Children of Memory
by Adrian Tchaikovsky · first published 2022
41% recommend50% neutral9% critical
Why HN recommends it
The third book in a far-future series about uplifted animals. It poses philosophical questions about consciousness and sentience, and suits fans of smart, idea-driven science fiction.
Common criticism: Some find it repetitive and the ending weak, with one critic calling it not a good book.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Sequel to Children of Ruin. On Imir, Captain Holt founded a hopeful new colony on an empty world. But generations later, his descendants are struggling to survive. As harvests worsen and equipment fails, strangers appear in a town where everyone knows their neighbour. Now the community fears it's being observed - that they're not alone. And they'd be right. Explorers from the stars have come, in secret, to help. Confident of their superior technology, they begin to study their long-lost cousins from Earth. Yet the visitors aren't the only watchers. When the starfarers discover the scale
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Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (third book in the children of time series) The children of time series books all describe a far away future in which some animals have evolved to be about equally intelligent as…
on “Ask HN: Can you think of a sci-fi novel that feels like ChatGPT now?” ↗…incredible, kept going, but the ending felt like both a fizzle as well as a cliff-hanger for the next book. I'm glad I read it, but I wish it had a clear conclusion it wanted to reach. Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Children of Memory" delivers more of the great philosophical questions & answers about the nature of consciousness and personhood that the previous books did, A+. No idea where he could possibly go from there, but if he…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗…Children of Ruin had more of a horror focus to it and left me with much more icky feelings than the brilliant positivity I felt at the end of the first book. It was still well done, though. I agree that Children of Memory is not very good, mostly because it repeats itself so much. That could've been handled differently while still advancing the plot. I LOVE the overall concept, and the author's skills describing Gothi…
on “Sins of the Children (Adrian Tchaikovsky)” ↗…consciousness, and then you quickly dig yourself into a deep hole, which is why I can't say anything but "meh" to someone who is so keen to go on the record to say "absolutely not". Coincidentally I just read "Children of Memory", which was published in 2022 and I wonder if the advent of LLMs had any influence on Adrian Tchaikovsky's conception of the Ravens? The Ravens are excellent analysts but they themselves insist that…
on “No, Artificial Intelligence is not Conscious - Ted Chiang” ↗If you like the idea of smart corvids, Adrian Tchaikovsky's scifi novel "The Children of Memory" is a fun read. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60850767-children-of-...
on “Who's the Smartest Corvid?” ↗He’s got a third now, Children of Memory - it also is quite good. The whole series is really fantastic, although I think I enjoyed the second book with the octopi the most.
on “Why octopuses are building small “cities” off the coast of Australia (2017)” ↗On a related note: Tchiakovsky's novel Children of Memory has some characters of dubious sentience that almost seem based on LLMs. Book is 3rd in a trilogy, but anyone who likes Chiang will like the series.
on “Understand by Ted Chiang” ↗…know why Children of Ruin came to my mind instead of Children of Time, but I agreed that the first book is more focused in the spiders. I was told that there is already a third book that end that serie, Children of Memory, gotta read this one! ...
on “Spider Uses a Light Show to Trick Eager Male Fireflies into Its Web” ↗And then read Children of Ruin, Children of Memory and finally Children of Strife. Every book of the series is amazing in its own way.
on “What's Earth's dominant species by mass?” ↗…intelligence, I think we need to have a multi-factor understanding of intelligence. Too many people think that intelligence means doing well on tests (this was my view as I grew up). In the SciFi book "Children of Memory", Tchaikovsky at least splits intelligence into reasoning and recall. People also talk about system size and working set. Persistence is another thing I've come to view differently. The mind is willing…
on “Part two of Grant Sanderson's video with Terry Tao on the cosmic distance ladder” ↗…characters who are, you know, young, "nubile," and hyper-sexual, the remaining roster is, I think, solid. Even the characters who are archetypes worked for me. (Edit: sorry, I confused Children of Ruin and Children of Memory.) And I find myself agreeing with your assessment of Children of Ruin. In some ways I think it's not well constructed, sort of stumbling through the mystery, winding up much longer than it needed to…
on “Jumping Spiders” ↗In Children of Memory, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the corvid mind is a plot device, particularly their approach to recognition of novelty, organization into memories/archives, and problem solving by combining those. The book…
on “Crows can recognize geometric regularity” ↗I concur on "really good" but have to disagree on the "series" part. Children of Time is a remarkable book, one of the best science fiction stories in a very long time. Children of Ruin is ... okay. Children of Memory is not a good book, IMO. Both of these suffer from the same mysticism-used-to-spin-up-a-red-reset-button plot device plague that fundamentally guts Xenocide. Nowhere as bad as that, of course, but the…
on “Sins of the Children (Adrian Tchaikovsky)” ↗…yourself. Both my wife and I have lived frugal lives at various times[0] and I feel much happier with the degree of spending we have now. I'm reminded of the intelligent corvids in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Memory where the sum of the two birds forms a being with intelligence in a way that the individual segments do not. The frugality is a deeply embedded piece of our being and undoing it seems hard, but together…
on “Maladaptive Frugality” ↗I can't believe they left out Gothi and Gethli in Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
on “An investigation into the state of corvid–human relations” ↗