Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

(Tor, 2024)

Reviewed by Susan Peak

Since 2008, Adrian Tchaikovsky has had 49 books published, with a further three, possibly four, due to be published in 2025. He is a one-man publishing phenomenon, and, remarkably, his writing is consistently high-quality, mostly SF with some fantasy.

Professor Daghdev has fallen foul of The Mandate, a, or the, governing group on Earth, and he has been exiled, along with other dissidents, to a planet nicknamed Kiln. This planet has alien life on it of a very strange sort, which The Mandate has set up as a unit to explore and report back on. Kiln is in effect a prison planet, and the unit is the prison itself.

Society in the unit is oppressive in two ways: a few dissidents have betrayed others, but who are they? Who can be trusted?—this makes for a tense atmosphere. The prisoners are continually spied upon by the guards, they and the commandant are randomly cruel, and it is evident from the start that the prisoner’s lives don’t matter. For example, the guards have good-quality protection suits for activity outside the unit; the prisoners do not—their suits are made of a form of paper, and they tear. They are also decontaminated only every three days—if they are lucky.

Daghdev and the other prisoners’ job is to form work parties that go out and explore the area around the unit, looking in particular for ruins—clay buildings that have writing carved on them. This enables the small science section in the unit to study the writing, and report back its findings to Earth. It’s a sort of alien archaeological site.

Tchaikovsky takes the concept of transportation and applies it both to an alien planet and within what is effectively a first contact story. The model he seems to be drawing on is that of internal transportation/exile within the old USSR, where the transportees were expected to work, and a high death rate was normal.

In common with other Tchaikovsky books, I found this to be well-written (except for one caveat) and the third part—the book is in three parts—to be particularly gripping. The caveat is that the story is told in the first-person, with a lot of narrative and reflection, and Daghdev’s superior and sarcastic tone can grate after a while. But it’s interesting to see the society through his eyes as he learns about life there.

The story’s background is only lightly sketched in, and there are elements which didn’t make a great deal of sense to me. For example, exactly how are the people on Kiln fed and supplied? There is a ‘Reclaimer’ which uses any available material (including dead bodies) to produce food and the raw material for 3D printing, but it’s hard to see how that is enough. How is contact maintained with Earth?—there is a 30-year time lag in travel between this planet and Earth. Senior staff do travel back, apparently, but how do they get to the ship which is in orbit, waiting for them to use? But the story of the planet is sufficiently absorbing for these questions to be set aside.

Kiln’s life is very strange indeed. It is simultaneously hostile and intensely cooperative. Humans have bacteria and viruses in their bodies which are in effect cooperative parasites: Kiln extends this to entire body units. This is quite a fascinating aspect of the story, although a strong stomach is occasionally required for the descriptions. In summary, it’s an intriguing mixture of elements and a very interesting and readable story.

Review from BSFA Review 25 - Download your copy here.