58 pages • 1 hour read
Adrian TchaikovskyChildren of Time
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Parts 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “Genesis” - Part 2: “Pilgrimage”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Just a Barrel of Monkeys”
In orbit above a planet, Doctor Avrana Kern readies herself to give a speech to her crew before initiating her experiment. She plans to launch a container of monkeys, a nanovirus that advances evolution, and a stasis pod that is designed to hold a single human preserved in cryo-sleep; this will allow the human to survive until the evolution of the monkeys is complete and the time is right for humans to influence this hypothetical future species.
While researching her speech, Kern muses on the Earth factions that resist her scientific ambitions; they are spearheaded by the group Non Ultra Natura, or NUN. Now, when she introduces the man who has been selected to stay in the pod, she realizes that he is not in position. As she speaks to the crew, Kern realizes that this man is actually an agent of NUN and has sabotaged her project by rigging the central hub to explode, destroying both the research and those who have performed it. Kern escapes by getting into the cryo-pod herself and launching it far from the facility. The monkeys and virus also launch, but the sabotage causes the monkeys’ delivery pod to be incinerated when it enters the planet’s atmosphere. However, the nanovirus is successfully delivered. Kern, preserved in her cryo-pod, now orbits the planet as a satellite.
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “Brave Little Huntress”
Portia, a spider infected with the nanovirus, hunts another species of spider. She encounters another male of her species and sees him as an ally. They join forces and successfully hunt together. Both of them are carriers of the virus. They mate and produce offspring who are significantly more advanced than a typical generational mutation would account for.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Lights Go Out”
The Sentry Pod’s AI computer system wakes Avrana Kern after only 14 years. The AI, Eliza, tells Kern that there is no contact with Earth. In the absence of any radio signals, it needs new directives. The last Earth transmission was a virus that was designed to shut down all technological systems, but it proved to be ineffective against the experimental tech in the Pod. After Eliza tells Kern that they can survive indefinitely, Kern directs Eliza to allow her computerized consciousness to determine when to wake her. She then returns to cryo-sleep.
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Two Thousand Years from Home”
Holsten Mason, a passenger on the ship Gilgamesh, is awakened from stasis by the Key Crew engineer, Isa Lain, at the direction of the commander, Vrie Guyen. The ship has a large crew that has been sleeping in cold storage for the last 1,836 years as the ship has been seeking signs of other human life in the universe. The Earth experienced a massive ice age that drove what was left of humanity into space, where they followed the star maps left behind by ancient humans like Avrana Kern. The ship has just picked up a distress signal, although it is still nearly a century of travel away from their position. Guyen sets a course for the nearest planet and orders the others back into cold storage. Holsten and Lain wait for a short time, looking out at the vast universe, and find comfort in one another’s embrace before going back to sleep.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Earth’s Other Children”
Many generations after the first Portia lived, her mutated and improved descendent, also called Portia, travels through the forest in the tops of the trees. She is much larger than her ancestor and is on a mission with two others of her kind. Portia, Bianca, and the unnamed male with whom they travel have advanced not just physically, but mentally. Portia, in particular, has begun to think in terms of future and past, and has the ability to plan ahead. Her species has also domesticated insects, allowing the spiders to be less reliant on hunting; this allows the spiders to focus on future advancement. Portia considers the sky, recognizing one particular star that strikes her as being more regular. This “star” is Kern’s pod.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “Enigma Variations”
Holsten and the core crew of the Gilgamesh awaken as they approach the location of the distress signal. They discuss the origin of the signal and what it could represent. Holsten attempts to answer the distress call, using his knowledge as a classicist who specializes in ancient culture and language, but he cannot get the computer to acknowledge him. However, he discovers some interference and asks Lain to help him isolate it. The interference is a series of math equations designed to detect intelligence; these signals are being continuously transmitted to the planet. When the humans aboard the Gilgamesh send back the correct answers, the distress signal stops.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Poor Relations”
Portia and her companions seek information about an area of their world that has not yet been unexplored by their nest. While Portia has the necessary intelligence and communication skills, Bianca possesses strength and power, and the male has the genetic material necessary to trade knowledge. The virus works in part by transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Because Portia’s people are spiders rather than mammals, they lack the bond with their young that would facilitate direct teaching and protection. As a result, they have evolved to be physically strong and to pass information genetically.
Portia’s group encounters other spiders of the same species and trade with them for information about a potential threat that lies just beyond the foreign spiders’ territory. After a battle between the lead female and Bianca, which showcases Portia’s peoples’ use of tools such as armor and weapons, Bianca wins, and the strangers agree to trade genetic material and current information.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “All These Worlds Are Yours”
The crew of the Gilgamesh receive a response from Kern’s satellite. The automated systems initially send a warning to leave Kern’s World alone. The security officer, Karst, sends drones to investigate the pod and the planet. Karst hides the only surviving drone in orbit around the planet. Holsten scrambles to translate and communicate with the computer system. Finally, at Lain’s suggestion, he repeats the pod’s distress signal back to it. Eliza comes online and offers to help, but only if they leave the planet alone. Holsten tries to explain that they carry the last of the human race. He encounters a second transmission in the process—either from Kern or from her AI equivalent—but the wording suggests the garbled utterings of an unstable mind, and they can make no sense of it. Two voices blend together, and the second voice repeats notions of despair and fear about the fate of the Earth. Holsten manages to get Eliza to allow him to speak to the other consciousness (Kern’s). Holsten attempts to explain what has occurred since Kern’s time. He states that the massive war on Earth at the end of the Empire caused the technological end of humanity for more than a century. The ice age drove humans back into caves, and the humanity then underwent a slow recovery of industrial and technological advances. When the ice thawed, the remains of Earth were toxic, and the humans built the ark ships to follow the ancient star maps in search of a new planet. Suddenly, Kern—who is now an amalgamation of the AI, Eliza, and her own human consciousness—takes control of the Gilgamesh’s systems and projects her image onto the humans’ screens. She tells them that they aren’t related to her, that they’re the same as monkeys, and she orders them to leave. Holsten and Lain beg for help, and she relinquishes control of their ship and sends them directions and access codes to other terraformed planets that lie within two lightyears of their current location.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary: “Metropolis”
Portia and her companions, now joined by the male Fabian from the foreign spider colony, travel into the ant territory neighboring the spiders. Portia is gathering information to take back to her nest to tell them about the odd new ant behaviors. They discover the ants using fire made by the chemicals that the ants naturally produce to clear brush and transform the landscape. The ants also use metal tools and armor used to clear trees and protect themselves from injury. Portia goes farther on her own group to try to learn about the odd structure on the main mound of the ants’ territory. The structure is a spire with a crystal mounted on top; the ants come out of their mound, put a filament of metal against the crystal, and dance in response to the radio waves that are transmitted from Kern’s satellite to the crystal. After the ants leave, Portia weaves a sack and steals the crystal, narrowly escaping when her presence is discovered.
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Exodus”
Guyen agrees to Kern’s option and orders the ship to follow the coordinates, although he also plans to stop at a gas giant at the edge of the planetary system to establish a small lunar colony as an alternative to wherever Kern is sending them. There is some discussion on Kern’s use of the term “monkeys,” given that no one on the ship has any knowledge of them except for Holsten. As they leave the system, Kern disappears from their computers entirely, and Karst tunes in to the drone’s visuals from the surface of Kern’s World. The scenery is lush and green, but the drone is destroyed suddenly and inexplicably by a creature that is roughly one meter in length—a spider eliminating a possible enemy. Guyen orders everyone back to stasis, with plans to wake at intervals to check on the development of the colonizing tools.
Parts 1-2 Analysis
In the novel’s opening chapters, Tchaikovsky characterizes Kern as arrogant but self-reflective; she sees herself as the pinnacle of human intelligence and ambition and believes that she alone is pushing the human race into the future despite all resistance to her cause. Tchaikovsky’s diction, which shows Kern’s point of view, suggests that she harbors a desire for science to take the place of religion. As Kern reflects, “[W]e are gods and we are lonely” (6), her thoughts of becoming a god via scientific creation holds parallels to the conflict on Earth between the NUNs and the scientific community. Ironically, although she dismisses Earth’s religious factions as short-sighted, her own obsession with creating worlds and species in her own image suggests that her own hubris renders her more closely aligned with concepts of religious dogma than with an open-minded search for scientific understanding.
By naming the primary resistance group to the world-building effort “Non Ultra Natura” and abbreviating that name to “NUN,” Tchaikovsky evokes an immediate and transparent conflict between science and religion, highlighting the novel’s fundamental focus on The Conflict Between Tradition and Progress. Although the saboteur, Sering, is not overtly religious in his determination to preserve what he sees as the natural order of things, the group’s name directly invokes imagery of nuns in habits and other similarly devout and dogmatic religious figures.
Interspersed with the snapshots of humanity’s struggle to survive, the narrative also follows multiple generations of spiders through the long, tortuous process of evolution—from the first nanovirus-infected spider driven solely by instinct to the intellectually, technologically, and culturally advanced arachnid civilization that dominates the novel’s final chapters. To create a sense of continuity across the ages, the spider characters are referred to by the same names throughout the book, even though the characters change from generation to generation. The names Portia, Bianca, and Fabian and Viola are also direct allusions to Shakespeare—to The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, and Twelfth Night, respectively. This stylistic choice sets the spiders apart from the humans and gives the spider civilization an aura of respectability. The allusions further connect the individual spiders to certain well-rounded characters in Shakespeare’s plays and strategically underscore the continuing gender conflicts in the spider society. Notably, the original Viola and Portia both dress as men in Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, respectively, and they are more powerful than most of the men around them. Similarly, the female spiders bearing these names prove themselves to be the most powerful actors in the world of the spiders.
As the title of the novel indicates, Tchaikovsky’s plot requires a massive passage of time, and the metaphorical deaths and rebirths of the humans in cold storage are therefore designed to echo the actual deaths of the generations of spiders. To this end, the references to cold storage equipment as “coffins” and “slabs” draw a direct metaphorical connection to the entombed slumber of the human characters, invoking images of death and resurrection. These aspects of the novel are further complemented by the recurring ambition of achieving immortality in one form or another, for just as the crew of the Gilgamesh leapfrogs through time via cold storage, Kern melds her mind with the computer and gains a proxy form of immortality, however unbalanced the tatters of her psyche become.
Additionally, Kern’s unusual evolution raises the question of whether the original Kern has survived at all or whether she has been entirely subsumed by her AI counterpart. Thus, Tchaikovsky uses this unusual character to speculate upon the development of sentience that transcends direct human intelligence. Tchaikovsky leaves this issue unaddressed until the end of the novel, and then even then, the AI counterpart is not certain whether Kern’s body was still alive when the satellite was destroyed. This element of ambiguity calls into question whether identity and sentience are the factors that constitute intelligent life. The spiders unquestionably gain sentience as they evolve, and although they are unambiguously nonhuman, they—just like the AI calling itself Kern—have been granted sentience by the actions of humans. The question of sentience and its relation to human life and individuality is therefore left unresolved, especially as Kern continues to exert influence over both human and spider society, existing as pure consciousness in a biological computer.
The titles and focuses of the first two sections simultaneously evoke concepts of religion and movement. The chapter titled “Genesis” in Children of Time describes how the Green Planet, or Kern’s World, first came to be. This title is shared with the first book of the Bible, which contains the Judeo-Christian origin story of the world. Likewise, the chapter titled “Pilgrimage” describes humanity’s quest to find somewhere new to settle, and this word also contains a distinctly religious connotation, as a pilgrimage generally denotes a journey to a holy place. By creating implicit parallels between the beginnings of the novel and early religious texts and practices, Tchaikovsky immediately establishes the idea that elements of religion will recur throughout the novel.
