Children of ruin

In the sequel to The Children of Time (2015), which won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke award, Tchaikovsky combines evolutionary theory, alien contact, terraforming, and ecology in a far-future when starships can travel generations. The story is told in two time lines ages apart. The first, dubbed the past, follows the crew of the Aegean on its journey 31 light years from a ravaged Earth to terraform two planets for future generations of humanity. They are surprised when one of the planets is not, as they'd assumed, desolate. The second, titled the present, tracks Avrana Kern, a great scientist and now immortal AI, as she traces the years-old communications of the Aegean. As in Children, in which he tinkered with the evolutionary biology of the Portiids, a race of sentient spiders now allied with Kern, the author here extrapolates on the evolution of octopuses that are being bred as underwater workers for the Aegean's crew. Intensely detailed and handily researched, Tchaikovsky's saga creates a deeply immersive narrative that will appeal to fans of intergalactic biopunk and transhumanism.--Craig Clark Copyright 2019 Booklist