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Fire and Fables - Speculative Fiction Book Club

Fire and Fables is intended to be a place for adults to read and discuss fantasy and science fiction novels. Friendly criticism is encouraged!

Toronto Science Fiction Book Club

We meet in person on the second Sunday of each month from 5-7 pm, or if that's a holiday weekend, on the third Sunday.

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel Children of Time is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age -- a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

BUY THE BOOK

Published Dec 11, 2018

640 pages

Average rating: 7.97

117 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Suzanne82
Aug 16, 2025
10/10 stars
This was so much fun. What a well-explored what-if!
Ly
Jul 21, 2025
Ly
JackboxAudience
Jul 08, 2025
6/10 stars
Spiders were tough. Everything else was great. But the spiders..
Lauren Greely
Jul 01, 2025
2/10 stars
DNF
Cowieliz
Jun 03, 2025
7/10 stars
For me the book was thought provoking in some ways and annoying in others. I was disappointed that the passage of time wasn't clearly defined. We had humans in suspension for years, coming out of suspension and believing that several generations of humans had lived and died, without any real clarification of how long. Even on the planet it wasn't clear how long an evolved spider's lifetime was and therefore how many generations we had moved through there! That said I was impressed that the ending showed the enhanced evolution of the spiders, through the nano virus introduced by humans thousands of years previously (!), put them ahead of humans in their understanding that no-one wins in war and we need to learn to live together and so a few spiders give their lives to save all remaining humans, allowing them to start again on the planet that they now have to learn to share. I am interested to read more.

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