Alien Clay

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Adrian Tchaikovsky: Alien Clay (2024, Pan Macmillan)

English language

Published 2024 by Pan Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-1-0350-1374-6
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4 stars (3 reviews)

On the distant world of Kiln lie the ruins of an alien civilization. It’s the greatest discovery in humanity’s spacefaring history – yet who were its builders and where did they go?

Professor Arton Daghdev had always wanted to study alien life up close. Then his wishes become a reality in the worst way. His political activism sees him exiled from Earth to Kiln’s extrasolar labour camp. There, he’s condemned to work under an alien sky until he dies.

Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem like nothing seen on Earth. The monstrous alien life interacts in surprising, sometimes shocking ways with the human body, so Arton will risk death on a daily basis. However, the camp’s oppressive regime might just kill him first. If Arton can somehow escape both fates, the world of Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it, and …

7 editions

Fav book this year!

5 stars

I really loved this book. It felt like the interest and passion in biology that Mikhail Bakunin exhibited in Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution but told ask a sci-fi epic@!

analyzing the conditions and contradictions of a human inmate labour camp upon an exoplanet with alien life Tchaikovsky looks at what makes us human, what mutualism and organization mean, and the struggles against domination.

I would liken this to The Dispossessed of Tchaikovsky's catalog and want you all to read it then get coffee with me and talk about the ups and downs.

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rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • English literature