The scientific method is built around questioning, setting up experiments, interpreting their results, and re-examining the original question in light of them. The question comes first, followed by the answer. However, this ideal is often corrupted. Bad actors and poor scientists will start with a result and build backwards from there. The answer comes first, and the question and experiments are derived from it. The ideal path is an open-minded attempt to expand knowledge; the corrupted path is an authoritarian method of confirming already-held beliefs. In Alien Clay, Adrian Tchaikovsky demonstrates for readers how the corrupted method of scientific inquiry can be used to control society. He sends readers and a dissident academic to a penal planet outside the solar system—the only extra-solar planet where intelligent life has been found. This is a problem for the approved answer around which scientific orthodoxy has been built.

Professor and revolutionary Arton Daghdev is sent to the extrasolar planet, Kiln, to study ruins left by aliens. Despite fulfilling his dream to study extraterrestial life, this trip isn’t one Arton wants to take. He’s a political prisoner sent to the planet for refusing to espouse accepted scientific orthodoxy. As punishment, he’s sent to a labor camp from which he must search for missing aliens who left behind mysterious ruins that seem to have writing on every surface. No evidence of tools or ships has been found; so where did the aliens go? Arton and the other prisoners are tasked with answering that question—so long as their answers fit within the political dogma: Readers learn that the “long-lost man” of Kiln must be a human-like creature because the totalitarian scientific orthodoxy under which Arton labors states that the human form is the height of evolution. Thus, on a different planet, evolution must produce a being similar to the human form. In other words, Arton’s job is to find evidence that confirms orthodox beliefs. If the results of his study lead in a different direction, he must twist those results in such a way that they lead to the conclusion that the authoritarian regime demands.

Adrian Tchaikovsky delivers with every story he creates, and Alien Clay is no different. Here he’s created an anger-filled treatise on authoritarianism’s attempt to control science and, by extension, society. “Orthodoxy was like a hand at your throat. If we had anything to say that didn’t fit within the narrow spaces between those clenched fingers it was whispered in secret” (p. 12). Arton was sent to Kiln for not espousing orthodoxy, but he was also sent to Kiln so that he could still be useful to the authoritarian regime back on Earth.

Kiln, however, isn’t lifeless. It’s filled with aliens that will kill and infect humans. Painful decontamination procedures keep the prisoners mostly healthy. Yet the mortality rate among the prisoners remains high and gruesome. Yet that’s not all Arton must deal with. His fellow prisoners don’t trust him, and the commandant of the camp has marked him as deserving of special attention. Interspersed with science’s relation to politics, then, is the constant paranoia and worry of the dissident. Who does Arton trust? Who trusts Arton? The way that the authoritarian regime finds dissidents is through torture of other dissidents. Every prisoner in the camp wonders who sold them out or who will seek revenge for being sold out. Arton reflects on fleeing the authorities, trying to hide and survive, and how his capture led to torture: To be a dissident in an authoritarian society is to be in an inherently unsustainable position. Hiding, lying, living double lives are the dissident’s modus operandi; yet humans constantly and consistently fail at these tasks. “The surveillance and informants, and neighbor watching neighbor, until you end up doubting everyone except yourself. You even end up doubting yourself” (p. 217). Arton doubts whom he can and cannot discuss his theories with. Tchaikovsky depicts in expert fashion the paranoia and loneliness Arton feels as a dissident and as an academic that society labels a criminal.

As the story grows, and as Arton grows, so does the philosophy of the book. “You ever think about the fundamental paradox of our society? How they build a tight-knit machine of a state by breaking everyone down into solitary units turned against each other? How you compel mass obedience out of the most individualistic drives of selfishness, greed and fear?” (pp. 356-357) The two themes of science and dissent mix into a larger examination of community. Human beings are communal animals, but much of Western society seeks to deny this by placing individualism over community. This is how the US ends up with school shootings and religion dictating laws: Because “my freedom” trumps (pun intended) common decency. The cliché is “United we stand, divided we fall” for a reason; companies seek to break up employee unions because they know united workers have more power to negotiate compensation than individuals. In Alien Clay, Tchaikovsky argues that community is important to human ecology through a slow yet effective build-up—but also shows how an individual can remain an individual while helping the community.

This book is quite philosophical, then, but it’s also a ripping, good, brutal yarn: It has body horror in addition to revolutionaries. Tchaikovsky makes Kiln feel alien—it’s not just Earth with a costume change. Rightly so, he considers how the planet’s native biology is dangerous to humans, how humans must recycle as much as they can and rely on shipments from Earth for day-to-day existence. In addition, those who leave the confines of the work camp must undergo decontamination to ensure that no native flora or fauna infest it. Tchaikovsky gives readers examples of native biology infecting humans, and it’s not pretty. His descriptions are disturbing and gross in the best possible way.

While this book holds the readers’ attention, though, it is a slow read. The heavy subject matter does make the story feel sluggish. And Arton is an interesting character: He’s in crisis mode for so much of the book that it’s difficult to tell what depths he possesses; because he’s a political prisoner in mortal danger daily, readers get mostly his fight, flight, or flee reactions. But he’s not just a mouthpiece for Tchaikovsky’s philosophy. Readers will feel for Arton as he tries to navigate humans at their most savage and brutal. In the end, it’s doubtful that readers will be able to like him, but they’ll sympathize and hope he remains safe.

The novel’s MacGuffin, too, is presented unusually. The solution to the “Kiln man” conundrum is creative yet quickly dismissed, making it feel a bit of a letdown: The whole of the story is designed to solve this mystery, yet when it is solved, it is not explored; the novel quickly ends. What do these revelations mean for the planet of Kiln? For our characters? We don’t know. This isn’t to say that the ending is unsatisfactory, it’s a fine ending. The book wraps up nicely and satisfyingly. There is a sense of wonder throughout that the book that has a razor’s edge to it. But readers want to explore the planet, while at the same time wanting the prisoners to be safe. Unfortunately, on Kiln, only one of those wants can be satisfied at any given time.