is speculated to be the aftermath of an alien visit.
  - JadeNB 8mo ago
    > Roadside Picnic I believe would also fall into this category. Though the aliens are just theoretical in the book and the characters deal with what is speculated to be the aftermath of an alien visit. Another sci-fi classic sorta made into a movie (Stalker).
GordonS 8mo ago
I have a spider phobia, and struggled not to put the book down at first! But the concepts and writing are excellent... really engaging stuff. And by the end of the book I'd learned so much about spiders that I honestly felt less scared of them! Definitely not cured by any means, but a year on and I still fear them less than I used to.
- Angostura 8mo ago
  I’ve only read the first one. My main thought was ‘I wish he could write people as well as he could write spiders’ :)
  - oaiey 8mo ago
    I think humans and spiders and octopus and viruses are for him just a background for the object he wants to narrate. In difference to many other fiction where the persons are the objects. I also missed a human part of it.
- sph 8mo ago
  If you want more spiders from him (actually, a spider-man), in a fantasy setting, I recommend Spiderlight. Just a fun novella that feels like a D&D campaign, works great as a palate cleanser. I find his writing style really enjoyable, to the point that I really need to dive into his entire repertoire now.
  - BryantD 8mo ago
    Unsurprisingly, Tchaikovsky is a tabletop gamer and his first series, Shadows of the Apt, was derived from a game he GMed in college. And I agree, everything hes written has been worth reading.
- Xiol 8mo ago
  I had much the same experience, coming out of it with much less fear about jumping spiders in particular. Now they don't really bother me. Didn't really do much for all the other species though!
bostik 8mo ago
I concur on "really good" but have to disagree on the "series" part. Children of Time is a remarkable book, one of the best science fiction stories in a very long time. Children of Ruin is ... okay. Children of Memory is not a good book, IMO. Both of these suffer from the same mysticism-used-to-spin-up-a-red-reset-button plot device plague that fundamentally guts Xenocide. Nowhere as bad as that, of course, but the unpleasant echoes are there. As it happens I'm in the middle of the Architects series and while it has its distant whiff of Stainless Steel Rat[ß], on the whole the series and its universe have so far remained consistent. ß: Stainless Steel Rat was notorious for repeatedly putting the protagonist into impossible situations and then whipping up near-magical pieces of technomancy that just happened to solve the problem of the moment.
- jives 8mo ago
  I loved Children of Ruin, but Children of Memory did nothing for me.
- overfeed 8mo ago
  > Stainless Steel Rat[ß] I read this as Stainless Steel Rat[ss], and was befuddled until I read the end of your comment.
- slfnflctd 8mo ago
  For me, Children of Ruin had more of a horror focus to it and left me with much more icky feelings than the brilliant positivity I felt at the end of the first book. It was still well done, though. I agree that Children of Memory is not very good, mostly because it repeats itself so much. That could've been handled differently while still advancing the plot. I LOVE the overall concept, and the author's skills describing Gothi and Gethli's unique kind of intelligence was great, so I was okay with it overall... but too much of it was just a slog. First book is by far the best in my opinion as well.
- t-3 8mo ago
  I always took the Deus Ex Machina in Harrison's books to be just more of the satire. He never really takes his settings or characters lightly, but the presentation is almost always aimed at comedic effect.
kybernetikos 8mo ago
I was not particularly a fan of them - the plot seemed to find overly easy solutions to all the actual messiness that comes when dealing with others very unlike yourself, which given the rest of the stories, feels like it undercuts the entire point of them. The Tchaikovsky novella I really like is Elder Race. Technology-as-magic is done in so many places (Ventus is another favourite), and I usually enjoy it, but I felt that in Elder Race it was pulled off in an unusually elegant way.
alecco 8mo ago
The "aliens" are just spiders. With a lot of magical thinking. It's more like fantasy than science fiction. And character development is terrible. Only one or two are interesting and they get killed too early. I can take SciFi that's at least either good story or good science. To this day I don't know why people recommend this author so much, even more than Watt's Rifters trilogy or Firefall. He is a "legal executive" who dropped out of zoology/biology. Explanations are just "nanovirus!" or "bioengineering!" and left at that. Spoiler: the spiders make a space elevator and an asteroid catcher out of spiderweb; really. Stuff like this doesn't pass the suspension of disbelief for me. Reading it was quite annoying. Feel free to downvote me, but if you do, I ask you the minor kindness to refute my points. Edit: also "nanovirus!", what? All viruses are nano. And this virus being so complex it can't be too short, either.
throw0101d 8mo ago
> Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Series ?
- loeg 8mo ago
  I'm not sure it meets the criteria of "good."

by iroddis 8mo ago

The Children of (insert adjective) series by Adrian Tchaikovsky is really, really good, especially the second in the series. Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by.

idopmstuff 8mo ago

It'd be (insert noun) and the first one is far and away the best but on the big picture you are absolutely correct that it is fantastic. Children of Time (first one) is maybe my favorite book ever.

cududa 8mo ago
I just get all excited whenever anyone brings these books up, remembering the first time I read them.
danielbln 8mo ago
Children of Time so very good, it is in the top 5 of my favorite books of all time. I enjoyed the second one as well, and found the third one to be a bit inconsequential and I didn't re-read it when I re-read part 1 and 2.
- aduwah 8mo ago
  If you've enjoyed these, give a go for Dogs of War too.
james-bcn 8mo ago
Yes Children of Time is very good. Tchaikovsky is excellent at portraying alien/non-human minds. You can tell he studied zoology and psychology at university.

roughly 8mo ago

Alien Clay is also fantastic. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think it gives the best intuition I’ve seen for a scientific concept that can be difficult to really grok otherwise.

nozzlegear 8mo ago
The elephant's dad was such a fascinating creature, and the way he described it keening in the distance at night reminded me of the amalgamation creatures from Annihilation. I loved Alien Clay – I hope we get a sequel because the world was so interesting.
kmarc 8mo ago
Just finished it, and while I loved the whole plot, the adventurous expeditions away from the base, somehow this one with the waaay too long paragraphs seemed... Unnecessarily boring? My first Tchaikovsky was children of time and TBH none of the sequels nor his other space operas were as captivating as that one for me. Yet, I will read this one too. I believe that his ideas and stories are great in books and would never be able to make them into movies. So unique.

lelandfe 8mo ago

Children of Time sparked more comments from strangers in NYC than anything else I’ve read. I came almost to expect them when reading it.

nosianu 8mo ago

> Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by. Apart from "Solaris", which many probably know because there's been a reasonably well-known movie, I recommend "Fiasco" by the same author, Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by Stanisław Lem. Spoiler: It does not end well. The aliens are too alien, and the humans do what humans often do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiasco_(novel)

thom 8mo ago
Wang’s Carpets usually comes up alongside Solaris as another example of deliberately alien aliens.
bear8642 8mo ago
> Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by I feel this is one of the reasons I liked Fire upon the Deep with the group mind based Tines
nemosaltat 8mo ago
In Shroud, Tchaikovsky does very alien (“real” aliens, not “uplifts”) very well. Anthropocentrically, it does not “end well.” Literarily, it vies for my favorite SciFi read of ‘25. Technically, I read “There Is No Antimemetics Division” last year, but I’d already kind of read it... or at least I think I thought I had. uh uh, uh
SuzukiBrian 8mo ago
Roadside Picnic I believe would also fall into this category. Though the aliens are just theoretical in the book and the characters deal with what is speculated to be the aftermath of an alien visit.
- JadeNB 8mo ago
  > Roadside Picnic I believe would also fall into this category. Though the aliens are just theoretical in the book and the characters deal with what is speculated to be the aftermath of an alien visit. Another sci-fi classic sorta made into a movie (Stalker).

GordonS 8mo ago

I have a spider phobia, and struggled not to put the book down at first! But the concepts and writing are excellent... really engaging stuff. And by the end of the book I'd learned so much about spiders that I honestly felt less scared of them! Definitely not cured by any means, but a year on and I still fear them less than I used to.

Angostura 8mo ago
I’ve only read the first one. My main thought was ‘I wish he could write people as well as he could write spiders’ :)
- oaiey 8mo ago
  I think humans and spiders and octopus and viruses are for him just a background for the object he wants to narrate. In difference to many other fiction where the persons are the objects. I also missed a human part of it.
sph 8mo ago
If you want more spiders from him (actually, a spider-man), in a fantasy setting, I recommend Spiderlight. Just a fun novella that feels like a D&D campaign, works great as a palate cleanser. I find his writing style really enjoyable, to the point that I really need to dive into his entire repertoire now.
- BryantD 8mo ago
  Unsurprisingly, Tchaikovsky is a tabletop gamer and his first series, Shadows of the Apt, was derived from a game he GMed in college. And I agree, everything hes written has been worth reading.
Xiol 8mo ago
I had much the same experience, coming out of it with much less fear about jumping spiders in particular. Now they don't really bother me. Didn't really do much for all the other species though!

bostik 8mo ago

I concur on "really good" but have to disagree on the "series" part. Children of Time is a remarkable book, one of the best science fiction stories in a very long time. Children of Ruin is ... okay. Children of Memory is not a good book, IMO. Both of these suffer from the same mysticism-used-to-spin-up-a-red-reset-button plot device plague that fundamentally guts Xenocide. Nowhere as bad as that, of course, but the unpleasant echoes are there. As it happens I'm in the middle of the Architects series and while it has its distant whiff of Stainless Steel Rat[ß], on the whole the series and its universe have so far remained consistent. ß: Stainless Steel Rat was notorious for repeatedly putting the protagonist into impossible situations and then whipping up near-magical pieces of technomancy that just happened to solve the problem of the moment.

jives 8mo ago
I loved Children of Ruin, but Children of Memory did nothing for me.
overfeed 8mo ago
> Stainless Steel Rat[ß] I read this as Stainless Steel Rat[ss], and was befuddled until I read the end of your comment.
slfnflctd 8mo ago
For me, Children of Ruin had more of a horror focus to it and left me with much more icky feelings than the brilliant positivity I felt at the end of the first book. It was still well done, though. I agree that Children of Memory is not very good, mostly because it repeats itself so much. That could've been handled differently while still advancing the plot. I LOVE the overall concept, and the author's skills describing Gothi and Gethli's unique kind of intelligence was great, so I was okay with it overall... but too much of it was just a slog. First book is by far the best in my opinion as well.
t-3 8mo ago
I always took the Deus Ex Machina in Harrison's books to be just more of the satire. He never really takes his settings or characters lightly, but the presentation is almost always aimed at comedic effect.

kybernetikos 8mo ago

I was not particularly a fan of them - the plot seemed to find overly easy solutions to all the actual messiness that comes when dealing with others very unlike yourself, which given the rest of the stories, feels like it undercuts the entire point of them. The Tchaikovsky novella I really like is Elder Race. Technology-as-magic is done in so many places (Ventus is another favourite), and I usually enjoy it, but I felt that in Elder Race it was pulled off in an unusually elegant way.

alecco 8mo ago

The "aliens" are just spiders. With a lot of magical thinking. It's more like fantasy than science fiction. And character development is terrible. Only one or two are interesting and they get killed too early. I can take SciFi that's at least either good story or good science. To this day I don't know why people recommend this author so much, even more than Watt's Rifters trilogy or Firefall. He is a "legal executive" who dropped out of zoology/biology. Explanations are just "nanovirus!" or "bioengineering!" and left at that. Spoiler: the spiders make a space elevator and an asteroid catcher out of spiderweb; really. Stuff like this doesn't pass the suspension of disbelief for me. Reading it was quite annoying. Feel free to downvote me, but if you do, I ask you the minor kindness to refute my points. Edit: also "nanovirus!", what? All viruses are nano. And this virus being so complex it can't be too short, either.

throw0101d 8mo ago

> Good science fiction where the aliens are very alien are hard to come by. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Reach_Series ?

loeg 8mo ago
I'm not sure it meets the criteria of "good."