After two older books, it is time again for something more recent: Published in March 2024, Alien Clay is Adrian Tchaikovsky’s latest work. And while I wouldn’t rank it as highly as his earlier “Children of Time” series, I enjoyed Alien Clay much more than his 2020 book “The Doors of Eden” and the first half of “Shards of Earth” (which I never finished).
Arton Dagdev, the book’s protagonist, was a professor in extraplanetary biology on earth as well as a revolutionary against the powers that be. When his revolutionary sub-committee is betrayed, he ends up on a prison barge to Inno 27g, nicknamed Kiln, one of a handful of recently discovered exoplanets. What could be an exoplanetary scientist’s dream is anything but: As Arton quickly discovers, prisoners on Kiln are an abundant and easily replaceable resource and protecting them from the dangers of their new habitat is nobody’s priority.
After arriving on Kiln, Arton initially appears to be getting a good deal: As a respected scientist, he is at least allowed to serve on “Dig Support”, where he works as a lab assistant, rather being sent out into the wild, the unforgiving nature of Kiln that appears to be intent on infecting and destroying human minds, driving them to insanity. From his protected position in the lab, Arton begins to explore the planet’s biology. Samples brought in from excursions to monuments seemingly left by a past civilization suggest an ecosystem entirely built on symbiosis, where organisms of all sizes mix and match into larger beings, allowing for much more rapid adaptation than earth’s evolutionary processes. While based on a biology that seems fundamentally incompatible with that of earth, Kiln’s micro- (and macro-) organisms appear to quickly find ways to cling on to human bodies and without regular decontamination it appears that the inhabitants of the human colony would quickly become a breeding ground for Kiln flora and fauna.
After a failed attempts of taking down the commander of their outpost, Arton and his co-conspirators are sent out into the field, where Arton sees first-hand the dangers of the planet. However, unlike the government scientists who have been trying to make the planets reality match their preconceived notion about how nature has to work in line with political orthodoxy, with a more open mind Arton is also able to begin to understand the biology of their environment.
The whole political and revolutionary arc of the story is entertaining at times, but mainly serves to provide a background for the societal structure in the camp on Kiln: Without more of an exploration of what is actually going on on earth, it feels artificial at times and not always necessary.
What stands out, however, and makes the book worthwhile is the exploration of Kiln’s strange biology: The way we follow Arton through his journey leaves the reader to gradually explore the make-up of Inno’s eco-system, the true nature of the builders of the planet’s monuments, and the future of human intelligence on a planet teeming with a fundamentally different biology.
Not all of the ideas in this book are new, but Tchaikovsky brings them together in a fascinating exploration of a very alien biology and sentience - world-building and speculative science-fiction at its best.