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.

RECOMMENDED

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Tordotcom on June 4, 2024

Service Model is an amusing story of a robot’s search for purpose. There has been an apocalypse (or a series of apocalyptic events) but it wasn’t caused by a robot revolution. In fact, quite the opposite. Since the cause of civilization’s collapse is the point of the novel, I won’t reveal it, but I will say that Adrian Tchaikovsky furthers the grand tradition of exploring big ideas through science fiction.  

Some humans have survived the end of civilization, but they are outnumbered by robots who follow their programming, carrying on with tasks that have become meaningless. They are increasingly starting to glitch, the end of civilization having had “a negative impact on scheduled updates.” They wander in circles, freeze in place when their memories are full, haul freight back and forth that never gets unloaded. Robots are lining up at repair centers for maintenance that will never be scheduled. Being dutiful robots, they stand in line until they stop functioning altogether.

The story’s protagonist is Charles, a valet robot who works in a manor for a wealthy recluse. Since his master no longer entertains or goes out, Charles maintains a social calendar that is empty and lays out clothing that is never worn. This does not bother Charles, who is content in his performance of useless tasks. Serving a human is all he wants to do, even if the service has no value.

One day, while Charles is shaving his master, he discovers that his master’s throat has been cut. Charles endeavors to go about his day — even reasoning that taking his dead master for a drive might cheer him up — before the majordomo that operates the house calls a robot doctor and a robot cop. Hilarity ensues.

Charles realizes he might have a fault that will require diagnostic intervention but hopes he won’t be sent into retirement. “Given the considerable investment in domestic service that Charles represented, surely he should be allowed to murder three, or even five people before being deemed irreparably unfit for service.”

The plot follows Charles as he searches for another human to serve. He makes his way to Diagnostics, where he hopes a software adjustment will make further murders improbable. He meets a girl who, by virtue of her attire, he mistakes for a robot. She introduces herself as The Wonk and tries to convince him that he has acquired the Protagonist Virus and is now self-aware and autonomous. Charles is certain he is neither of those.

Diagnostics is overcrowded with robots who will never be fixed, so Charles is sent to Data Compression, where it seems his fate is to be recycled. Fortuitous circumstances cause Charles to visit the Library, where all human knowledge is being stored, albeit in a way that makes more sense to robots than to humans. He later encounters a group of humans who would be at home in a Mad Max movie. In the last stop of his journey, Charles visits God.

While Service Model tells a funny story, Tchaikovsky makes some serious points. To preserve humanity’s past, humans held captive in the Library make a long circular commute to engage in meaningless make-work at workplaces next to their residences. Robots were supposed to make manual labor unnecessary, but how can humans be valued in the eyes of others if they don’t work?  The novel asks whether the employment of laborers is any different from ownership of robots. When a robot stops being productive, society discards it. Are humans any different? “Individual value is tied to production, and everyone who’s idle is a parasite scrounging off the state.” The homeless are treated no better than obsolete robots.

Tchaikovsky also has an interesting take on justice. How would one program a robot to mete out justice? In the end, wouldn’t a rational robot determine that everyone is guilty of something and that humans all deserve to be punished? The notion that it’s better to punish the innocent than to allow the guilty to get away with crime is antithetical to American and British values, but common enough among people who accept the authoritarian promise to protect them from imagined threats. And who would make a better authoritarian than a robot?

The story is ultimately about Charles’ search for purpose. Charles appears to frustrate The Wonk at every turn by insisting that his purpose is to serve because that is how he was programmed. And if serving others makes Charles feel fulfilled (a possibility Charles would never articulate because he does not “feel” anything), perhaps service is his purpose. Perhaps humans also have a predetermined purpose that requires no search. Perhaps we are all wired in a particular way and Charles is simply being more honest than humans who believe they can find a purpose through religion or philosophy. Yet the ending suggests that Charles might eventually work around his programming and determine his own purpose, one his programmer did not envision.

This is the first novel of Tchaikovsky’s I’ve read that is primarily a comedy. I’ve enjoyed his space opera and fantasy, but he is just as successful at humor. Tchaikovsky borrows ideas from Star Trek, Borges, A Canticle for Liebowitz, and the Wizard of Oz (among other sources), then milks them for their comedic potential. The story can be read as a cautionary tale about the potential causes of humanity’s destruction, but the end of civilization has never been funnier.

RECOMMENDED

Lords of Uncreation by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Orbit on May 2, 2023

Lords of Uncreation brings The Final Architecture trilogy to a fitting end. It just takes an awfully long time to get there.

In Shards of Earth and Eyes of the Void, readers met the Architects, aliens who (perhaps for aesthetic reasons) reshaped planets, rendering them uninhabitable. Earth was one of their victims. Many humans died but many others scattered to the stars, using throughways that pass through “unspace” to shortcut travel times. Those humans formed colonies that are governed by the Hugh.

Outside the throughways, travel in unspace is precarious. Apart from navigational difficulties, unspace causes a sense of dread, a certainty that a monster is preparing to turn the traveler into a snack. Surviving a journey through unspace usually means going to sleep, but certain navigators called “ints” have had their brains rewired so they can stay awake in unspace without going mad.

The first two novels developed the plucky crew of the Vulture God, a ship that eventually takes on the task of saving humanity from the Architects and their evil masters. The crew interacts with a sect of human female warriors (the Partheni) who initially organized to protect humans, although a faction in the third novel wants nothing to do with other humans. The crew also deals with a spy from Hugh who returns in the final novel. Whether he will help them or kill them is a question about which the spy is of two minds.

Aliens who are also threatened by the Architects include insects that operate machines through collective effort, a race of shipbound aliens who avoid the risk of planetary destruction by living in space, traders that look like crabs, and a few species collectively known as the Hegemony who serve the Essiel, an alien race that likes to be worshipped.

The primary mysteries developed in the first two novels are (1) why are the Architects destroying worlds, (2) who do the Architects serve, (3) why are Architects unwilling to harm artifacts created by the Originators, (4) who were the Originators and what happened to them, (5) what is the scary presence that everyone senses in unspace, and (6) what lives at the core of unspace? Lords of Uncreation eventually answers those questions. The answers make sense within the context of the impressive worldbuilding (or universe building) that Adrian Tchaikovsky undertook.

The trilogy is a strong contribution to the subgenre of far future space opera involving humans (with some alien help, in this case) overcoming an alien menace. The future is created in so much detail that the background is at least as absorbing as the plot. Conflicts between factions of the human race and occasionally between humans and aliens all follow their own logic, the kind of logic that is recognizable throughout human history. The story is, in a word, smart.

In the grand space opera tradition, characters engage in acts of heroism, sometimes valiantly (including a Partheni who joins the Vulture God’s crew), sometimes reluctantly (including the int who is often part of the Vulture God’s crew and who holds the key to solving the mysteries described above). Even characters who are very different from 21st century humans are relatable in their emotions and desires. Characters evolve over the series; the spy, for example, turns into a better guy than his nature initially seems to permit.

The mysteries are answered with a creative (albeit incomplete) reinterpretation of what the universe is and, to some extent, how it was created and shaped. Suffice it to say that humans and aliens think too much and that all that thinking is troublesome to the shapers of the universe. There is a man-behind-the-curtain component to the mystery that will be satisfying to readers who agree that might doesn’t make right, particularly when the might is wielded by the weak to create the illusion of strength.

My knock on the last novel in this trilogy is its unnecessary length. Modern sf writers seem to feel the need to cram six or seven novels into three fat books. The worldbuilding and action in the first two novels is sufficiently interesting to overcome their length. This one seems wordy for no purpose other than to grow the word count. The first half not only struck me as padded but rushed. Tchaikovsky can be a skilled wordsmith, but the early prose in Lords of Creation is sometimes awkward or clichéd. Fortunately, his prose in the last 200 pages is sharper and the story comes to a satisfying finish that makes it worth wading through the unnecessary verbiage.

RECOMMENDED

Children of Memory by Adrian Tchiakovsky

First published in Great Britain in 2022; published by Orbit on January 31, 2023

Children of Memory is the third book in a trilogy. While the books are connected by a shared history and a few characters, they tell independent stories. It isn’t necessary to read the first two novels to enjoy the third.

After a very long journey from Earth, a ship full of sleeping humans arrive at Imir. The ship is on its last legs. Some of the pods in which humans sleep are ruined, but most passengers are still alive. Unfortunately, the terraforming seeds that were planted on Imir long ago have only barely taken root. The planet has no predators because it has no life at all, apart from the primitive algae and such that the terraformers seeded. Imir might sustain a small settlement that works hard to grow the right crops and breed the right animals, but it won’t sustain the thousands on the ship.

All but a handful of settlers are left in orbit in the hope that they can one day be brought to the surface. That hope dims when the landers that operate between the surface and the orbiting ship break down. The survivors who make it to the planet must live with the guilt of leaving so many behind.

That’s a great concept for a story, but it’s only one part of Children of Memory. Before they travel to the surface, the colonists detect a radio signal. They pinpoint its origin and decide to build their settlement nearby, but they are too busy with the struggle for survival to investigate it. When they finally establish a foothold, the captain goes into the hills to find the signal’s source. What happens to him? Three hundred years later, nobody is quite sure.

In an earlier novel, a terraforming project gone wrong caused spiders with uplifted intelligence to evolve on another planet. The uploaded mind of the woman behind the terraforming (Avrana Kern) and one of the spiders, as well as a pair of birds and additional aliens that appeared in the second novel, make their way to Imir on a grand tour of planets that were seeded with life. What they find on Imir is puzzling.

A woman named Miranda, who thinks of herself as human but is something more than that, is dispatched to investigate. She plays the role of a teacher and befriends a young girl named Liff, who somehow remembers witnessing the entire history of the planet, including events that occurred long before she was born.

Miranda realizes that the colony is falling apart. Crops are failing, animals are not reproducing, machinery has broken down. She wants desperately to help while the colonists, wary of outsiders who have suddenly appeared, don’t trust her. A mythology of “others” has evolved during the colony’s brief existence. In tough times, it is always good to blame your problems on others. Perhaps the others managed to escape from the orbiting ship and set up a competing civilization. Perhaps the other are indigenous. Miranda claims to be from an outlying farm but she’s the only obvious evidence that “others” exist. She’s in danger of being lynched because lynching “others” is what humans do. The society’s development of an “us versus them” mindset, even in the absence of a “them,” is a smart take on human nature.

After some time passes, Kern loses track of Miranda. She sends the birds to find her. The birds excel at solving puzzles but are baffled by what they find. Nothing on Imir is what it seems to be. Liff thinks Kern is a witch but the truth is more complicated.

The story jumps around in time. That’s a common literary trick, but here the shifting time frames have a larger purpose. They make sense in the overall context of the story for reasons that won’t be revealed until the novel nears its end. A shift back to the day the colonists first landed on Imir, told in one of the novel’s concluding chapters, provides a satisfying view of events from the reader’s new perspective. Mastery of plot development and storytelling is one of the reasons I keep coming back to Adrian Tchaikovsky.

The story’s most poignant moments surround the choice to leave thousands in suspended animation so that a relative handful have a chance to survive. A later decision to allow couples to reproduce taxes the colony’s limited resources, making it even harder to justify bringing more people down to the planet’s surface. I enjoyed thinking about the moral uncertainties of such difficult choices.

Scenes of pioneering, while abbreviated, give a sense of how difficult it would be to sustain life on a planet that has never supported life. Intermittent debates about the differences between instinct and intelligence, body and mind, sentience and artificial intelligence, simulation and reality, add the philosophical depth at which Tchiakovsky excels. Science fiction is a perfect showcase for such debates, and these are both intriguing and relevant to the plot.

RECOMMENDED

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Published by Orbit on May 3, 2022

The crew of the Vulture God returns in Eyes of the Void, the second book of the Final Architecture trilogy. The first novel built the future in which the novel is set. This one expands the reader’s understanding of the universe while advancing (albeit slowly) the fight between the Architects and the various human and nonhuman species who are fleeing the Architects’ grand design.

At the end of the first novel, the Architects took a break, perhaps in response to contact made by Idris Telemmier, one the original humans who was designed to stay awake while navigating through unspace. Now the Architects are back, redesigning worlds in an apparent desire for a different aesthetic. The redesigns are unfortunately fatal to all life on the planet, as they involve pulling some of the planet’s core to its surface.

In the first novel, the Architects did not bother worlds that had artifacts of the Originators. Soon after Eyes of the Void commences, the Architects are carefully removing artifacts from a world that has been colonized by the Divine Essiel, leaders of a religious cult who make an improbable promise of protection from the Architects to those who build and occupy a “great new temple.” Idris happens to be on that world for a time, but various individuals from multiple species would like to capture him for their own purposes.

Idris is the novel’s most interesting character, if only because he has been forced into a life he never wanted. Having been given the extraordinary but painful ability to see into unspace without being driven mad, Idris feels compelled to use that power for the greater good while satisfying his own fear-driven curiosity about the true nature of unspace and its inhabitants. That curiosity will be at least partially satisfied by the novel’s end.

The remaining crew of the Vulture God spend most of the novel trying to rescue each other. They hope to snatch Idris from the Divine Essiel’s planet before it is destroyed. They hope to snatch Kris Almier, their knife-wielding lawyer, from the clutches of the Uskaro family, residents of a prosperous colony world. They need to rescue one of the characters a second time. Solace, one of the warrior-angels known as the Parthenon, does much of the rescuing. Solace’s character, having been developed in the first novel, undergoes little change in the second. Kris and Idris are the most interesting characters in this installment.

The Naeromanthi are one of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s most interesting creations. Realizing that living on a planet made them vulnerable to the Architects, the Naeromanthi built and filled huge arks and dispersed them throughout the galaxy. The quickly lost the cultural referents that come with planetary attachment and developed into a nomadic culture, scavenging whatever they can find from other planets and ships. It occurs to some humans that they should follow a similar path.

Eyes of the Void is wordy. Descriptions of unspace and Idris’ reaction to it are often redundant. Padding is not an issue I’ve noticed in Tchaikovsky’s other work. It is, however, an issue in the second novel of many sf trilogies. Still, the novel serves its purpose as a bridge between a fascinating first novel and the promise of an equally fascinating conclusion.

RECOMMENDED