Hugo Reading: Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[chomiji]

The Earth is ruled by the authoritarian Mandate, which like all such governments is constantly alert for threats to its stability. This extends to its scientific research: although the Mandate has explored space and discovered a number of exoplanets (a few of which have some form of life), it still insists that scientific discoveries must support the philosophy of the Mandate, which holds that human beings are the pinnacle of creation and that other life forms must all be in the process of striving to achieve that same state of being.

Ecologist and xeno-ecologist Arton Daghdev chafes against both these mental manacles and the Mandate in general. Some time before the story opens, he becomes part of a cell of would-be revolutionaries. After discovery of his improper views and rebellious actions, he is sentenced to what is meant to be a short life assisting research on the planet Imno 27g, casually known as Kiln for the strange clusters of pottery buildings scattered over its surface.

Life as a prisoner on Kiln within the research enclave is brutal in all the ways any such prison can be, when the prisoners are nothing but human-shaped machinery to accomplish the goals of their jailers. The Mandate's leadership has absolute control over who among their prisoners lives or dies, and if anyone should harbor the intent to escape, the environment outside the base is all too lively. The death rate among the workers is appalling, but new shipments of convicted crooks and malcontents arrive all the time, so it hardly matters.

None of the weird aliens seem to be builders of the sort needed to create the clusters of mysterious structures or indeed intelligent in any way beyond, perhaps, the level of social insects on Earth. Yet somehow the small, dysfunctional cadre of scientists on Kiln must serve up the desired tidbits of discovery to keep their commandant happy with them: evidence that there once were intelligent humanoids on Kiln.

Distressingly, the alien biology of the native lifeforms there is not as different from that of creatures of Earth as one might prefer. Without care, including punishing decontamination, humans can find themselves hosting one or more of a myriad of Kiln plants/creatures. The leadership from time to time keeps one of its worst miscreants alive and thoroughly infested in an observation chamber so that the rest of the prisoner/workers can learn what rebellion against the system on Kiln gets you. Eventually these pitiful and horrific examples are killed outright and become part of the biomass that feeds and supplies the enclave.

Mysteriously, one of the most frightening of these examples is not a prisoner per se but is instead one of the original scientific team members. Despite the decades she has existed since Kiln's ecosystem took up inhabiting her, this woman shows no signs of dying, and even has weird semi-lucid moments. The commandant keeps her around because he's convinced that she knows something she has not yet been able to tell him.

Perhaps predictably, the revolutionary spirit has not been completely extinguished in all the prisoners. Daghdev and number of others stage a rebellion that fails spectacularly, apparently because of a traitor among them. Some of the rebels are killed outright, but Daghdev and the others remaining are assigned to the worst job in the long-term mission on Kiln: Excursions, in which poorly equipped teams go out to catalog newly discovered building sites (discovered by satellite surveillance) and bring back the information that Kiln's leadership thinks will further their potted research.

Daghdev's team is on one of these excursions when their transport is destroyed. Communications are badly hampered by the loss of the vehicle, and in any case, the team leader, Keev, knows that it's unlikely that the commandant will put any effort into retrieving the team. Why risk any additional equipment and labor when more of both will arrive with the next regular automated prison ship, due in a few months?

Instead, Keev calmly organizes what everyone assumes will be a futile effort: a march back through the teeming jungles to the base. It's on this journey that Daghdev and the others come to learn the secrets of Kiln and its builders.

I am an emotional person, and I want to like at least some of the characters about whom I'm reading. Daghdev is prickly, snarky, and fatalistic — but then, he has cause. He's also an unreliable narrator who only reveals to the reader what he wants, when he wants. The situation is really excruciating: people with a deep dislike of body horror might want to avoid this book. And there is not, in fact, a happy ending (at least not IMO).

On the other hand, this is very well written. For me, it moved along at a fantastic clip, and when I went back to check some particulars for this write-up, I found myself reading far more than I had intended because the story caught me up again. Some of the scientific ideas reminded me of other works (Sue Burke's Semiosis surfaced in my thoughts a couple of time), and sometimes I was reminded of something more elusive, a source that I can't recall. Does anyone else who has already read this have thoughts on the book's likely ancestors?

From my viewpoint, this was one of the most "science fictional" of this year's finalists. I think it might be my first choice in the vote.