Everything that's happened in the Children of Time series so far

Avrana Kern survived the destruction of her terraforming station by putting herself into suspension, merging her mind with an artificial intelligence. She expects to wake to a world of sapient, civilized monkeys, but while the uplift virus was delivered, the monkeys were not. Instead, what evolves on her world is a species of jumping spider, the Portiids. Over long ages they crawl from the stone age to the space age, initially seeing her orbiting satellite as their god, later making contact and incorporating her into their ant-based technology. At the same time, an ark-ship from Earth, the Gilgamesh, is bringing a human population to take up residence on Kern’s world. On board, Classicist Holsten Mason and Engineer Isa Lain wake repeatedly from cold sleep to watch the ship and the humans aboard it  degenerate to infighting, cults and xenophobia. When they reach the world to find it infested with spiders, they react with violence, but the Portiids turn the human-made uplift virus on them, creating a bridge of empathy between the two species to allow for communication and cooperation. The
humans are given space for a new home on the world, but more than that, the two species are
able to unite with the dream of exploring further worlds and seeking the rest of the terraforming project to see what else survives.

Back in the age of the terraformers, one of Kern’s teams discovered a system with two
habitable worlds. The ocean world of (NAME) and the world of Nod, which already had a
complex alien biosphere. (NAME), the expedition leader, decided to explore Nod, and left his
subordinate Senkovi to work on the terraforming, which Senkovi took as an excuse to uplift
his beloved octopuses to sapience to help with the work. When the shutdown virus struck,
Senkovi’s octopuses prove the fluke that preserves at least some of the team, but they are left
with no functioning project and no home to return to. On Nod, (NAME’s) team encounter –
are infected by – a sapient slime-mould like colony organise that sets about joyously
exploring the human body, eager for new experiences in a way that is catastrophic for the
people involved. The Nodan organism has a vast ability to store information within its
individual cells, and ‘learns’ the personalities of its former hosts by encysting itself in their
brains. Senkovi cuts off all contact with Nod and lives out his life with his octopuses in orbit
over (NAME). However the Nodan life reaches their world long after he dies, with disastrous

consequences, leaving the octopuses living in orbit. Far later, a ship of humans and Portiids
arrives, following a trail of radio signals. They encounter both the Nodan organism and the
octopus civilization, clash with both but are at last able to initiate communication with the
latter. An instance of Avrana Kern – now existing as the chief artificial intelligence within
most of the Portiid ships – is able to reach the Nodan lifeform and make it see that if it
devours and incorporates all life outside itself – which it is capable of doing – it will be left
without stimulation and the “adventure” it seeks, which realisation allows it to enter into
more negotiated and consensual interactions with other species and individuals. Humans,
Portiids, octopuses and the Nodan life are now a loose coalition, ready to exploit octopus
technology that is just developing a method of faster-than-light travel.

The ark ship Enkidu suffers serious damage arriving at its destination world, that they name
Imir. They decamp to the planet’s surface and set up a colony under Captain (NAME), doing
the best they can with limited resources. Children are born, the first of whom is the girl, Liff.
Over the generations the colony begins to fail, small miscalculations becoming greater and
greater problems until they face extinction. However, something strange is afoot. There are
talking animals, a witch in the woods, rumours of others where no others can be, a communal
guilt. At the same time the colony is being visited and studied by a panspecific team of
Portiids, an octopus and Miranda, a human-seeming host for the Nodan virus. They live
amongst the locals, pretending to belong, but Miranda becomes more and more confused as
to just what is going on. She relives incidents, exists at different time periods in the colony’s
history, and always there is the girl Liff. Plus the witch seems to be Avrana Kern, who is
furious with Miranda for some reason. What Miranda discovers – with the aid of the
possibly-sapient corvids (NAME) and (NAME) – is that the colony on Imir died long ago,
but discovered the presence of a vast alien machine that has been running a simulation of the
colony’s history over and over, in repeated permutations. Her presence – especially the vast
consignment of information and personalities that the Nodan lifeform represents – has thrown
this exercise out of balance, and Kern is trying to extricate her from it. After she is freed, she
learns that not only is the Imir colony dead, it was never founded. The initial shuttles crashed,
and the alien machine constructed a hypothetical colony history from the minds of those
aboard. Liff, who had become quite dear to Miranda, and helped free her, never even existed
outside the dream of the machine.

There were other, worse terraformers than Avrana Kern. There were more desperate ventures
from dying Earth than the Gilgamesh. There is another species that evolved on Kern’s World,
and wishes to see the stars. Join Cato the mantis shrimp war hero, traumatised survivor of the
god-machine Alis and their crew as they following the trail of human exploration to the world
of Marduk, terraformed in the image of a god very different to Kern. A world of impossible
orbital jungles, jealous monsters and secrets.