Children of Time

Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: ~600

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 10/10

I fuckin' loved this book.

Set many thousands of years in the future, Children of Time follows the last remnants of humanity aboard an ark ship and a population of intelligent jumping spiders that are rapidly evolving thanks to a biologically engineered nanovirus.

See, the humans have rendered Earth pretty much inhospitable, and they all boarded huge ark ships and went to sleep for a long time, to be woken up if and when needed. They find the perfect planet, only to discover that it's protected by a very ornery satellite and inhabited by a rather enlightened and fascinating spider civilization. The story aboard the ship, Gilgamesh, is mostly told from a classicist specializing in the Old Empire. The spiders' story follows Portia and her many, many descendants, as they make scientific discoveries and learn how to mold and shape the world around them. The author has really put a lot of thought into how a spider society might develop, and watching the nascent spider civilization grow was the best part of an already stellar story (holy shit the ants).

Children of Time has one of the most satisfying endings of anything I've read recently. Turns out empathy is powerful and beautiful, and if spiders actually evolve human intelligence god I sure hope they have empathy.

10/10.

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Game 14 of 2023 - Starfield

Starfield

Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Publisher: Bethesda Software
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG

Difficulty: Easy/Moderate
Hours: ~40

Finished: Yes
Final Rating: 7/10

It's fine. End of review.

Starfield

Okay, fine.

Starfield does a lot of things, it just doesn't do anything particularly well. It does them all, fine, I guess.

Meet Blast Hardcheese.

There's a zillion quests, but the overwhelming majority of them are boring. Get coffee for that lady. Pick up the coffee order for the executives. Take this message to this guy on this planet and bring what he gives you back. Find a charred planet for some reason. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There was one quest, Entangled, that I felt was kinda cool. I couldn't help but think that the quest would have made a great game on it's own if fleshed out.

There's one other quest chain that sticks out in my mind. Blast Hardcheese and Sarah Morgan ended up embroiled in a turf war in Neon between The Strikers and The Disciples. As we do quests for the leader of The Strikers, the less worse gang, the turf war escalates and Sarah and I end up in a shootout in Ebbside. The bullets and lasers are flying fast and furious, but The Strikers prevailed!

That's when I notice him.

A Chunks employee, lying in the gutter, cut down in the crossfire. Was he killed by the Strikers? By the Disciples? By Sarah? By... me?

That was like the one quest I actually felt connected to, partly because I chose the Neon Street Rat for my character.

Space travel is pretty much pointless, I mostly skipped space combat, and I never really gelled with any of the characters. I found base and ship building too fiddly to get into, and I didn't want to spend points in those skills, anyway. I wanted to shoot things. With lasers.

Yeah, I guess there are a lot of planets to explore, but why? There's mostly nothing except copy/paste structures there.

I'm sure some kickass DLC and mods will come down the pipeline in the near future, but I mostly pushed through this game out of obligation, being a fan of the Bethesda RPG since the days of Daggerfall.

So, yeah, it's fine. Nothing memorable, but fine.