Going to recommend a book that I think might be a sci fi classic at this point

[img]https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51Z1HPz0MyL.jpg[/img]

Yes, I know, the book cover looks like "Oh great, more space opera shit" but stay with me here.

Humans discover there's no alien life in space. So what do they do? Attempt to uplift monkeys (over several thousand years) to sentience. This goes wrong when the entire plan is sabotaged by terrorists, which results in a war on earth that utterly destroys it and leaves the retrovirus thats intended to lift the monkeys to go haywire and instead uplifts the Portia jumping spider. Then the last remaining Ark ship of humanity starts heading towards the planet...

What separates this from a "oh god the horror, giant sentient spiders" story is the spiders are actually treated as protagonists, just like the humans are. The plot also spans hundreds of years as the ark humans on their ship enter and leave cryosleep and the spiders go through their history from the caveman-spider era to several eras that aren't quite like our history.

It's also becoming a movie directed by the guy who directed the hunger games, but I recommend reading it before then so you can join TEAM SPIDER with me.