Children of Ruin
Adrian Tchaikovsky
The direct sequel continues the spider-and-human storyline, but it is a different volume in the series, so it is listed only as a reminder that more follows the same world.
11 books to read next
Books Like Children of Time
If you loved Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Children of Time follows two threads: a terraforming project that seeds a planet with uplifted monkeys, and the survivors of a human crew who arrive there much later. Readers love its sweeping scope, its serious take on evolution, intelligence and first contact, and the way it gives non-human minds real interiority. The pace is steady and absorbing, with science grounded in plausible biology and a tone that is hopeful without being sentimental.
Evolution and nonhuman minds
Blindsight
Peter Watts, Peter Watts
Like Children of Time, it asks what intelligence means when it is not human, using a first-contact crew and a biologically rigorous approach to alien minds.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood
Its interest in engineered life and humanity's ecological mistakes echoes the book's hard-edged look at what people do to the worlds and species they reshape.
Same sweeping scope
Red Mars
Kim Stanley Robinson
A long, detailed account of humans settling and remaking another planet, with the same patient attention to engineering, politics and the cost of colonisation.
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu
Like Children of Time, it spans generations and turns a cosmic-scale premise into a story about how civilisations fail or survive when they meet something unknown.
Seveneves
Neal Stephenson
A large-scale survival story that follows humanity across centuries after a catastrophe, with the same interest in how ordinary people adapt to radically new conditions.
Smart, thoughtful science fiction
The Martian
Andy Weir
Shares the book's respect for practical problem-solving and real science, though its tone is much lighter and its focus is a single survivor rather than a whole species.
Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer
Its unsettling, scientifically strange environment and its interest in an alien intelligence working on its own terms will appeal to readers who valued the book's unusual perspectives.
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
A classic of thoughtful science fiction about understanding a deeply different culture and mind, handled with the same care for how biology and society shape behaviour.
Go deeper into the genre
Hyperion
Dan Simmons
A structured, ambitious space epic with a range of narrators and big ideas about evolution and humanity's future, matching the book's appetite for scope.
Dune
Frank Herbert
A foundational work of long-form science fiction about ecology, adaptation and a civilisation shaped by a hostile world, appealing to readers who enjoyed the book's worldbuilding.
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