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Adrian Tchaikovsky's sci-fi book Children of Time has a pretty cool take on the future of ant wars. I'm interviewing him in a couple weeks to talk about ecology
by ryanblakeley 3y ago
Adrian Tchaikovsky's sci-fi book Children of Time has a pretty cool take on the future of ant wars. I'm interviewing him in a couple weeks to talk about ecology in science fiction. If anyone has a suggestion for a question I'd love to hear it.
- laylower 3y agoHi Ryan, This is really cool. I read the trilogy, time, ruin, memory in 5-6 sessions and I loved it. Questions I would ask: 1) Where does he draw his inspiration from? 2) Should we expect to continue seeing Adrian putting together such amazing books so prolifically? 3) Does he believe that the outcome of his trilogy would be the most probable? 4) Besides arthropods do any other species stand a chance against primates?
- ssnri 3y agoI enjoyed that book. After I read it I made my bio on dating apps: “Active, creative, hairy; but enough about Portia spiders.” My question is: how successful do you think that’s been for me as a straight man?
- gryn 3y agoDepends on your metric for success I guess. - number of matches ? Probably not. - number of fellow fans ? Probably.
- ryanblakeley 3y agoIs sexual cannibalism off the table?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- snapcaster 3y agoIt depends on how physically attractive you are obviously, that variable confounds everything people say about dating apps and what works or doesn't
- ssnri 3y agoI go to yoga studios and the instructors hit on me. Still have a mostly shit time with apps. Not zero dates, but going out and doing things in the real world is a much better strategy. Being attractive is probably enough for women, not men though.
- lukan 3y ago"Being attractive is probably enough for women, not men though. " That is valid only for a certain subset of humanity.
- Jemaclus 3y agoYou said "book" (singular), and I just wanted to let you know it's actually a trilogy, so there are more if you want to read them!
- dmix 3y agoI'm not sure talking about hairy spiders in your opening sentence will work wonders with women.
- Loughla 3y agoIt won't work until it works really well with one specific woman.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoI'm not sure women are as homogeneous as you're suggesting.
- ssnri 3y agoI guess I’ll have to fall back on my oversized genitals
- tomcam 3y agoCan't unsee this
- zabzonk 3y agonot to mention ant-based computers hosting super-human level AIs, which seems highly unlikely. but it did work for terry pratchet.
- ssnri 3y ago[flagged]
- whichfawkes 3y agoIt's totally solved, first class is just too expensive for most people. The future is not evenly distributed.
- lynguist 3y agoWhy not bunk beds like in a sleeper car? They don’t take up more space, and let you have a good night’s rest.
- SeanAnderson 3y agoLove this book! I wrote Adrian after reading it and asked for permission to build a game inspired by it and received his blessing (https://i.imgur.com/JWwNMR4.png https://i.imgur.com/JWwNMR4.png) :) (slight spoilers, FYI) https://ant.care/ https://ant.care/ https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants It's my first game, so it's going pretty slowly, but the goal is to have the player fill the role of the Eliza/Kern hybrid. You send commands to your pet ant colony once-per-day when orbiting the planet gives you line-of-sight. The act of caring for the pet gives you a renewed sense of purpose and a reason to care for yourself and is a mechanism for helping undue the insanity and create personal growth. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the game mechanics will look like (if you have suggestions, I'm all ears!), but I took a stab at some creative writing to build up the plot a bit. It feels very Children of Time-y and some might enjoy reading bits of it: Half-Assed Technical Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ACH1XLCn7hkKz2dhuL1c_nxbGOTZdUY6jJPsY_xA6I/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ACH1XLCn7hkKz2dhuL1c_nx... Freeform Creative Writing of Scripted Game Intro: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wET9mWaYae_GMqbm8n37UoNFKs5Y_USuDQqFTgHHKHc/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wET9mWaYae_GMqbm8n37UoNF... --- Regarding the interview, I would love to know more about his process for deciding which aspects of an animal's ecology/behavior to represent in his fiction. Tynan Sylvester (creator of RimWorld, a popular video game) wrote this article called The Simulation Dream, https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-simulation-dream https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/the-simulation-dream, and I think about it a lottt. One concept Tynan stresses for creating a rich and engaging simulation is to "Choose the minimum representation that supports the kinds of stories you want to generate." I would love to know why Adrian chose to give ants/spiders/(octopi..) the behaviors they have throughout his series and, if he considered other behaviors that he ultimately omitted, what his thought process was for ruling those other behaviors out.
- arc-in-space 3y agoThis is super random but for a brief time I happened to be in a WoW guild with Adrian, did some raiding together. Really should get around to reading Children of Time at some point.
- mcmoor 3y ago
- ScotterC 3y agoRe: Ecology in Scifi The interactions between Ants and Spiders gave me some associations with Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy (aka Lilith's Brood). Particularly, I loved how both were painting an alternative evolutionary path but 'grafting on' to existing notions and understandings of what we know to be true in species development. I wish there was more of this! I felt Children of Ruin was weaker in this regard, maybe because the conflict for the species was absent. The Spiders vs Ants and then Spiders vs Humans being conflicts which created a fanstatic narrative to explain alternative solutions to prisoner's dilemma (spiders choosing to co-opt their enemies' strengths or in Lilith's brood, Oankali being a hybrid of alien/human). I'd be curious to learn if there's more examples in zoology/ecology of species choosing this route instead of competition every time - and also, what factors might impact this.
- grimgrin 3y agoI'll piggyback this sci-fi thread to link the beginning of Phase IV, because I rather like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTv4WYHsncQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTv4WYHsncQ The plot: "After a spectacular and mysterious cosmic event, ants of different species undergo rapid evolution, develop a cross-species hive mind, and build seven strange towers with geometrically perfect designs in the Arizona desert."
- romaintailhurat 3y agoLove all the scifi recommendations in this thread!
- wonderwonder 3y agoI really liked Children of Time and Ruin. I could not get through Children of memory and its very rare for me to abandon a book. It just seemed very different than the prior ones for me. Maybe I will give it another shot. With that said I loved his Final Architecture series and just finished the final book in it.
- bebopfunk 3y agoIf you’re interested in ecology in science fiction you should give Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez a read. It’s not about ants specifically, but they play a large roll in a way (I don’t want to spoil too much and it’s been long enough since I read it I can’t remember what’s a spoiler or not). It’s a good read.
- fritzo 3y agoQuestion for Adrian: All your sentient beings are animal-like: they are discrete animals that move around, or at weirdest are a ruinous sludge that moves around and assumes the form of animals. But might we see mycelium networks as sentient? Zoubin Ghahramani argues that intelligence is about motion, that the sea squirt digests its own brain as soon as it settles down. But might there be intelligent communities of static individuals that nevertheless form dynamic networks?
- bellorap 3y agoCould you link to where Zoubin Ghahramani talks about that? Curious but can’t find it in my web search
- fritzo 3y agoSorry, I don't see anything public. I remember a particular talk he gave in maybe 2018 or 2019 while he was at Uber. IIRC the talk started roughly: <shows picture> Do any of you know what this animal is? This is a sea squirt. What's interesting about the sea squirt is that it has a brain --but for only part of its life. It starts out mobile, seeking a place to live. But once it finds a place, it fixes itself to a rock and digests its brain. What this shows us is the purpose of intelligence: it is motion. Intelligence is about moving things around. <continues to argue that AI is central to Uber's mission...>
- renjimen 3y agoOlaf Stapledon has two sci fi works that incorporate many ecological ideas into his vision of a future history of the human species (Last and First Men) and his ideas for possible alien life (Star Maker). They are both incredible works of human imagination
- abrookewood 3y agoCan you please let everyone know where this interview will be available?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]