Adrian Tchaikovsky: Alien Clay (2024, Orbit)
English language
Published 2024 by Orbit.
I think I find a jocular first person narrative really irritating. I wish Adrian Tchaikovsky would write fewer books but make them all as good as children of time (not the sequels).
This is now my favorite Adrian Tchaikovsky book. The writing is grippy, the narrator is wry, and I love the way the plotlines of revolution against authoritarianism and academic exploration of alien biology intertwine with each other.
Some extremely minor asides that I appreciated:
The narrator is quite funny and I appreciate the way he sometimes deceives the reader; there are several scenes where you get the surface level view of the scene and then find out shortly afterwards that he's also doing something furtive simultaneously.
I love that the authoritarianism is all about black and white binaries, and the book casually infers that one of the characters fell into political disfavor because they are some flavor of non-binary (without using that word, thank goodness).
This is also somehow the second academic adjacent alien book that I've read recently, with James SA Corey's The Mercy of Gods being the other. …
This is now my favorite Adrian Tchaikovsky book. The writing is grippy, the narrator is wry, and I love the way the plotlines of revolution against authoritarianism and academic exploration of alien biology intertwine with each other.
Some extremely minor asides that I appreciated:
The narrator is quite funny and I appreciate the way he sometimes deceives the reader; there are several scenes where you get the surface level view of the scene and then find out shortly afterwards that he's also doing something furtive simultaneously.
I love that the authoritarianism is all about black and white binaries, and the book casually infers that one of the characters fell into political disfavor because they are some flavor of non-binary (without using that word, thank goodness).
This is also somehow the second academic adjacent alien book that I've read recently, with James SA Corey's The Mercy of Gods being the other. The power dynamic contexts are different enough that they end up taking different collaborator vs revolutionary approaches.
A deeply interconnected multi-level story diving into structure, communication, and organization from the deep level of biology & chemistry through community and up into society.
You're never going to believe this, but Adrian Tchaikovsky of all people has written a novel about the biology of non-human consciousness & awareness and the implications of that structure for the social structures and creations of such an alien consciousness. This particular novel also engages a little with 20th century authoritarianiam and where that movement might go in the future. That political dimension is connected back as a metaphor for the biology, human connection, & consciousness.
A neat, tight, well-executed novel. Great stuff; lots to consider. Not quite as thought-provoking as Watts' Firefall books which engage with the same material in greater depth. Probably not going to be a perpetual reread for me, but a deeply satisfying read nonetheless.
