鈥�Hard鈥� science fiction exists to push the boundaries of the imagination in a very specific way: thought experiments that start with the known and the possible, then dial everything up to 11 to see what the world looks like.

This works with any area of science, or indeed human life. In a way, the authoritarian excesses of the Earth-based regime known as the Mandate in my novel are as much a thought experiment as the bizarre life of Kiln, the planet on which the book is set. It is just that there are fewer steps between the now and the future of the book on its political side than on its biological side.

Alien Clay is in conversation with scientific knowledge in two quite distinct ways. The first 鈥� the most obvious 鈥� is what is going on on Kiln. The scientists in the prison colony there have the unenviable task of trying to categorise and explain a world organised along very different lines to Earth.

That was my starting 鈥渨hat if鈥� question. It鈥檚 very easy to take a lot for granted and assume that some Earth things are universals, but our data set for 鈥渓ife鈥� is precisely one. We know Darwinian evolution explains the interconnected variety of Earth life, but could life have gone any other way? Or is that competitive world the only possibility?

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In Alien Clay I hypothesise an alternative of extreme symbiosis. In fact, a lot of what goes on there is inspired by Earth life because the popular image of 鈥渟urvival of the fittest鈥� focuses on 鈥渇aster, stronger, tougher鈥�, whilst life tends to be more about how well you work alongside your neighbours.

The basic unit of life, as my protagonist Professor Arton Daghdev says, is all life, not the individual organism. On Kiln, this interreliance is taken to extremes, as each apparent organism or species is a composite of specialist parts working together, any of which parts might be found performing its trick as part of any number of separate creatures. It is evolution by Lego, fit to drive the poor Earth scientists mad. Life by committee, meaning that the individual parts of the Kiln ecosystem are pre-adapted to be adventurous in what they try to intersect with. Kilnish biochemistry is different to that of Earth, but if you want to interact on that level, it comes down to molecular shapes, locks and keys 鈥� and the life of Kiln is a natural lockpicker, as the humans of the prison colony have found to their cost.

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The other half of the scientific conversation that鈥檚 going on is the political regime that the scientists are working under, which is the reason why the madcap ecology of Kiln is considered a problem and not an opportunity to learn. The Mandate can鈥檛 abide anything that doesn鈥檛 fit into its worldview, and its worldview is anthropomorphic 鈥� 鈥渢he universe has a purpose, and the purpose is us鈥�, as the motto goes.

Kiln is an affront to the humanocentric science of the Mandate, especially with the maddening signs that Kiln鈥檚 hotchpotch evolution produced intelligent life. The point that Arton 鈥� the dissident scientist 鈥� makes is that, no matter their possession of the power and the guns, regimes like the Mandate always feel the need to appeal to some higher power permitting them their violence and oppression. It can be religion or it can be science, but there is just enough shame in the most brutal regime that they need to justify their excesses and cruelties. Hence, the Mandate looks to the scientists to make Kiln fit into their neat universal view, and the life of Kiln thumbs its many noses at them and refuses to oblige.

by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor) is the latest pick for the 快猫短视频 Book Club. Sign up and read along with us聽here

They say never start a story with a waking, but when you鈥檝e been hard asleep for thirty years it鈥檚 difficult to know where else to begin.

Start with a waking, end with a wake, maybe.

Hard asleep is, I am informed, the technical term. Hard, because you鈥檙e shut down, dried out, frozen for the trip from star to star. They have it down to a fine art 鈥� takes eleven minutes, like clockwork. A whole ship full of miscreants who are desiccated down to something that can . . . well, I was about to say survive indefinitely, but that鈥檚 not how it goes, of course. You don鈥檛 survive. You die, but in a very specific flash-frozen way that allows for you to be restarted again more or less where you left off at the other end. After all the shunting about that would kill any body 鈥� the permanent, non-recoverable kind of kill 鈥� who wasn鈥檛 withered down.

They pump you full of stuff that reinflates you to more or less your previous dimensions 鈥� you鈥檒l note there鈥檚 a lot of more or less in this process. It is an exact science, just not one that cares about the exact you. Your thought processes don鈥檛 quite pick up where they left off. Short-term memory isn鈥檛 preserved; more recent mental pathways don鈥檛 make the cut. Start with a waking, therefore, because in that instant it鈥檚 all you鈥檝e got, until you can establish some connection to older memories. You know who you are, but you don鈥檛 know where you are or how you got there. Which sounds terrifying but then let me tell you what you鈥檙e waking up into: actual hell. The roaring of colossal structural damage as the ship breaks up all around you. The jostling jolt as the little translucent bubble of plastic you鈥檙e travelling in is jarred loose and begins to tumble. A cacophony of vibration coming through the curved surface to you: the death throes of the vessel which has carried you all this way, out into the void, and is now fragmenting. There鈥檚 a world below that you know nothing about, not in your head right then. And above you are only the killing fields of space. The fact there鈥檚 a below and an above shows that the planet鈥檚 already won that particular battle over your soul and you鈥檙e falling. The oldest fear of monkey humanity, the one which makes a baby鈥檚 rubbery hands clench without thought. Such a fall from grace as never mankind nor monkey imagined.

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All around you, through the celluloid walls of your prison, you see the others too. Because it can鈥檛 be hell without fellow sinners to suffer amongst. Each in their own bubble sheared away from the disintegrating ship. Faces contorted in terror: screaming, hammering on the walls, eyes like wells, mouths like the gates of tombs. You鈥檒l forgive the overwrought descriptions. I am an ecologist, not a poet, but mere biology does not suffice to do justice to the appalling sight of half a hundred human beings all revivified at once, and none of them understanding why, even as you don鈥檛 understand why, and the vessel coming apart in the wrack, and the world below, the hungry maw of its gravity well. Oh God! The recollection of it makes me sick to my gut. And of all things, in the midst of that chaos, to remember I am an ecologist. Out in space where there isn鈥檛 even an ecology. Was there ever a less useful piece of self-knowledge?

Some of us haven鈥檛 reawakened. I see at least two bubbles whirl past me in which the occupant remains a dried-out cadaver, the systems failed. Acceptable Wastage is the technical term, and that鈥檚 another unwelcome concept to suddenly have remembrance of. For there are always some who don鈥檛 wake up at the far end. They tell you it鈥檚 the inevitable encroachment of entropy over so long a journey. Maybe it is. Or maybe those who don鈥檛 wake up are the most egregious troublemakers. It鈥檚 hard to recognize anyone when their skin is stuck to their skull without the interposition of familiar flesh, but I think I see my old colleague Marquaine Ell go whirling past. She鈥檚 been shipped all the way out here from Earth, even at the minimal expense they鈥檝e boiled the process down to, yet they might as well have just thrown her into the incinerator for the same effect.

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With the reminder of that minimal expense comes another piece of knowledge. Another couple of my neurons renewing a severed acquaintance, bringing understanding that鈥檚 relevant but unwelcome. That this is intentional. It鈥檚 no traumatic wreck of the Hesperus. Not a bug but a feature. Sending people into space used to be expensive, and for people anyone cares about it still is. You鈥檙e encouraged to keep them reliably alive in transit, with actual medical care and life support and sporadic wakings to check on their oh-so-delicate physical and mental wellbeing. And, saliently, you鈥檙e encouraged to arrange a means by which to bring them back home again, their tour of duty done. Big expensive ships that can do complicated things like refuel, slow down, speed up, turn around.

But if all you want to do is deliver some felons to a labour camp on a remote planet, because it鈥檚 literally cheaper and easier than sending machines to do the same work, then you don鈥檛 ever have to worry about them coming back. Because they won鈥檛. It鈥檚 a life sentence, one-way trip. More unwelcome revelations fall into my head, even as my head, along with the rest of me, falls into the pull of Imno 27g.

I should be beating my newly revivified fists against the inside of my bubble, except it鈥檚 whirling round and round, having dropped out of the disintegrating ship, and the world below is growing in size. The void has become a sky, yellow-blue. Can you have a yellow-blue? Not on Earth, but this is Imno鈥檚 sky. Blue for the oxygen the planet鈥檚 biosphere has pumped into the atmosphere as a by-product of its metabolic pathways, just like on Earth. Yellow for the diffuse clouds of aerial plankton. Or they鈥檙e yellow-black, actually, because of their dark photosynthetic surfaces. Blue-yellow-black should not be a colour, and of all things it should not be the colour of the sky.

We fall. At some point the chutes open: filmy transparent plastic, already biodegrading from the moment it contacts atmosphere. Like the ship, it鈥檚 designed to last the minimum possible period of time to do its job. The ship, that unnamed plastic piece of trash which was printed as a single piece in Earth鈥檚 orbit, no more than a one-shot engine and a pod to hold us all like peas. An egg-case, perhaps. Designed to carry its corpse-cargo across space to one of the current 鈥楶lanets Under Activity鈥�, as the Mandate鈥檚 Expansion department terms it. To carry us to Imno 27g, then break apart in the upper atmosphere. Fragmenting into pieces even as the one-shot medical units resuscitate its cargo from cadaver to screaming lost souls tumbling to our doom. While some of us don鈥檛 get the wake-up, others who do won鈥檛 survive the descent. Doom is what we鈥檙e all going to, sure enough, but it鈥檚 less drawn-out for some than for others. My bones jar as my chute deploys, and while I see others similarly wrenched from the teeth of the ground, I also see the handful whose chutes have failed drop away. Still screaming, as they remember just enough to know they鈥檙e about to die all over again.

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I don鈥檛 die from not waking up, and I don鈥檛 die falling from the edge of the atmosphere either. I鈥檓 not written off on the ledgers as Acceptable Wastage. They have to work out very carefully the precise level of expense that鈥檚 necessary, and the precise percentage of failed deliveries 鈥� meaning dead people 鈥� this entails. Because who wants to spend a single cent more than you have to when you鈥檙e shipping convicts off to die in a distant world鈥檚 work camp? People who鈥檝e gone against the system and are now going to pay their dues permanently, for the rest of their lives. People like me. I hear the figures later: twenty per cent Acceptable Wastage. If that sounds like an absurd loss of investment, then you don鈥檛 know the history of people shipping other people against their will from place to place.

They put manoeuvring jets on the pods. Little plastic things. One shot. As I fall 鈥� it seems to take so long! 鈥� I see them fire. Each one discharges its blast of bottled gas and destroys itself in the process. If that allows me to land where I鈥檓 supposed to, then good. If I end up somewhere distant from the work camp then they aren鈥檛 going to waste the work-hours it would take to retrieve me. I鈥檒l die trapped in my bubble or outside it, because Imno 27g is full of things that will kill you. Especially alone and with only half your head together. Not that there has ever been anything in my head that would help me survive on this alien world.

But that doesn鈥檛 happen to me either. I come down with everyone else, those of us not covered under the Wastage provisions, around the same place, where they鈥檙e waiting for us. The camp鈥檚 commandant has sent out the heavy mob, just in case we somehow managed to form a revolutionary subcommittee on the way down. On seeing the riot armour and guns 鈥� the 鈥榤inimally lethal鈥� public order pieces I (now) recall from Earth, which only kill you an acceptable proportion of the time 鈥� I remember there had been a revolutionary subcommittee I was part of. Not, obviously, on the ship, because we鈥檇 all been flash-frozen corpses. And not on the way down, because we鈥檇 been far too busy screaming. But back on Earth, before they鈥檇 infiltrated our network, tracked our contacts, arrested everyone we knew for a discounted friends-and-family betrayal, I had actually been part of the problem, so I鈥檇 earned this. Back on Earth I had been stubbornly proud of the fact, too. In the prison attached to the space port, in the cramped orbital quarters, I had known that, yes, I was going to be deported to the camps, but at least I鈥檇 tried to do my bit, even a lowly academic like me.

Right now, after plummeting to this doom, then seeing the death-squad-slash-welcoming-committee, I regret it all. If a political officer magically manifested, offering a pardon if I signed a confession, I鈥檇 reach for the pen. Much unlike the song, I regret every one of my life choices that has led me to this point. It鈥檚 a moment of weakness.

My bubble deflates around me. I have a fraught minute of fighting it off to stop the clammy plastic suffocating me before they cut me out. They have a special tool for doing this, like a heated knife. I gain a shallow, shiny slash along my thigh to testify to their general lack of care wielding it. One more person becomes Wastage when they鈥檙e the last to be cut free and by then it鈥檚 too late. All within tolerance, you understand. And that鈥檚 it. We鈥檙e down. I look up into an alien sky.

This is an extract from by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor, 拢10.99), the latest pick for the 快猫短视频 Book Club. Sign up and read along with us聽here

鈥淭hen a guy鈥檚 bustling out of the house. It鈥檚 the actual Lord of the Manor come to greet us in person鈥�

鈥淚t all had to be perfect. We spent months recording it and nobody listened to it all the way through鈥�

鈥淢y vision keeps blurring and jumping as though the world鈥檚 vibrating in 19/8 time鈥�