Alexander Kokhno, Period 2, 4/20/23

Socio-political Consciousness

I have recently begun to read a book by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time. I have only read the first 2 chapters, but the introduction, or more specifically, the events preceding the main meat of the plot have more than enough content to talk about.

The story begins with a terraforming team over a newly terraformed world. We get a monologue about what appears to be the lead director of the entire project, having an extremely egoistic internal monologue. “This is where we become gods” yet calls her fellow species “...you tedious little primitives …. Midgets, lots and lots of midgets” She aims to colonize a thousand worlds with monkeys infected with a forced evolution virus to essentially create a superior human race, each per planet. They (rather she, for her trusted team are naught but tools to her) are to leave a single man behind in a cryo state to one day awaken like a god to guide the evolved monkies on the path to technological galactic ascension. Unfortunately for her, that man turns out to be an agent of NUN, which is essentially a conservative alliance with the goal of human superiority - In other words those who aren't willing to see themselves replaced by virus-laden apes, but also actively make Earth the shithole it is by continuing 21st-century policies. In part of a coordinated attack, the man detonates the spaceship’s reactor core, taking down the ships with all hands on deck, all but the director who locked her colleagues and escaped on the cryo pod. We later learn that humanity sterilized itself in the conflict and all the terraformed colonies got eradicated with a released computer virus.

Both factions can be critiqued, but I find the most fault in the terraforming fanatical eugenics theocracy. It quite clearly ignores the human aspect to levels of absurdity. The NUN are described by them as a menace but they themselves fan the flames of tension. As Earth is dying, they want to utilize resources to create a home for monkeys, not to save existing humans. In fact, it can be compared to the German government stealing the taxpayer’s Euro to bail out the Greeks. The Technocracy clearly makes no efforts to come to a compromise but rather seems specifically ignore humans in favour of extreme eugenics. Additionally, the director is a self-styled tech-cultist leader who clearly shows how little she cares about existing humans who aren't her perfected experiments.

While definitely the correct way to approach interstellar travel, the policy of humans first by the NUN is nothing more than a rallying cry, a glue of sorts. Rather than a unified organization, it's a coalition of everyone from religious fanatics to terrorists, nationalists, fanatic xenophobes to government officials clinging to power. One might even say it runs on the fear of the masses and the blood of martyrs. The policy of humans first is little more than a fix to the symptoms, not the ailment - core societal and political issues. You can even say its an American dream of sorts; to consume resources while spreading out into new land - terraformed planets in this case. Additionally, rampant technophobia in its ranks most likely cut off opportunities for rapprochement with the technocracy, not to mention limiting their own ability to fix Earth. Oh, if only they had some Xenos to blame rather than fellow countrymen!