[Spoilers, at least up to halfway through]
Clickbait aside, Adrian Tschaikowski writes a hell of a sci fi book… it’s been a while since I’ve gotten sucked into a storyline this way, even more remarkable in that very few of the original protagonists last till the end of the book. The pacing felt great, none of the action felt forced, it seems like the sort of novel he may have started and let evolve organically.
And wow! I’ve never dove into the spec evo genre but always been curious. For those that haven’t read the book, a brief summary would be “humans set out to terraform the stars, mostly kill themselves off, but leave their colonization project running, which ends up evolving spiders from Mars”. Out of all the brainstorming we all have done about “what animal shall inherit the earth if humans burn themselves out”, I’m confident very few of us would have ‘jumping spiders’ on our list. But in this context it so very makes sense. A social animal, innate building capabilities, refined sensory organs for sophisticated speech, it all sort of makes sense. I *love* the way he is able to project the sort of needs of a generic civilization and show how evolved spiders would get there differently to us.
Sure he leaves a lot of details out. But little about it felt contrived or forced. I’m not sure how much detail is worth potentially spoiling for people here, so I’ll just say go out and read it. Worth.
But on to the title: I’ve always had a (un)healthy fear of spiders. Something about the legs… I’m fully on board with being a spider bro, but that’s on the condition that they stay a solid COVID-length away from me. And if it needs to go, you better believe I’m yelling for a roommate to deal with it – getting close enough to squash one with a shoe or (god forbid) napkin *shudder* is generally off the table.
And yet, as I read this book, I began seeing spiders in a new light. Not as mindless monsters of anger and venom. But Carnivores, predators to the lesser beings they hunt, as evolved compared to a bug as a cougar is to a deer. And yes they may be too small to really cogitate in a way we’d recognize, but we share a kinship with them as the clever masters of our respective food chains. And in their world, there is nothing more “human” than the vibrations through a web, or the basic communication through palpable and leg tremors. It is us who have strange frightening ways, we pale fleshy apes who vibrate the air to communicate and manipulate tools through split ends in our forelegs because were never gifted the ability weave.
I guess I was always afraid of spiders not because they were scary, but because they were unfamiliar. And Adrian Tschaikowski has made them familiar to me. I saw a small spider on my dresser this morning and to my surprise, gently guided her into a cup and deposited her in the storage room where our compost attracts flies. From one predator to another, carry on, miss 🫡
by dryuhyr