Alien Horrors?
Sorry this is a little late in the day…I had to get a bunch of con stuff done!
Review: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
I haven’t read much Tchaikovsky. Alien Clay is somewhat hard biology SF that drifts dangerously close to body horror in places (that’s your content warning).
Earth has been taken over by a fascist government, the Mandate, which has trapped biological science within a basic concept - humans are the peak of evolution and any intelligent aliens must be humanoid. Questioning the Mandate can get you shipped out to an extrasolar concentration camp, one way trip.
This book, then, punches a few fascists. Arton Daghdev is a professor of biological science who is also part of the Resistance, very much with a capital R, who has been captured and shipped off to Imno 27g, which its residents call Kiln because of the clay ruins scattered across its surface.
Their goal is to find the missing aliens who built them. But per the Mandate, those builders must be humanoid…and nothing on Kiln resembles anything human, or even earthlike.
Until now.
This book reminds me a bit of Spider Robinson if he was less funny and more into actual science. Daghdev is a fine protagonist, but a lot of the characters are sketches and the Commandant is close to being a stereotype of the same.
The alien-ness of Kiln, though, is beautifully created. I liked this book, although I didn’t love it, and definitely understand why it has its fans.
Recommended to people who like lots of weird biology in their SF.
I received a copy of this book in this year’s Hugo packet.