I love a good science fiction story, and in this book, Adrian Tchaikovsky is in top form. Here is a crisp, intelligent, engaging, and well-written space opera—one of the finest in a generation.
In it, Tchaikovsky shows off his visionary grip on future human possibilities, his biological understanding of evolution, and how it might be artificially accelerated—in spiders, for God’s sake!
Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel
Adrian Tchaikovksy's critically acclaimed, stand-alone novel Children of Time, is the epic story of humanity's battle for survival on a terraformed planet.
Who will inherit this new Earth?
The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.
But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the…
Gary Lachman, one-time bass player for the rock band Blondie, has since become a latter-day Colin Wilson, writing with amazing skill and insight on a wide range of topics, including consciousness.
There are many books on this topic these days, but this one is unique in its thoughtful exploration of several influential theorists often overlooked or forgotten in the fray of discussions and books on this topic. Here, for example, Lachman delves deeply into the important contributions of Jean Gebser, Owen Barfield, and many others.
This is an essential addition to any collection of books on consciousness.
-- What is consciousness like? -- How can consciousness be achieved?
Gary Lachman argues that consciousness is not a result of neurons and molecules, but is actually responsible for them. Meaning, he proposes, is not imported from the outer world, but rather creates the world. He shows that consciouness is a living, evolving presence whose development can be traced through different historical periods. Concentrating on the late nineteenth-century onwards, Lachman exposes the 'secret history' of consciousness through thinkers such as P. D. Ouspensky, Rudolf Steiner, and Colin Wilson, as well as more mainstream philosophers like Henri Bergson, William James, Owen…
At the age of 98, James Lovelock, known for the Gaya Hypothesis and one of the great minds of our age, has given us a remarkably visionary glimpse of the future of humanity and its situation here on Earth.
He argues that we are now coming to the end of the human-dominated Anthropocene age and moving into the dawn of a new era, the novacene. In this rapidly approaching future of hyperintelligent machines that think ten thousand times faster than humans, these new “beings” will take the leadership in managing the Earth’s ecological as well as other systems.
This is not a threat to human existence, however, as depicted in science fiction scenarios, because the coming hyperintelligent machine minds will need the planetary cooling provided by a healthy Earth as much as we do.
So, humanity will continue in a healthy relationship with the new machine beings.
This is a remarkably accessible read, a fine visionary book, and for once, predicts an optimistic future for humankind and the Earth.
A clear and deep exploration of the nature of
consciousness, endorsed by Ken Wilber as “The finest book on consciousness
in modern times, bar none. I give it my very highest recommendation.”
