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Fairly well known on this site, but for those interested, some really good sci-fi authors inspired by Portia's brilliance include Peter Watts and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

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Children of Time is my favorite sci fi novel. The sequel isn't bad either, the 3rd one gets a little weird, but i thought the argument about "sentience" != "intelligence" was an interesting one. This is a prevailing theme in Blindsight by Peter Watts too, but I felt the technobabble really took away from the theme and distracted from story.

The third book of the series was my favorite thanks to those two corvid characters (the sentience versus intelligence being alluded to, for those who haven't read the book). Their little monologue (duologue? actually, monologue?) to Doctor Kern about sentience at the end of the book was so interesting.

> This is a prevailing theme in Blindsight by Peter Watts too

Portia is explicitly referenced in the sequel Echopraxia.

Indeed, but I think parent was referring to "sentience" != "intelligence" .

This reminded me of Blindsight as well. The fact that intelligence does not have to present in a way that's familiar to us is important to keep in mind.

Thank you for bringing up Children of Time... off to go get it.

And of course the classic of Sci-Fi of unusual intelligence: Solaris by Stanislaw Lem.

One reason why I wonder if communications with extraterrestrials will ever be as simple as we hope.

We struggle to communicate with our own species and other creatures that are related to us.

"If a lion could speak, we could not understand him."

Third book is a bit weird, but I enjoyed the second book more than the first one. I don't want to spoil the book for anyone but new intelligent species were shocking and more interesting than spiders. Now I have have to check what Tchaikovsky will publish this year.

I'm about two hours into the audiobook version of Dogs of War by Tchaikovsky. The narration is a little rough on the non-dog chapters, but the plot and setting is interesting so far.

I'll always recommend his Shards of Earth series for sci-fi enjoyers, I love the worldbuilding in this one. And if you're really into the intelligent animal/alternate timelines tropes, his Doors of Eden wasn't a bad read either.

I've been going through his whole filmography and haven't run into anything I've disliked yet. Much of it is in an audiobook format on your local library app.

I loved Children of Time. Made me appreciate multi-generational stories for the first time. Also, the ants!

If you haven't read it, the Octavia Butler trilogy called Lilith's Brood is a great multi-generational story as well.

Awesome book from Adrian - intelligent spiders using ants for computing.

The spiders also used the ants as cameras.

Another great book series on alien intelligence is the Zones of Thought series by Verner Vinge. Excellent books!

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