Children of Ruin (2019) is worldbuilding at its best. In Tchaikovsky's intricately imagined universe humankind has taken to terraforming in order to evacuate the poisoned Earth. They have been doing it for millennia, the terraformers often transcending the ages by cryogenic sleep. One group we follow have travelled so far that it takes 31 years for messages from Earth to reach them. They listen keenly, even though they know these are the last communications of a dead world. One of the crew is Disra Senkovi, who spends most of his time with the pet octopuses he has managed to smuggle aboard. Their spaceship happens upon two planets, which Senkovi names Damacus and Nod. He is sent to seed life on one while the mission commander Yusuf Baltiel explores the other.
We then join another mission. Slowly, we realise that we are thousands of years further on from the arrival of Baltiel and Senkovi in the binary system of Damascus and Nod. This ship is commanded by evolved spiders, Portiids, They are assisted by Humans with a capital h, one of whom, Meshner, carries an implant which enables him to link more thoroughly with the portiids. The Portiids also use AI, which is the way in which the very first terraformer, initiator of the original project, Avrana Kern, survives. She lives on through a living computer made of ants.
Meanwhile the worlds created on Damascus and Nod live on. One is ruled by evolved octopuses whose multiple brains, the Crown and Reach, remember and revere their creator, Senkovi. The other world is inhabited by molecules which can combine to infect and takeover other entities.
I was completely, 100% fascinated by these extreme lifeforms who have to come together to resist the virus whose system wholly depends on their ability to combine. Tchaikovsky is able to takes us into the different thought systems of octopuses and spiders, to establish ways in which they can communicate, and to establish empathy. Truly, a stunning achievement. No wonder it won the Arthur C Clarke Award for book of the year.
