Children of Ruin

Why it’s on the list: Tchaikovsky’s sequel to Children of Time runs the first book’s experiment again with octopuses, whose cognition is distributed through their limbs, and adds a second, genuinely non-cognate intelligence. Its real subject is the cost of first contact when neither side’s concepts translate.

Where I heard about it

• a16z’s infrastructure team — on the a16z Infra Reading List, B tier (“also worth reading”), as volume two of the Children of Time series. It follows the first book directly and assumes its ending.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — the list this came from.
• Adrian Tchaikovsky — the author.
• Children of Time — volume one, and the starting point.
• Children of Memory — volume three.
• Evolution — the mechanism the series runs on.
• Science Fiction — the genre page.