I had this book on my shelf for a long time. I like scifi in generational, but especially deep space explorations of the last humans (usually on board a generational ship) are one of my favourite topics. That plus the green cover drew me in and made me buy it bac then, but it wasn't until now (a buddy-read with the group) that I finally picked it up. Had I known what was to await me between the pages ... I could smack myself for not reading this sooner!



The story is about humanity travelling amon

I had this book on my shelf for a long time. I like scifi in generational, but especially deep space explorations of the last humans (usually on board a generational ship) are one of my favourite topics. That plus the green cover drew me in and made me buy it bac then, but it wasn't until now (a buddy-read with the group) that I finally picked it up. Had I known what was to await me between the pages ... I could smack myself for not reading this sooner!



The story is about humanity travelling amongst the stars, building an empire. One result is that we also terraform planets to make them habitable for us or in order to send other life forms to those planets as giant experiments. One such experiment is lead by Dr. Kern (aka "the bitch") and is about some monkeys being infected with a nanovirus in order to speed up their evolution. However, typical humanity, we manage to fuck everything up by killing ourselves and some fundamentalists blow up the research station. Dr. Kern manages to send the money down to the planet before she escapes in a pod (hoping for Earth to send a rescue team because she doesn't know about the war) but they burn in the atmosphere - unlike the virus they were infected with.

This last bit is a bit sketchy, science-wise because I doubt such a virus would have survived when its hosts are all dead and it has to travel through the same kind of atmosphere as well (and then needs time to find a new host planetside). The rest, however, was very well done so it bothered me only in the beginning.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and we get a documentary-style POV of what's happening on the planet the nanovirus crashed on. It found new hosts and they are no mammals. *lol* I'm also not sure if a spider was on the ship that had the monkeys on (if so, they should have burnt) or if the terraforming efforts produced an arachnid, which seems unlikely as well. So that sciency bit is also off, but I went along with it anyway because the evolution of all the generations of Portias was just so damn fascinating (Portia is one of the spiders, no spoiler there).

Fast forward some more time and we have the POV of the supposedly last remaining humans on board the generational ship "Gilgamesh" that try to find a new home now that Earth has been destroyed. They find the pod of Dr. Kern (yep, she's still around though I won't tell you how) as well as "her" planet and you can imagine the conflict that ensues.



The interesting thing was the opposing development of humans and arachnids.

Humanity had reached quite a peak what with their awesome technology before destroying Earth but the humans on board the "Gilgamesh" are out of luck for several reasons so we often see them revert back to more primitive ways.

All the while the Portias (not all spiders on the planet have the virus, just one species, the jumping spiders called portia xxx; that is a real species on our planet by the way and considered the most intelligent spider with almost human levels of pattern recognition and, perhaps, even time-slicing consciousness) thrive and develop in all kinds of ways (there are setbacks too at some points though).



These POVs alternate so we get so see several generations of spiders (what the nanovirus triggers in their development, right down to their life-spans, their scientific as well as social evolution) as well as the humans that keep going back to their sleeping chambers (those things basically stop your aging process so you can wake up several hundred years later and still be as "young" as when you went to sleep) and re-awaken at different points in their travel.

There are scientists, warriors, cultists; some are nice, some are unfortunate, some are downright crazy.



The great feat of this author is in taking something humans usually fear (spiders) and make them so damn human. Seriously, I loved the chapters about the evolution on Kern's world - partially because it was like watching a David Attenborough documentary, partially because the spiders all had different characters so they are jsut like us. *winks at all that have read the book*

I did not care for how they were treating their males. I know it happens in nature (to say nothing of gender inequality in our society) but there was quite a strong emphasis on it and it was definitely the author's way of holding up the mirror and showing us how stupid we are. If he hadn't let this topic lead to a very interesting place (evolution, remember?), I would have actually deducted a star for that plot point because I'm sick and tired of any form of media preaching about equality but then displaying inequality just turned upside-down as if it was only right (revenge-style).

However, let me say it again: that is NOT what the author did, he actually had a very clever point to make that he developed beautifully over the span of the book.



In general, there are some VERY big ideas packed into this narration and explored in detail. It's why the story spans thousands of years. It's about humanity, war, social evolution, several what-if questions (another thing I love to ponder), technology, bio-engineering, religion, relationships of any kind and so much more.



The writing style was never ever boring, all the alternating POVs never confusing, and the uplifting tone from start to finish (despite some depths we had to plunge into because of the afore-mentioned themes that had to be explored) was so refreshing. This is what scifi is all about and I'd love to read another book from this author that explores a different corner of this universe!