Children of Time
The 10th Anniversary Edition of the Arthur C. Clarke Award winning science fiction novel
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pan Macmillan
Published:13th Nov '25
Should be back in stock very soon

A race for survival among the stars . . . Humanity's last survivors escaped earth's ruins to find a new home. But when they find it, can their desperation overcome its dangers?
Humanity is overrated.
The tenth anniversary edition of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s critically acclaimed Children of Time – an epic story of humanity’s battle for survival on a terraformed planet. Winner of the 30th anniversary Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel.
Contains the short story ‘Bearable’ exclusive to this edition.
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 planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind’s worst nightmare.
Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?
Continue the journey with Children of Ruin, Children of Memory and Children of Strife.
* * *
Praise for Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Children of Time is a joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human’ - Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls.
‘No one has an an imagination like Adrian Tchaikovsky’ – Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific
‘Tchaikovsky is the break-out star of contemporary British SF’ – The Guardian
Brilliant science fiction and far out world building. -- James McAvoy
No one has an imagination like Adrian Tchaikovsky -- Jim Al-Khalili, presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific
Children of Time is a joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human. -- Patrick Ness, author of A Monster Calls
Has a fabulous sense of scale that only someone as talented as Adrian Tchaikovsky can pull off . . . Very much recommended. -- Peter F. Hamilton, author of Pandora's Star and EXODUS: The Archimedes Engine
I swear the man is some kind of genius -- Peter Watts, author of Blindsight
This is superior stuff, tackling big themes - gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness - with brio * Financial Times *
I cannot recommend it enough. It's a helluva first contact story, and that's only like its 5th most interesting feature! -- Ezra Klein, New York Times columnist
Tchaikovsky is the break-out star of contemporary British SF * The Guardian *
A huge talent, writing at the peak of his powers * New Scientist *
One of the most interesting and accomplished writers in speculative fiction -- Christopher Paolini, author of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars
All underpinned by great ideas. And it is crisply modern - but with the sensibility of classic science fiction. Asimov or Clarke might have written this -- Stephen Baxter, author of Proxima, on Children of Ruin
- Winner of The Arthur C. Clarke Award 2016 (UK)
ISBN: 9781035076192
Dimensions: 198mm x 132mm x 40mm
Weight: 450g
672 pages