Hello, friendos. I've read a book this week, at the recommendation of YouTube channel Hello Future Me. The book in question is Children of Time written by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The book is great. Like, genuinely great. It's the type of science fiction that could convert a bibliophobe to a rabid fan. I typically avoid science fiction as a genre, not because there isn't great science fiction, but because I'm an elf-ears-and-second-breakfast, Tolkien-pilled, fantasy reader. Children of Time has changed that. I've already bought the sequel, Children of Ruin, and I intend to pick up the third in the series as soon as I can.
Go read it, if you're even remotely interested. The book is rife with potential spoilers, so I'm going to be as vague as I possibly can, but if you value the opinion of this basement-dwelling nerd-king, it has my enthusiastic endorsement.
Now that the review is out of the way, I'm going to run through a quick fan-cast of the key players. Technically, there are a few more characters than this, both human and alien. The alien characters, to my mind, really need to be silent, and should be entirely CG. I think it will contribute to the otherness that- in my opinion- is key to the story. The human characters not named below are each intriguing in their own right, but in my imagination, they never took shape in the same way the key players did.
Let's get into this. First off, I want to talk about the audience POV character, and arguably the main character in the book, Holsten Mason. This was an easy one for me, as I listened to the audiobook narrated by Mel Hudson, whose interpretation of this character took shape the moment I heard her chosen accent. I want this role to go to Liam Cunningham. You may know him as Davos Seaworth on Game of Thrones. Listening to Hudson reading Mason, it was as if she had been going for an impression of Davos Seaworth, or vise versa.
Next, I want to talk about Lain. Lain is the Chief Engineer of the Arkship Gilgamesh, and feels at times like a perfect foil to Mason. Where Mason is timid through the bulk of the novel, Lain is a brusque, somewhat vulgar, and tough. At first, my mind went exactly where I imagine many others might, Ellen Ripley in Aliens. I was so sure in this that I was going to just take the easy way out, recommend Jamie Lee Curtis for this role, and call it a day. I was thinking on it all day Wednesday and Most of the day Thursday, and I spent some time meditating on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Angela Bassett is on top of the world right now, and is undoubtedly one of the greatest talents of her time, and throughout Wakanda Forever she, as Queen Ramonda, was an exemplar of powerful femininity, and that's why Bassett is my choice for Lane.
The next character on the stump will be another huge player in the plot of the story, Dr. Avrana Kern. Kern is a scientist who, through a random roll of the dice, outlived her world as she knew it. The character is defined by tragedy, but more than anything, is superior. She is the best of her world and she has no qualms with thinking as much. To say she has a god complex is, I fear, both an understatement and a disservice to the character. When seeking out a source for this specific type of inflated ego, I had to go to another Game of Thrones alumnus. Lena Headey played smug and self-satisfied for years and she played it well. She's my pick for the role of Kern. Interestingly enough, Headey and Bassett worked together in the film Gunpowder Milkshake. I haven't seen it.
Expect these to get a little less verbose from this point forward. These are the best of the best in the supporting cast, and I don't have much in the way of justification for these choices. This is just the face that got stuck in my brain-web when I was listening to how the characters interacted.
First up is Commander Guyen, which I for some reason was expecting to be spelled Nguyen, so you'll hopefully forgive my dumb American brain for attaching an Asian face to this role. Again, I've got no justification for this, but in my mind, Guyen was James Hong. Frankly, he's in so many movies which made up the bulk of my childhood that he and Pat Morita feel more like older Asian relatives than like actors, but enough about my unhealthy parasocial relationships. James Hong deserves a win, and Guyen is a great character to really dig in a chew scenery, so Hong is my choice for the role.
Vitas is a scientist, and is the Chief Science Officer of the Gilgamesh. In Vitas, we see echoes of Kern; however, instead of heedless ego, her character is cold, calculating, and stoic. Listen, I'm not proud of this, but the emphasis placed on Vitas' stony lack of expression reminded me in a big way of the (frankly extremely undeserved) hate that Kristen Stewart got in the wake of her somewhat lifeless performance in the early Twilight movies. Stewart has since blossomed as an actor and has proven several times over that Bella Swan is the exception rather than the rule. She's an easy pick for Vitas in my book.
Last character I'll be talking about here is the Chief Security Officer of the Gilgamesh, Karst. Karst is a terse and gruff man who, despite appearances, turns out to be a reasonable and effective leader when he's made to fill that role. I genuinely have no idea why, but in my mind, I was seeing Alexander Skarsgård as the face of this character. Admittedly, I did toy with the idea after the fact of casting Kristofer Hivju in the role to get the Game of Thrones hat trick, but in the end, Skarsgård won out in the theatre of my mind.
And that's it, y'all. I'm going to bed after putting this on the socials. I hope you enjoyed reading this even a fraction as much as I enjoyed reading Children of Time. I also hope you'll go out and pick up the book yourselves, so that we can see Disney or Amazon pick this up for a movie/series deal and see this fancast become reality. With that said, if you're hankerin' for more NKP content and don't want to wait the week until my next update to the blog-o-sphere, maybe check out my TikTok profile, Instagram profile, or Twitter profile. My sincerest thanks for reading. Cheers!
