Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

First published in the UK in 2024; published by Orbit on September 17, 2024

Alien Clay imagines a world in which the process of evolution does not move ahead in fits and starts but proceeds in a steady stream that builds to an eventual frenzy. A world in which all life is linked, co-dependent, constantly changing by creating new symbiotic relationships and different kinds of merged entities. Each organism serves other organisms and is served in return.

Competition for survival drives evolution on Earth. On Kiln, survival depends on cooperation, on being useful to other entities. Still survival of the fittest, but the fittest are those that most capably join with other entities to make something better.

Tchaikovsky typically infuses his novels with philosophy. While Alien Clay explores what it means to be an individual human on a planet that invites cooperation with other species, its greater focus is on the evil of enforced orthodoxy, particularly when scientific outcomes are predetermined, not the product of science.

Arton Daghdev was a scientist on Earth, specializing in xenobiology and xeno-ecology. Earth, unfortunately, is governed by the Mandate, a political force that requires scientists to produce orthodox results, rather than the truth — results that show the inevitable superiority of humankind to all other life, for example.

The Mandate combines totalitarianism with something akin to theocracy. Scientists who veer away from the orthodox in favor of objective truth, who grumble about constraints on what they can publish, are labeled dissidents and are sent to work as laborers on colonized worlds. The worlds are harsh and prisoners tend not to live long, assuming they survive the journey and harrowing landing in their sleep capsules. Kiln is the most habitable of the worlds but it is a dangerous place.

Dhagdev’s resistance to the Mandate on Earth consisted of attending subcommittee meetings until someone ratted him out. Because — and this is a point Tchaikovsky makes repeatedly — there’s always someone willing to rat out fellow travelers in exchange for a promise of less pain. Someone ratted out Dhagdev and he woke up in a capsule falling toward Kiln.

Adrian Tchaikovsky likes to start with an interesting idea or two and build from there. The idea that a cooperative society might outperform a competitive one is an unorthodox view in science fiction. Its fans have been fed a steady diet of stories about clever humans who outthink (and thus outcompete) aliens. The idea that human society might not be as strong as an alien collective intelligence is untraditional and might be anathema to some science fiction fans. I mean, the Federation defeated the Borg, didn’t it?

Science fiction also has a long tradition of championing individualism. If there is a Mandate that unites science fiction traditionalists, Tchaikovsky might be violating it with a plot that ultimately embraces the concept of a hive mind (at least one that doesn’t destroy the sense of individual identity) as a design improvement rather than a threat. I suspect that Tchaikovsky is deliberately advancing unorthodox ideas to underscore his criticism of the Mandate’s orthodoxy. Ideas might be debated and rejected or reconsidered but they should never be suppressed.

Having laid those ideas as a foundation, what kind of plot does Tchaikovsky build? Not clever humans against an alien menace but open-minded humans rising up against their oppressor. Although Dhagdev is initially assigned to tasks the resemble the performance of science, his instinct to join an insurrection is punished with reassignment to a team of prisoners who are sent into the jungle. Excursion teams make first contact with complex structures that appear to have been erected by builders who can no longer be found on Kiln. The excursion teams clear the structures of plants that have overgrown the outer walls so that scientists can study them safely — in particular, lines of inscriptions that might or might not be a form of writing.

The Mandate does little to protect excursion team members from contamination by aggressive spores, spiky plants, and large beasts that stomp on humans. One of the original scientists has done nothing but babble since being infected by something outside the walls of the labor camp, but she refuses to die — and the person in charge of the camp prefers to study her rather than kill her.

So we have a plot that follows a rebellious scientist as he interacts with an ecosystem that he begins to understand on an internal level. Can he lead a rebellion? Not exactly, but Tchaikovsky puts a neat spin on the notion of leadership in a cooperative society. In any event, the plot gives Dhagdev a series of adventures and challenges that keep the story moving. It’s fun and at least modestly thought-provoking, a good combination for a science fiction novel.

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