Adrian Tchaikovsky

“Alien Clay is a book about human societies and alien ecologies. About how the things that are held up as being hard divisions and solid boundaries are all too often permeable. About what people and regimes try to control, and what they can’t. 

Condemned to a labour camp on a distant exoplanet, scientist Artin Daghdev is thrown into a brutal prison camp run by a police state that holds the bodies and minds of its citizens in a ruthless grip. Beyond, he discovers a planet that doesn’t play by his rules of biology, ecology or evolution. On Kiln, Arton will learn that no law is inviolable, and no border can be relied upon, not even that between human and alien. 

Who were the ancient Builders who littered Kiln with their ruins, where did they go, or are they still here…?”

    To fix the world they must first break it further.

    Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.

    When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: they can run away.

    Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

    Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.