Favourite Quotes

“empathy - the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people” - p. 598

Short Summary

  • this book switches through 2 different plots that eventually converge

Holsten Plot (the humans)

  • starts off in a spaceship led by this female scientist Dr Avrana Kern. She wants humans to became space-faring but some people at home think that it’s wrong and humans should stick to earth
  • one of her people is about to blow the ship up cause he’s part of the anti-space movement. The scientist escapes on an escape pod and goes into cryo sleep
    • she is orbiting a terraformed planet that she planned to send monkeys to along with her nanovirus. But the monkeys die in the explosion
  • fast forward 2000 years and another ship (Gilgamesh) hears a distress signal from the scientists ship
    • The Gilgamesh was a ship that was sent with the last of the humans
    • at this point, the civilization Dr Kern was from has died off a long time ago. The new humans refer to it as “the Old Empire”
  • these new humans had to escape earth cause it was dying. They come across Dr Kern’s world
  • Dr Kern is still there in cyrosleep with an AI watching over her planet.
  • the AI refuses to allow Gilgamesh to come close to the planet, threatening destruction
  • Gilgamesh decide to leave to a nearby star system with another potentially habitable planet
    • they go back into cyrosleep for another few hundreds years for this journey
  • this planet proves uninhabitable, so they must return to Dr Kern’s planet
  • when Holsten awakes, he sees that Gilgamesh has completely changed. Turns out their leader, Guyen, has basically created a cult and he is a god-like figure
  • eventually Guyen is defeated and Lain takes over as leader
  • at this point in time CENTURIES have gone by, most of ‘key crew’ have slept in cyro most of the time, but entire generations have been born and died on Gilgamesh
  • the humans go back to the green planet (Dr Kern’s world) and a battle ensues between spiders and humans
    • at this point the spiders are so advanced that they have space capabilities. They can get into orbit, they have space-suits, etc
    • the first thing that happens is Gilgamesh destroys Dr Kern’s satellite

Spider Plot

  • meanwhile, on Dr Kern’s planet, the nanovirus was still sent and spiders ended up taking advantage of it
  • each chapter goes over the intellectual, societal, and technological developments of the spider civilization
  • eventually they form complex institutions like tribal structures, religion (with Dr Kern’s satellite being ‘God’ or ‘The Messenger’), etc
  • Dr Kern’s consciousness is uploaded to something by the spiders, so even when Gilgamesh destroys her satellite she is still “alive”

Both plots converge:

  • during the battle, the spiders basically win and defeat most of the humans aboard Gilgamesh. The entire battle takes place on Gilgamesh
  • during the battle, the spiders come up with a brilliant idea: they’ll use a stripped down version of Dr Kern’s nano-virus and inject it in the humans so the humans can have form a bond or kin-ship with the spiders
  • the nano-virus works! They land Gilgamesh on the planet and the remaining humans have a positive outlook on the spiders, they view them as fellow “people”
  • the last few pages of the book (p. 597 onwards) takes place several generations after the end of the battle and follows the great-great grand-daughter of Lain and Holston, Helena
  • at this point, spiders and humans live together in harmony and even work together
  • they build a new spacecraft: Voyager. They are about to embark on a mission in space to investigate the source of a signal/message they received (this will probably be the plot of book 2)

Analysis

Notes and Quotes

Truth

  • “That is a mystery that cannot be comprehended by those outside Temple” - p. 343
    • Context: Portia tells this to Bianca, who has been dabbling in heresy, specifically using lenses to find out the ‘mysteries’ surrounding “The Messenger”
    • Analysis: this is basically the crux of religion. You are labelled a heretic when expressing ideas too complex for the masses. It reminds me of Alamut and Ibn Sabbah. There are those who are dumb, the ones who must be fed the fairytales of religion, the followers. Then there are the leaders, the ones who search for truth (and ultimately realize there is no truth, but that’s off topic)
      • also reminds me of the discussions of perception in Alamut. Bianca has now perceived “The Messenger” in a more clear way and discovered some truth behind it, a truth that the masses are ignorant of

Other

  • “empathy - the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people” - p. 598
    • all it took was empathy via the nano-virus for the humans to recognize the spiders as fellow people and to stop the violence
    • empathy really is a strong force.

Reflections

Was a really interesting read. You get to experience “first-hand” how a primitive spider society becomes an advanced one. The author does a great job explaining this societal evolution. They go from being typical spiders to having space-faring capabilities. You see them develop complex societal institutions like religion, etc.

On the other hand, the book follows the plot aboard a spaceship containing the last of the human race. The way they seem to devolve despite already being advanced is remarkable. They descend into chaos, the leader develops a cult following, the people are brainwashed, etc

There’s a nice contrast: spiders went from being primitive to advanced, while the humans went from advanced to primitive!