Alien Clay

July 15, 2024
Imprisoned dissident scientists struggle to understand alien ecology in this mind-expanding planetary romp from Arthur C. Clarke Award winner Tchaikovsky (Service Model). Arton Daghdev, captured by the totalitarian Earth government called the Mandate after a year in hiding, lands on the prison planet Kiln, where he is assigned to support archeological digs into the beehive-shaped mounds left by a vanished civilization. Caught between fellow prisoners planning a rebellion and a warden who espouses the Mandate party line—that the Universe was designed to produce humanity as its pinnacle achievement—Daghdev forges his own path into the heart of Kiln’s vitally different life-forms. (“Know thyself is the Earth adage, but here on Kiln it’s Know one another,” he muses of their strikingly different culture.) Tchaikovsky’s philosophical musings about identity and the individual against the collective will feel familiar to science fiction readers, but his resolution will surprise even longtime genre fans. Tchaikovsky continues to impress. Agent: Simon Kavanagh, Mic Cheetham Agency.