Tchaikovsky's octopuses

[asakiyume]

Children of Ruin is the sequel to Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time. If you liked Children of Time, I think it's a safe bet to say you'd like Children of Ruin.

I'm not going to talk about writing craft or the plot or even what I liked best. Instead I'm going to talk about the octopuses. Portiid spiders were what came into their own in Children of Time; it's octopuses in this book.

Tchaikovsky does a breathtaking job conveying such an alien form of intelligence--an individual octopus isn't really a centralized consciousness the way a person is. Three components play a role in each octopus's personhood--their crown, which is their central brain; their reach, which is the intelligence in each of their arms (which in this story are sort of the R&D and operations aspect to the crown's executive function); and their guise, which is the play of mood and emotion they display on their skin. You know how a person can say one thing with their mouth and another with their facial expression? Well that's an octopus, only more so. And then imagine that meanwhile your hands are doing calculations, examining data, scenario planning--and communicating, independently of your awareness, with the hands of other people. And imagine that that communication can affect how you feel and think about things.

It's such a different way of thinking, but I really believed in it, could imagine it.

And as time has gone by since I finished the book, it's come to me that human communities are like octopuses. Our guises are our expressive cultures--our songs and TV shows and architecture and so on. Our crowns are the voices among us, institutional or individual, that speak for the community. And our reaches are the various groups in society actually doing things, figuring out things, providing things. The reaches of one community talk to the reaches of other communities, and that affects what the crown ends up expressing. And meanwhile Facebook and Twitter memes and TV and radio advertisements pick up and express lightning fast the mood and emotion of communities--those are our guises.

Wittingly or unwittingly, I think Tchaikovsky must have been drawing on this when he created the octopuses. It's what makes their style of thought and interaction relatable--we do think like this, but in the aggregate rather than individually.

Just like human communities have a hard time rallying to a common purpose, so do the octopuses. But it's not impossible for either the octopuses or for us.

... Anyway, that's me in my role as reach, communicating with you other reaches out there.

Comments

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[minoanmiss]

I think I need to read this book, not least because every so often I write from an octopoid POV.

Re: *

[asakiyume]

He strains a bit writing the octopus parts, in the sense that it's very hard for him to create an octopus character as a character--he's too busy explaining how things work, and that can sometimes can be exhausting. And yet the overall effect is marvelous. (And some of the octopus characters really do come through as characters.)

[sartorias]

The book sounds so fascinating, and this post just adds to it.

[asakiyume]

I'm still vibrating with it, weeks after reading it.

[osprey_archer]

I've been resisting this spider/octopus/God knows what other unlikely animal books, but you and rachelmanija are really wearing down that resistance. Uuuuugh I don't need a new series...but maybe I really do need a new series???

[asakiyume]

🎶There are only two in this series 🎶

(I know Rachel has talked about other books by him; I've only read these ones)

If anything, I might like the second book even more than the first.

BUT. There are some elements of the storytelling--like when he's going through the early stages of the spider evolution in the first book--that is more like reading worldbuilding than a story, and so you have to enjoy that, or you'll be tearing out your hair.

[rachelmanija]

They're soooooo gooooooood.

[rachelmanija]

I love this book so much and I knew you would love it too. The octopi are so great. That bit where everyone's trying to communicate with Paul and his interpretation is a million things and "and also very horny." LOLOLOL.

I love your idea that human communities equal one octopus.

[asakiyume]

If anything, I loved this even more than the first one, and that's saying a lot because I *really loved* the first one. When it came to the climax scene between [spoiler] and [spoiler], that speech that was like the 1980s Wargames movie climax only if you were talking to the Borg, only if the Borg only wanted to be everyone's friend and go on an adventure. OMG. I was in floods of tears just like at the end of the first book.

There was something so weird about reading this *now*, when it came to [spoiler] about Damascus.

I really appreciated both Tchaikovsky's faith in the possibility of a good future and a good outcomes and also his clear-eyed view of the possibility of a terribly terribly bad one. I so rarely see this! It's not happy endings pulled out of a hat after acres of grimdark; it's hope all along, but also people's (or octopuses', or even spiders') *natures* and how they eff things up. I love his Carl Sagan-like faith in science, a mind of curiosity, empathy and a desire to connect--I love how these are always at the roots of salvation.

[ivy]

You have totally sold me on this book, which I wasn't going to read before. (I liked "Children of Time", but the title of this one made me think it was going to be bleaker than it would be interesting, and I just wasn't up for a depressing read right now.) Thanks for the thought-provoking nudge!

[asakiyume]

It is not bleaker! There are some bleak moments, and I have to warn that actually--weirdly--there is a pandemic, but if you trust in the author, your trust will be rewarded the way it was in the first book. It's not a retread! But it's got similar elements, and it's *heart* is similar.

[amaebi]

Wow, I think them octopi. Thank you!

Also your analogy, which reminds me of 1 Corinthians 12: 12-26.

[asakiyume]

Yes! It's like that passage, very much.