Children of Time

by Adrian Tchaikovsky
read May 2019
reviewed Jun 5 2019
***

spoiler alert

The aliens were alien but not very. I liked them and was more interested in their story than in the humans’. The climactic conflict promising dystopic mutual destruction ended in optimistic mutualistic synthesis. The tech that made everything possible was too vaguely magic, so the denoument was unsatsfying: lessons were not learned but imposed by biochemical fiat. Maybe we should be trying to develop a pan-empathetic nanovirus….