explorer / books · 2025
Alien Clay
Published 2024 by Tor Books · 416 pages
Hugo · 2025
FinalistOn the ballot with
This book is recorded on the Hugo ballot only. Each row shows the full Best Novel ballot for that award and ceremony year. Winners appear first.
Adrian Tchaikovsky on these ballots
3 award entries · 3 books · 0 wins · 2025–2026
Synopsis
Exiled to a prison planet for challenging Earth's fascist regime, biologist Arton Daghdev discovers that all life on Kiln exists in radical symbiosis — organisms merging and hybridizing in ways that contradict everything the totalitarian Mandate teaches. When the alien ecosystem begins to transform the prisoners themselves, Daghdev must decide whether to fight the change or embrace it.
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