Children of Time is a 2015 science fiction novel by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

In the distant future, humanity seeks to create new habitats for itself on distant planets, terraforming them and seeding them with life. Dr. Avrana Kern is heading one such project, orbiting the tentatively named "Kern's World", where the plan is to release monkeys le-monke infected with a nanovirus that will accelerate their evolution. Through an act of sabotage from an anti-technology group that has also destroyed much of Earth, the monkeys are never released, and the virus instead infects a species of spider, Portia labiata. The book follows the evolution of the spiders and their eventual civilisation, as well as a remnant of humanity that fled to Kern's World hoping to find paradise.

also children of ruin and children of memory, the sequels, are really good

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  • Tommasi [she/her, pup/pup's]
    ·
    4 days ago
    mood

    While feelings of inferiority to cis women passed quickly for me, the sense that I've lost something I can't get back by not having the right childhood or adolesence definitely lingers, and the lack of those "universal" experiences of womanhood sometimes makes me feel like there's this huge gulf between me and the people around me. (even though i logically know they're not universal even among cis women)

    I try to cope with the otherness of it by thinking about how stuff like this affects a ton of people. A lot of people lose the opportunity have a "normal" adolesence for all sorts of different reasons, we as trans people aren't alone in this. Tons of cis people aren't able to have babies and don't function "right" biologically. And while I don't think it will ever not hurt it doesn't have to define us.