Nicely done story. Good memorable characters - loved how he kept using the same names for the spiders, that was clever. Liked the mechanisms by which the spiders become sentient and then develop their technology. Great descriptions of the spider habitats, the increasing desperation of the ship's crew, the mutiny. I liked how the spiders dealt with the Messenger and I especially liked the end. If you're paying attention you saw that coming, and it was wonderful. But I did think it was a bit long.
I greatly enjoyed this. Yes, I know it isn't perfect: the human characters are a bit two-dimensional. (It might give you an idea where the author's heart really lies that the most rounded, complicated characters are the spiders ...) And yes, I know, it isn't the purest most rigorous hard SF, in spite of the author's scientific chops: there are plausibility gaps, and backstory holes that you could roll a small generation starship through.
But it was fun. I thought the plight of the human refugees from a dying Earth was well handled, and set the stakes pretty high. I thought the development of spider society and psychology was interesting and well-developed (and made me very proud of all those spiderwebs around my house that I haven't been bothered to dust away, since lockdown began ... I'm not a slob, I'm just recognizing the rights of indiginous inhabitants ...)
Tchaikovsky clearly had a lot of fun imagining the evolution -- and DEvolution -- of societies, science, religion, mythologies; the painfully slow recognition of the rights of a traditional underclass, and the way that each of us can reflect generations of history, conditioning and tradition, while at the same time bringing our own uniqueness to the mix. And possibly persuading us that spiders are nicer than we are ...
But it was fun. I thought the plight of the human refugees from a dying Earth was well handled, and set the stakes pretty high. I thought the development of spider society and psychology was interesting and well-developed (and made me very proud of all those spiderwebs around my house that I haven't been bothered to dust away, since lockdown began ... I'm not a slob, I'm just recognizing the rights of indiginous inhabitants ...)
Tchaikovsky clearly had a lot of fun imagining the evolution -- and DEvolution -- of societies, science, religion, mythologies; the painfully slow recognition of the rights of a traditional underclass, and the way that each of us can reflect generations of history, conditioning and tradition, while at the same time bringing our own uniqueness to the mix. And possibly persuading us that spiders are nicer than we are ...
Humans terraform a planet, then plan to send down monkeys and an evolution accelerating virus. Only the virus arrives. So it goes to work on the most intelligent species it finds - spiders! This is a really interesting look at what civilization could be from the point of view of a completely different species.
