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I learned way more about spiders in the sci-fi book "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky than I thought I would! The basic premise is that the evolution of

I learned way more about spiders in the sci-fi book "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky than I thought I would! The basic premise is that the evolution of spiders on a new planet is hyper-increased, and they become the dominate intelligent species on the planet. The sexual dimorphism comes into play because male spiders are the victims of sexism in spider society. They are smaller, weaker, but eventually work towards equality. That book is interesting but nightmare inducing!

Raphmedia 6y ago
Out of topic... This book is really expensive as a hardcover! I had to look around to make sure it's not a glitch. It goes for $180-$374 on amazon.com and $630-$1222. $800 on ebay.com even! Woah. I'm guessing it's out of print and extremely popular?
- mrlonglong 6y ago
  Get it on kindle, I have it and it's brilliant. Edit for typo
  - Raphmedia 6y ago
    I usually try to get Sci-Fi books in hardcover (that's how I read all my first Sci-Fi and it stuck with me)... I'll make an exception for that one!
- ebg13 6y ago
  Likely not because of extreme popularity. Publishers almost always switch very quickly from hardcover to only printing paperback editions because the market isn't willing to pay the additional cost. It's worse for weird scifi novels because the market is small, so the hardcover run for this was probably tiny.
- markatto 6y ago
  There are many SciFi titles that are extremely expensive in hardcover these days. There is a lot of amazon volatility, so I tend to use price watch sites, but some also consistently stay in the hundreds of dollars (for example, the original printing of Hyperion). I suspect that this is because the genre used to sell badly in hardcover and many SciFi fans have come into money over the last few decades, but I'd be curious to hear from somebody who understands the market better.
- NickNameNick 6y ago
  Amazon prices for uncommon/rare items can get wierd. There was an issue a while ago with resellers that would look for items on amazon, and create a duplicate listing with a slightly higher price. If they got an order, they could buy the item from another amazon seller, and onsell the item for a profit. This broke in a predictably amusing way when there were only a few vendors for an item, and all of them were doing the same thing - each vendor updating their price to be higher than the others, quickly spiralling up to ludicrous values.
the_af 6y ago
Interesting that you mention a sci-fi book, because I was reminded of James Tiptree Jr's masterpiece "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death", which also tackles the subject of spider-like aliens and their strange lifecycles and mating rituals (it seems Tiptree -- aka Alice Sheldon -- actually knew her spiders, because her aliens perform some of the antics described in this article).
- ajxs 6y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this and reminding me of this story. Tiptree's writing is amazing. The short story can be read for free here: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/ http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-t...
rwbcxrz 6y ago
That book was a delightful surprise. I never expected that the chapters about giant, intelligent spiders to be the parts that kept me hooked. I'm not sure I could have cared less about what happened to the humans.
- bitwize 6y ago
  I love me some Pham Nuwen, but in A Deepness in the Sky the giant, intelligent spiders were the coolest characters in the whole damn book. That book will give you a new perspective on the term "weaponized autism".
  - shagie 6y ago
    That book also has another bit in there with the programmer archeologist - digging through centuries of technical debt to find ways to make ancient code work in different ways. My favorite passage in the book: > There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it — the horror of it, Sura said — was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex — and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely… the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems.
    - saalweachter 6y ago
      The moon landing is such a better modern epoch than Jan 1 1970.
    - ncrmro 6y ago
      Commented this earlier The author will actually respond to you his email domain is the name of the ISP from the first book! His books are easily top 3 for me now
freddier 6y ago
If hyper evolved kinda-realistic spiders are your thing and their first contact with a highly evolved humanity, I strongly suggest Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky". It also introduced to me the concept of software archeologists.
- ncrmro 6y ago
  He will actually respond to you his email domain is the name of the ISP from the first book! His books are easily top 3 for me now
- nitrogen 6y ago
  The Zones of Thought series is fantastic, and A Deepness in the Sky may be my favorite sci-fi novel of the many dozens on my shelf. Highly recommend, and I wish there were more novels set in that universe.
hobby-coder-guy 6y ago
Amazing book. Sequel is great too.
kiddico 6y ago
Hahahaha I was just thinking that, having walked back from the bathroom where that book is currently my "Shiterature Literature" I'm 85 pages in, so the sexist tones are there... but not in full force (yet, by the sounds of it). Portia's note on the male spiders always thinking about fear was... interesting. But also useful insight at the time lol.
shostack 6y ago
I love how regularly I'm seeing this series pop up. I've loved both his books in this series and hope for several more. A movie or TV series would be amazing.

Raphmedia 6y ago

Out of topic... This book is really expensive as a hardcover! I had to look around to make sure it's not a glitch. It goes for $180-$374 on amazon.com and $630-$1222. $800 on ebay.com even! Woah. I'm guessing it's out of print and extremely popular?

mrlonglong 6y ago
Get it on kindle, I have it and it's brilliant. Edit for typo
- Raphmedia 6y ago
  I usually try to get Sci-Fi books in hardcover (that's how I read all my first Sci-Fi and it stuck with me)... I'll make an exception for that one!
ebg13 6y ago
Likely not because of extreme popularity. Publishers almost always switch very quickly from hardcover to only printing paperback editions because the market isn't willing to pay the additional cost. It's worse for weird scifi novels because the market is small, so the hardcover run for this was probably tiny.
markatto 6y ago
There are many SciFi titles that are extremely expensive in hardcover these days. There is a lot of amazon volatility, so I tend to use price watch sites, but some also consistently stay in the hundreds of dollars (for example, the original printing of Hyperion). I suspect that this is because the genre used to sell badly in hardcover and many SciFi fans have come into money over the last few decades, but I'd be curious to hear from somebody who understands the market better.
NickNameNick 6y ago
Amazon prices for uncommon/rare items can get wierd. There was an issue a while ago with resellers that would look for items on amazon, and create a duplicate listing with a slightly higher price. If they got an order, they could buy the item from another amazon seller, and onsell the item for a profit. This broke in a predictably amusing way when there were only a few vendors for an item, and all of them were doing the same thing - each vendor updating their price to be higher than the others, quickly spiralling up to ludicrous values.

the_af 6y ago

Interesting that you mention a sci-fi book, because I was reminded of James Tiptree Jr's masterpiece "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death", which also tackles the subject of spider-like aliens and their strange lifecycles and mating rituals (it seems Tiptree -- aka Alice Sheldon -- actually knew her spiders, because her aliens perform some of the antics described in this article).

ajxs 6y ago
Thank you for mentioning this and reminding me of this story. Tiptree's writing is amazing. The short story can be read for free here: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/ http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-t...

rwbcxrz 6y ago

That book was a delightful surprise. I never expected that the chapters about giant, intelligent spiders to be the parts that kept me hooked. I'm not sure I could have cared less about what happened to the humans.

bitwize 6y ago
I love me some Pham Nuwen, but in A Deepness in the Sky the giant, intelligent spiders were the coolest characters in the whole damn book. That book will give you a new perspective on the term "weaponized autism".
- shagie 6y ago
  That book also has another bit in there with the programmer archeologist - digging through centuries of technical debt to find ways to make ancient code work in different ways. My favorite passage in the book: > There were programs here that had been written five thousand years ago, before Humankind ever left Earth. The wonder of it — the horror of it, Sura said — was that unlike the useless wrecks of Canberra’s past, these programs still worked! And via a million million circuitous threads of inheritance, many of the oldest programs still ran in the bowels of the Qeng Ho system. Take the Traders’ method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex — and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth’s moon. But if you looked at it still more closely… the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind’s first computer operating systems.
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    The moon landing is such a better modern epoch than Jan 1 1970.
  - ncrmro 6y ago
    Commented this earlier The author will actually respond to you his email domain is the name of the ISP from the first book! His books are easily top 3 for me now

freddier 6y ago

If hyper evolved kinda-realistic spiders are your thing and their first contact with a highly evolved humanity, I strongly suggest Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky". It also introduced to me the concept of software archeologists.

ncrmro 6y ago
He will actually respond to you his email domain is the name of the ISP from the first book! His books are easily top 3 for me now
nitrogen 6y ago
The Zones of Thought series is fantastic, and A Deepness in the Sky may be my favorite sci-fi novel of the many dozens on my shelf. Highly recommend, and I wish there were more novels set in that universe.

hobby-coder-guy 6y ago

Amazing book. Sequel is great too.

kiddico 6y ago

Hahahaha I was just thinking that, having walked back from the bathroom where that book is currently my "Shiterature Literature" I'm 85 pages in, so the sexist tones are there... but not in full force (yet, by the sounds of it). Portia's note on the male spiders always thinking about fear was... interesting. But also useful insight at the time lol.

shostack 6y ago

I love how regularly I'm seeing this series pop up. I've loved both his books in this series and hope for several more. A movie or TV series would be amazing.