/lit/ - Literature

Children of Time is a decent read, but on one aspect it did fail. Orson Scott Card is indeed right in that stories about a Generational Ship are, ultimately, about the life on the ship, not about the destination. The problem is that Tchaikovsky wanted to have his cake and eat it too, so he made the destination (spider planet) the climax of the story. This turned out to be a blunder, as the life on the Generational ship is actually more interesting than the spider civilization and its evolution.

If Tchaikovsky didn't spend half the space building up the spider civilization this story would have turned out horribly.

Currently reading pic related. It's really weird but I like it. Anyone familiar with the author and if his other stuff is good?

>Children of Time
Had some fun reading this, but the pacing was all over the place. The setting was quite unique. The worst part would be some annoying monologuing and some crappy and shallow characterization in a few characters, which reminded me of old school SF in that aspect. I don't really care for the 'character progression' meme, but in those classic books, characters were just vehicles for ideas and plot, and you liked them or you didn't.
The spiders are disposable, presented in an episodic format, which benefits this apparent shallowness. But after 600 pages, you're stuck with the same humans and their repetitive patterns.

Maybe 3-3.5/5. Would recommend for the novelty.

I read the sequel was more space operaish, and I have a few other books in that genre I'll probably read before I give it a chance.

Anyone else read this? Did I get memed again? It was this or Spaceman of Bohemia.

The premise is interesting, not sure how unique, but I guess super evolved spiders in terraformed world, allied with mantis shrimp colonies and telling spider Indiana Jones legends can't be that common in SF, but all the inner monologuing is jarring and a little schizoid, and the way the chapters are spread shits on the pacing. The first couple of chapters were definitely a challenge.
I'm about 100 pages in and I don't know how the satellite sends the math puzzles or if it's just spider religion things.

it feels like author never commanded or was responsible for anything. If some character takes control they become evil and dumb.
Otherwise it reminds book like "mote in gods eye"