History Literature / ChildrenOfTime

* AfterTheEnd: Human society collapsed into a small number of survivors on an ice-bound Earth for centuries after the fall of the Empire.
* AGodAmI: Kern, especially after a few centuries of isolation and equipment failure. [[spoiler: Also Guyen, towards the end of his life.]]

* UpliftedAnimal: The plot begins with a project to fill the galaxy with life by terraforming worlds and populating them with monkeys infected with the [[AppliedPhlebotinum Rus-Califi nanovirus]], which is designed to slightly mutate the brains of each successive generation of monkeys until sapience emerges. The terraforming succeeds on Kern’s World, but the moneys never arrive thanks to the sudden destruction of human civilization. The virus, already introduced to the planet, instead begins working on the local arthropods, eventually causing a thriving civilization of jumping spiders to emerge, who share the world with an underwater civilization of mantis shrimp and a menagerie of other bugs made very large and abnormally smart, though not entirely sapient. (The other mammals on the planet were engineered to be immune to the virus so as not to interfere with the monkeys — its makers just didn’t anticipate it would be so successful in invertebrates.)

* UpliftedAnimal: The plot begins with a project to fill the galaxy with life by terraforming worlds and populating them with monkeys infected with the [[AppliedPhlebotinum Rus-Califi nanovirus]], which is designed to slightly mutate the brains of each successive generation of monkeys until sapience emerges. The terraforming succeeds on Kern’s World, but the moneys never arrive thanks to the sudden destruction of human civilization. The virus, already introduced to the planet, instead begins working on the local arthropods, eventually causing a thriving civilization of jumping spiders to emerge, who share the world with an underwater civilization of mantis shrimp and a menagerie of other bugs made very large and abnormally smart, though not sapient like the jumping spiders.

* ItCanThink: The partially-uplifted ants manage to invert this. Despite developing sophisticated behaviors such as glassmaking and metallurgy, they ''don’t'' think. Each individual ant is just a bundle of dumb reflexes, and the intelligence they display as a collective superorganism is pure computation, using trial and error to discover more efficient means of expansion and then improving on those means without conscious understanding of what it’s doing. [[spoiler:When the spiders finally get the ants under control, they’re able to exploit this trait to create ant-based ''computers''.]]

* ItCanThink: The partially-uplifted ants manage to invert this. Despite developing sophisticated behaviors such as glassmaking and metallurgy, they ''don’t'' think. Each individual ant is just a bundle of dumb reflexes, and the intelligence they display as a collective superorganism is pure computation, using trial and error to discover more efficient means of expansion and then improving on those means without consciously understanding of what it’s doing. [[spoiler:When the spiders finally get the ants under control, they’re able to exploit this trait to create ant-based ''computers''.]]

* GeneticMemory: The spiders enjoy this, thanks to the nanovirus.

* GenerationXerox: Surprisingly averted for the spiders despite generally sharing the same names. Portia 1 is NOT the same as Portia 8. They run the gamut from noble warrior, scientist to religious fanatic. The same goes for the Fabians and the Biancas.

* AGodAmI: Kern, especially after a few centuries of isolation and equipment failure. [[spoiler: Also Guyin, towards the end of his life.]]

* SlaveRace: The spiders manage to turn the ants into one after figuring out how to "program" colonies with any desired behaviour by introducing the right chemicals to them.

* TheUnpronounceable: Due to their StarfishLanguage there is no way for us to know the spiders' real names, so Tchaikovsky uses human names instead. The viewpoint female is always Portia, named after the genus of jumping spider that was uplifted by the nanovirus; the main supporting female in any generation is always Bianca; and the main supporting male is always Fabian.

* GoodVsGood: Both sides in the war between humans and spiders are fighting for their survival as a species, and while both are flawed neither deserves to go extinct... but the cold logic of the situation still means that only one can survive. [[spoiler: Or so it seems, until it turns out that the spiders have managed to TakeAThirdOption.]]

* WhiteAndGrayMorality: There are no complete villains in the story; while some characters are more flawed than others, all of them are doing what they genuinely think is best.

A 2015 science-fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky which combines a convincingly alien society with a compelling story about the last humans left after the desolation of Earth.

2015 standalone science-fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky which combines a convincingly alien society with a compelling story about the last humans left after the desolation of Earth.

Has no connection to the ''Literature/ShadowsOfTheApt'' series, except Adrian Tchaikovsky's love for (and extensive knowledge of) invertebrates.

* ApeShallNotKillApe: The uplift-virus infecting the spiders enforces a version of this, allowing normally solitary ambush predators to form functioning societies. [[spoiler: It is weaponized at the climax of the book when the spiders infect the human refugees with a modified version of the uplift-virus before letting them colonize the planet.]]

* AlienKudzu: The teraforming target [[spoiler: Kern points the ''Gilgamesh'' to is completely covered by a uniform layer of grey fungus from pole to pole.]]

* AlienKudzu: The transforming target [[spoiler: Kern points the ''Gilgamesh'' to is completely covered by a uniform layer of grey fungus from pole to pole.]]

* AlienKudzu: The aborted transforming target [[spoiler: is completely covered by a uniform layer of grey fungus from pole to pole.]]

* AGodAmI: Kern.

* SchizoTech: Due to their [[BioPunk non-human mindset and technology]], the spider civilization has a bizarre (to humans) mish-mash of technology. For example, they invented advanced chemical and genetic engineering before radio or even electricity, and Kern is ''baffled'' when she has to introduce them to the idea of ''wheels''.

* HumansThroughAlienEyes: The spiders who capture a live human study her in detail, but never realise that she is sentient, as communication by sound is utterly absent from their society.

* SpaceElevator: A much simpler proposition for an advanced spider civilisation, given that they have their own silk to work with.

* TheUnpronounceable: Due to their StarfishLanguage there is no way for us to know the spiders' real names, so Tchaikovsky uses human names instead. The viewpoint female is always Portia, named after the nanovirus which encouraged their sentience; the main supporting female in any generation is always Bianca; and the main supporting male is always Fabian.