Adrian Tchaikovsky
Finalist for the 2025 Locus Awards, Best Science Fiction Novel
Finalist for the 2025 Hugo Awards, Best Novel
Nominated for the 2025 Philip K. Dick Award
When xeno-biologist Arton Daghdev is exiled to an alien planet, he journeys through a dangerous and hostile wilderness. Yet on his expedition, he uncovers lost alien ruins—and the mysterious builders who abandoned them. Alien Clay is a page-turning standalone adventure from master of sci-fi Adrian Tchaikovsky.
They travelled into the unknown and left themselves behind...
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. But his wishes become a reality in the worst possible way—his political activism sees him exiled from Earth to a penal colony on Kiln. 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 and sometimes disturbing ways with the human body. Arton must risk death on a daily basis—though the camp's oppressive regime might just kill him first. But Kiln holds a wondrous, terrible secret. A secret that will redefine life and intelligence as we know it. And it might just set Arton free.
