Children of Time (Novel). Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

Every so often, in the course of the last 60 years or so, I have indulged a secret vice: a search for a literate and intelligent science fiction novelist. When I was kid I read and liked two novels on the prospect of nuclear annihilation (Level 7 by Mordecai Roshwald and Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank). I’ve sometimes thought of getting hold of them for a second reading but I’m frightened they wouldn’t be as good in reality as they are now in my memory. Then from time to time in factory lunchrooms or half-abandoned bookcases I have found copies of Stranger in a Strange Land or Dune and struggled with them without being able to finish either (though I know what “grok” means!). Sometimes I have seen a previously unknown sci fi novel on a library shelf and, after a furtive glance to ensure that nobody has spotted me, tucked it under my coat and headed for the checkout. As in so many other facets of life optimism is subsumed into disappointment. I am speaking only partly from snobbery. My experience suggests that most works of science fiction are bad novels, the improbability of their plots not redeemed by the standard of their prose. But now I have a genuine contender.

I’ve read all 600 pages of Adrian Tchaikovsky;s Children of Time. It is literate, imaginative and thought-provoking. I am delighted that there is a sequel. Even more daringly, having learned that the author has also written a series of fantasy novels, I am going to give them a try, too.At first Children of Time seems to be an example of the hackneyed ark-ship-escaping- from-the-dying-earth genre but it soon becomes much more audacious than that.There was a point about two thirds of the way through the book when I thought the author might have lost control of the plot. Not for long, though. The mistake was mine. The book powered on to its inventive and satisfactory conclusion,

Night, Sleep, Death, the Stars (Novel). Joyce Carol Oates

I really  like  the novels of Joyce Carol Oates. I admire her ability to expose the tensions within a group of people who think of themselves as a community, whether they are members of a family, residents of a town, citizens of a nation or, as in this case, all three.

At one level the story is simple. The paterfamilias of a prosperous,  middle class family, acting on a decent impulse,  intervenes in a situation on which he has stumbled. A spiral of conflict ensues: brother against sister, children against mother, conventional family against the civic order.

This is one of those novels where you find yourself having one-sided conversations with the characters:  "Oh for Christ's sake!  Don't do that!  Can't you see where it will lead?"  In that sense, as in many others, it is a faithful portrait of the contemporary United States.