Children of Time is the first in a three-book series and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016. It is a clever sci-fi novel set in the far future that gives the reader a fascinating account of the evolution of a new culture and civilisation vastly different to our own.

Dr Avarana Kern and team have successfully terraformed a planet to create the beautiful green “Kern’s World” and they are ready to initiate the next phase of her experiment. The plan is to deliver a consignment of monkeys to the surface, together with a nano-virus that is designed to accelerate their evolution. This was sold as a way of producing a race of sentient aides ready to assist future colonists from Earth. As part of Kern's “Exaltation Program,” the true aim was to evolve the monkeys into a new race and culture that Kern and her progressive faction could influence and mould as they desired. It amounts to an arrogant desire to "play God" that will ultimately lead to unexpected consequences.

The process is sabotaged when one of her team turns out to be an activist from a rival faction called Non-Ultra Natura (no greater than nature) who intends to blow up the Brin 2 terraforming station. The N.U.N. are conservative group vehemently opposed to Kern’s “exaltation of beasts” and all other technological advances that threaten "human purity and supremacy". Being an overtly self-centred individual, Kern does the only dishonourable thing and secretes herself away in the safe Sentry Pod whilst her colleagues, the activist and the rest of the terraforming station are destroyed by the explosion. Falling towards the planet, the pod of monkeys burns up in the atmosphere but the nano-virus flask makes it to the surface. Leaving an uploaded AI version of herself to watch guard, Kern enters hibernation to await rescue from Earth.

After a significant time has passed, following the war between progressive and conservative factions which ultimately led to the destruction of Earth, the “Gilgamesh” ark ship carrying the last survivors of the human race approaches Kern’s World and the Brin 2 Sentry Pod. Kern is conscious but is trapped in her hibernation chamber by the AI. After all this time, she is losing her mind and beginning to merge with the systems in the pod. She also begins to hope that some of the monkeys may have survived after all and that her experiment may yet come to fruition. Determined to stop any “contamination” of her world and able to enforce her will through the superior Old Empire weapon technology of the sentry pod, she forces the Gilgamesh away towards the system of another terraforming site. As we know, no monkeys survived the descent to Kern’s World but the nano-virus managed to find a surrogate species to advance: jumping spiders of the Portia genus!

This book is a masterwork of “culture-building” as we see the curious and opportunistic spiders evolve and advance from generation to generation. Thanks to the nano-virus, they are given the ability to pass on learning and experience genetically, directly to their offspring with next to no parental teaching or care. They call this effortless generational spread of knowledge the “mechanism of understandings” and it gives them the creativity to overcome numerous perils including war, the plague and sexual inequality (poor male spiders being treated as underlings and even as a postcoital snack before they prove their worth to society!)

A notable prime goal for the spiders is to understand and learn how to communicate with Kern’s Sentry Pod which they watch overhead as it orbits the planet. They call it “the Messenger” as it has never ceased transmitting its sequence of mathematical puzzles originally set up for the monkeys to respond to.

The Portia labiata jumping spider is an interesting creature for Tchaikovsky to choose. Being so unlike human beings, their society, culture and technology all evolve in a vastly different way from ours. They never develop the use of metals, fossil fuels or electricity. Instead, they become masters of biotechnology and use trained colonies of ants for numerous tasks. These ants may not be as fast as electronic systems but each insect's tiny brain proves a capable engine for data storage and decision-making. It is amazing to read how the spiders manage to put a satellite into orbit without using a rocket!

Spider communication is not by speaking but by vibration & percussion, conveying messages by dancing rhythmically or by vibrating stands of web. This makes for an interesting conclusion by the spider’s scholars the first time they encounter a human being who tries to speak and reason with them: “It seems so hard to believe such a huge, ponderous thing could have been sentient, but apparently it was”.

The narrative flip-flops between the developing spider culture and the increasingly desperate straits of the humans on their ark ship. There is a stark contrast between the advancement of the spider society through determination, enthusiasm and ingenuity, and the slow deterioration and feuding of Gilgamesh’s occupants: “… that division of man against man that was the continual brake on human progress”. I think that even strong arachnophobes will be endeared by the plucky and positive attitude the spiders have which will make you feel you can't help rooting for them.

Conversely, the human protagonists are generally an unremarkable and uncharismatic bunch. Only the "classicist", Holsten Mason, who is an expert in the "Old Empire" of Kern's generation, appreciates that the spider culture would be worth understanding and negotiating with. A fairly impotent character, poor Holsten spends most of the book being buffeted around by events as things continually go pear-shaped for the Gilgamesh's occupants.

Although this is the first book in a trilogy, it is a sizeable 600-page tome which provides a complete story arc before the epilogue delivers an enticing stepping stone to the next in the series. The final act boils down to a clash between the two cultures, one very old and one very new but both are determined to survive. I found the conclusion particularly satisfying and somewhat unexpected.