As the sun advances into it's next stage the Earth has grown hotter. Plants and animals are evolving rapidly to survive, and as far as the the city of Shadripar knows, it's the last vestige of human civilization surrounded by a hostile jungle. Stefan Advani is an academic turned rebel against the corrupt government of a dying civilization. We meet Stefan as he's being transported to a prison in the jungle where it's expected he will spend a short miserable life, but thanks to his education and tentative friendship with a new guard, he has the opportunity to translate the last work of a famous scholar who died in the prison. Everyone knows there's no point attempting to escape because the jungle outside is deadlier than inside, but Stefan is determined to turn his new knowledge into not just an opportunity to live, but to live a better life.

Children of Time won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel and it is easy to see why. The story is rather unique despite the fact that the sci-fi concepts within are familiar ones: accelerated evolution, humanity seeking a new home after destroying Earth, cryostasis for long space journeys, and uploading one's persona into a computer, to name just a few. The story takes place in two main locales - a planet that has been terraformed by humanity for the sole purpose of running an accelerated evolution experiment and an ark ship that contains 500,000 humans in cryostasis looking for a new home. It is the evolutionary side of the story that is very unique and that makes things all the more interesting when the two threads finally converge.