Apple BooksBooks like Children of Time
For unfamiliar intelligence, species learning to understand each other and science fiction that changes the scale of human problems.
For understanding a nonhuman intelligence
Apple BooksProject Hail Mary
Shares the challenge of understanding unfamiliar intelligence, but builds cooperation through one scientist’s experiments and an immediate mission to save Earth.
The difference: More jokes, hands on problem solving and a tighter timescale.
Explore this bookFor humanity’s assumptions about another species
Apple BooksEnder's Game
Shares humanity confronting another intelligent species, but approaches that conflict through a child’s military training and adults’ fears of invasion.
The difference: More individual psychology and warfare; less evolutionary scope.
Explore this bookFor an ecology that resists human categories
Apple BooksAnnihilation
Shares encounters with living systems that unsettle human assumptions, but follows a small expedition into an altered landscape rather than generations of civilizations.
The difference: More uncanny uncertainty and less explanation of the science.
Explore this bookSources and book details
Collected’s editorial comparisons, informed by the descriptions and reading profiles.
About Children of Time