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Alien Clay

An incredible science fiction tale of first contact with the unknown, shortlisted for Best Novel at the 2025 Hugo Awards

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Alien Clay

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Narrated by: Ben Allen
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Summary

They travelled into the unknown and left themselves behind . . .

Alien Clay is a thrilling tale of alien encounter – from the acclaimed Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner Adrian Tchaikovsky.

‘Unputdownable’ – Stephen Baxter, author of Proxima

Professor Arton Daghdev has always wanted to study alien life in person. But when his political activism sees him exiled to the planet Kiln, condemned to work under an unfamiliar sky until he dies, his idealistic wish becomes a terrible reality.

Kiln boasts a ravenous, chaotic ecosystem. Its monstrous alien life means Arton will risk death on a daily basis – if the camp’s oppressive regime doesn’t kill him first. But, if he survives, Kiln’s lost civilization holds a wondrous, terrible secret. It will redefine life and intelligence as he knows it – and might just set him free.

This audiobook edition includes an exclusive interview between Ben Allen and Adrian Tchaikovsky.

‘Heart-in-the-mouth fantastic’ – New Scientist

‘Restlessly brainy and utterly involving’ – Daily Mail

‘The perfect gateway into what makes Tchaikovsky great’ – SciFiNow

 Best of 2024 First Contact Genetic Engineering Hard Science Fiction Science Fiction Space Exploration Space Opera Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

‘This is what it's like to be sentenced to Transportation in a fictional futuristic world . . . The regularity with which Tchaikovsky delivers great books is astounding. Highly recommended (Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater)
Alien Clay is convincing, compelling on human and cosmic levels, and unputdownable. With work like this, Adrian Tchaikovsky is fast becoming the voice of his generation in British SF (Stephen Baxter, author of Proxima)
One of our finest writers of SF right now . . . an excellent story told with Adrian's trademark skill and flair (James Oswald, author of the Inspector McLean series)
A hell prison on a hell planet with a thrilling, important message: only connect. Adrian's firing on all cylinders in this one (Ian McDonald, author of New Moon)
Is Tchaikovsky propping up the science fiction industry single-handedly? He is so prolific and reliably excellent that I think he might be
Restlessly brainy and utterly involving, Alien Clay is as morally engaged as 1984 and as immersive as Avatar
[Adrian Tchaikovsky] has created a wonderfully strange new world as the basis for an intriguing puzzle with plenty of thrills
Imaginative, horrifying and always amusing, it's the perfect gateway into what makes Tchaikovsky great.
[A] brilliant, gripping standalone novel, which reconstitutes numerous familiar SF tropes to create something thought-provoking, unexpected and at times unsettlingly weird
All stars
Most relevant
I can't really express how repetitive this book is, after an hour or so of listening I just gave up as I just couldn't bear to hear the same things again and again, dozens, of times. The same descriptions of the environment, the prisoners punishments, the mandates oppression, the nature of the alien life. Every significant aspect of the book, repeated again and again, it's painful to listen to. I kept thinking this was some slow burn introduction and that the pace would pick up, but if anything it just got worse. Eventually I gave up, couldn't listen to the same things, again and again. Just imagine the repetition of this review but ten times more repetition, again and again, with no more content, just endless padding to make the book three times longer than it needed to be. It's hard for me to understand how so many of the reviewers liked this, but it was not for me!

Incredibly repetitive

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I loved some of the authors other books, particularly the Final Architecture series. But I just didn't enjoy this. Too much politics and revolution talk, not enough happening to drive forwards the story. The last 90 mins of the book is the most interesting, but the previous 12 hours was just OK. In summary, it was disappointing.

Nothing Really Happens. I was kinda bored throughout.

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What happens if you take Alien, Avatar, and 1984, put them together, and shake them well? You end up with a one-of-a-kind alien world, a mixture of fear, awe, and hope so thrilling and fascinating that it is unputdownable.

One might say that not much happens in the book, BUT if you are searching for something extraordinary alien, highly imaginative, and thought-provoking, this is the book for you.

For my part, it is like having an old wish fulfilled: since I first saw Alien I found myself trying to change my position, like I could see hidden angles and explore more of that massive derelict ship full of dormant Xenomorph eggs.
Surely, that ship had a full story to tell... too bad that it was so infested, that the expedition was a disaster... no time to explore there...
Alien Clay gave me the chance to explore... without the terror of the Xenomorphs.

Yet, the alien life form on Kiln carries a lot of unknown danger, so much so that for a while I was afraid that some gruesome monsters would burst out from the humans trapped there...
But there is beauty and mystery too...

I will listen to it again!

Alien meets Avatar, meets 1984

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Adrian has a unique ability to describe alien life-forms in a way that feels truly convincingly alien. That is what this book is truly about. Oh it's about humans, it's about a prisoner, it's about other prisoners and guards and camp commandants but all of that takes a back seat to the xeno-biology and the philosophy around it.

That's really saying something by the way, because Adrian writes utterly brilliant characters and internal monologues. It's not just a philosophy of the alien, it's a philosophy of ourselves.

The last time I saw someone write so well about the uglier side of human internal nature was Mark Twain in The mysterious stranger. Yet the xeno-biology somehow steals the show.

Adrian, if you ever happen to read this review, thank you for writing my favorite books over and over again and please keep it up. May it never end.

Brilliant Xeno-Biology sci-fi from Adrian

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Narrated by Ben Allen
Adrian Tchaikovsky is such a good writer, his humans and aliens are brilliantly interwoven. Xeno-biologist and freedom fighter, Arton Daghdev, is exiled for his crimes to an alien planet where he's imprisoned under an oppressive regime. At first he's given some status because of his scientific work, but he's soon busted to a basic work detail in the toxic atmosphere of this very alien planet. He is tasked with discovering the origin of alien ruins, and the mystery of who the builders were, and where are they now. And he does indeed make that discovery, but not in the way the camp commandant expects him to.

Thought provoking

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