On "Children of Time" and the muffling of agency
A review of "Children of Time" (2015) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Starting a new star rating system (going back and adding ratings to the previous reviews from time to time).
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Science Fiction: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Literary: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Vibe: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
[No spoilers section]
Overall Children of Time (2015) by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a great book in the classic sci fi tradition of Arthur C. Clarke or even Phillip K. Dick — maybe even a “biopunk” William Gibson. Or Greg Egan. I could probably go on, but the large number of other writers that came to mind is actually a good sign. It means it’s quality but also not derivative of any particular author.
Children of Time gets labeled as “hard” sci fi but per my usual complaints about that designation, there are a few … scientific leaps. I’ll get to it more in the spoiler section, but suffice to say there’s (ironically) an inconsistent treatment of time. This in no way hurts the book. I mostly like to point these things out in “hard” sci fi just to continue my crusade against the label. Regardless, what others call your work doesn’t detract from it.
It sets up a collision of cultures from the very start, and its inevitability creates a near constant tension that is modulated by various sub-plots. I have an issue with the ending. A feeling of dread came over me as I noticed the remaining pages tick down to the low double digits. As hinted at the substance of my issue in the title of this post; it’s about agency — and characters without agency cannot genuinely complete arcs. However the journey is enjoyable enough that it is a minor point and doesn’t change the fact that I highly recommend it.
[Spoilers section]
One of the complaints I have with Children of Time is that the protagonist feels powerless. Of course, there’s a question of who is the protagonist in a story with two simultaneous story lines — Holsten the human versus a long line of Portias the spider (Portia the spiders?). The line of Portias has far more agency than Holsten, but are also technically multiple characters across multiple generations.
Holsten’s most consequential choice is acting to convince kidnappers to save the life of the chief engineer, but it’s not clear that the kidnappers had any rational reason to kill her — so might have done so regardless of Holsten’s bargaining. It is possible he has a consequential non-action towards the end of the book, but it doesn’t seem like it would have affected the outcome. For huge portions of the story Holsten is just along for the ride, muffling his agency.
I am also not sure what the rush is in resolving the discussion with Dr. Kern the first time. You have a generation ship and have already been on this journey for thousands of years. Kern is apparently sympathetic enough to what she views as sub-humans to allow a rescue. Just ask what the quarantine is about. Just ask why Dr. Kern is sending signals to the planet. Why basically give up after a few hours/days? There could even be significant communication while leaving unless the comm arrays are somehow all forward facing1. And on the other end of it, they're answering your distress call Dr. Kern. This is all basically papered over by saying Dr. Kern/AI ELIZA2 is insane so Holsten kind of gives up and Dr. Kern does not make rational decisions.
It’s one of those drama conceits where if everybody just discussed things rationally, then several problems that arise later in the book could be handled better. Dr. Kern seems pretty proud of herself and would likely tell them about trying to create intelligent life. And why else would you send a simple math signal — the Gilgamesh crew should almost be able to figure this out on their own. Wake up an exobiologist or whoever worked on their space program that sent the Gilgamesh out in the first place.
This part of the novel feels very much like it is trying to give a glimpse of “the promised land”, but then has to work out how to keep it out of reach. This is easier in e.g. a fantasy novel where a vista can open up but still be several days travel away. However, in this case it feels more like writing yourself out of a corner.
There’s a similar “write yourself out of a corner” feel in the ending which seems a bit deus ex machina, especially in how the effects of the virus are depicted in real time — it’s almost deliberate trickery. There’s a throwaway line that says the space suits re-seal after a puncture, but that's really the only hint that the virus/poison is in fact benign — or sort of benign.
Sure, this is some modified version of some kind of biotech virus, but viruses work by harnessing the cellular machinery of humans which operates on a (generic) time scale of 24 hours for cell division so you’d imagine even fast acting biotech would take an o(1) fraction of a day3. The speed of this virus/poison appears to be closer to a poison which acts on a time scale of an o(1) fraction of the minute or so for blood to travel around the body. All signs point to a poison.
Now the virus/poison could be just incapacitating the humans on this short time scale in a believable way — maybe it’s a combination sedative-virus. The spiders going for a kind of less-than-lethal approach (which they are). And that’s what brings me to the peak muffling of agency. This virus/poison basically just rewrites human’s brains to not be colonizers. Humans don’t decide to do it. Humans don’t consent to this medical experiment. They just have their brains, their consciousness, overwritten with Star Trek Federation-like attitudes4. As much as I’d love to do something like this to people who don't share my political views, I do think it’s a) wrong, and b) not actually achieving democratically legitimate results. In order to do this in a legitimate and morally acceptable way you need to allow for agency. In my mind, the human race effectively becomes zombies subjugated by the spiders when they are infected by the virus.
I guess this is sort of written as if the virus just makes the scales fall from humans’ eyes so that the humans realize spiders are just sisters from another mister themselves, but at some point in that causal chain the agency of humans is still removed. The ending fell a little flat because of that — the last minute deus ex machina of the spiders’ altruistic nature doled out at breakneck speed in just a few thousand words.
I get a feeling that this wasn’t the original ending — the hypothetical original ending following the events to their obvious, darker conclusion5. That’s because the story flips the virus/poison to benign and wraps up the plot in the span of just a few pages. Hey, even when reading the book I saw that obvious darker conclusion, saw how few pages were left, and was dreading it happening. I do say that was well done by Tchaikovsky — I had a genuine emotional response.
It’s not that this deus ex machina ending with the virus being “benign” is wrong or bad — it’s just a little unsatisfying in a “happily ever after” sense. In any case, this is just my opinion and doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel or recommending it. It may even enhance it as I have something to say about it. That ending along with the lack of agency (the human race and/or the protagonist, take your pick) is the reason it doesn’t get five stars, though.
PS In another issue of time scales, a computer made from ants would be slow. There’s a throwaway line in the book about ants being more complex logic gates, but a) they still operate on biological time scales, and b) if they are more complex logic gates then there’s an additional bottleneck of Input/Output — which also operates at biological time scales.
Gates and pins (i.e. complexity of a circuit and the number of I/O pins it requires) in a computing architecture follow a heuristic called Rent’s Rule. It’s pretty generic as it arises from general arguments in information theory (see my link to my other substack below) and has been shown to apply to the brains of flies. If ants are more complex logic gates then they also require a large number of I/O “pins”. And if it is chemical I/O, there will be an additional bottleneck of limiting reagents. And as a biological system, there will be issues of saturation as well as just the basic maintenance of keeping the ants alive. And you think your PCI bus is limiting your GPU compute power.
It’s not to say these aren’t insurmountable obstacles for a biological computer — it just would contribute to its size, which would then additionally limit its speed. It would take microseconds to move a signal across a few thousand feet; such a computer would be at best a 1 MHz processor and using chemical and biological processes would mean that isn’t even a strict upper bound.
Given the significant modifications to the ship made over the course of the story, a rear-facing antenna doesn’t seem like a big deal.
I wonder how many younger people would get this reference. It does come up in the discourse in reference to AI — especially in the era of chatGPT.
In fact, the fastest acting diseases take more than a day to become fatal.
As I was reading this and thinking back to the foreshadowing in the spiders dealings with the ants (and even the mind fungus that affects the spiders at one point) and thought it would be great if the spiders did what Tchaikovsky actually says they do — use humans like they use the ants; humans becoming a docile domesticated livestock performing tasks for them. But it seems to be that humans are treated as alien equals.
Humans die off and the spiders are the future of Earth’s sentient life.