Alien Clay (SF) - Adrian Tchaikovsky ****

This 2024 novel is the first of Adrian Tchaikovsky's books I've read - I can certainly see what the fuss is about, though there were a couple of things I really disliked about Alien Clay.

Let's get those negatives out of the way first, so we can get onto the positives. I'm no fan of dystopian fiction - if I want to be depressed, I can read the news. Tchaikovsky sets his book in a space travelling future totalitarian world state, using remote planets as one-way prison colonies. Initially this seems to make no financial sense, but the political prisoners are shipped out because they are cheaper and more disposable than machinery. The central character and narrator, Professor Arton Daghdev has been taken from his relatively privileged lifestyle to be the lowest of the low. Jolly it is not.

The bigger negative, though, is the character himself. Of course rebelling against a totalitarian state should be seen as a positive - but Daghdev's politics are all too reminiscent of irritating student protests in our own world. More to the point, though, he is given to extensive internal monologues, droning on for page after page - about half way through the book I was really tempted to give up, but it the end I just skip read his droning to get to anything happening.

Switching to the positive, I am so glad I did persevere, because the denouement is spectacular. One thing that was brilliant all the way through was Tchaikovsky's envisioning of a genuinely alien flora and fauna, one of the very few times I've seen this achieved. It's stunning. And then, following a disaster to make the dystopian world even less pleasant, we get a huge plot twist. I wasn't a great fan of the way Tchaikovsky presents this, suddenly starting to jump back and forth on the timeline to give little hints of what had happened. But what happens is remarkable.

Oddly, it reminded me of a book from an author that couldn't be more politically different - Robert Heinlein. IThe outcome here feels like Stranger in a Strange Land with better science, but less sex and mysticism. The way things turn out is wonderfully done, I just wish some aspects of the journey (unless we were intended to suffer like Daghdev) was less difficult.

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