2025 reads / storygraph
Children of Time / Children of Ruin / Children of Memory
sci-fi series following the remnants of humanity across generations as they try to survive on the planets they’ve terraformed
as conflict on earth increases, a scientist releases a nanovirus intended to rapidly evolve monkeys onto a planet they’ve terraformed, which instead infects a species of jumping spiders, creating a complex society
while a classicist of old earth from an ark of humans who’ve spent generations trying to find an another planet to call home, is intermittently woken up in order to translate communications between them and the spider planet they’ve been warned away from, as it is their only option
IN BOOK 2, a ship from the eventual spider-and-human society travel to a distant system that was occupied by another remnant of humanity, a crew terraforming a planet who also let loose their own experiments, creating an octopus society - but the planet was already occupied by true alien life, which caused things to go wrong...
IN BOOK 3, they travel to yet another colony of humans after detecting fragments of signals, and enter their small settlement to try and understand what’s going on
explores the way the different civilisations develop over time, what makes life and sentience and personhood
