Walking to Aldebaran

This was almost five stars for me.

I absolutely love Tchaikovsky's writing, in general and in this one.

The voice of the main character was excellent, I enjoyed the humor, and the main character's descent into madness (or monstrosity) was revealed with great pacing.

The main thing that kept me from loving this completely is an unfair criticism: had this been a full length novel with fully fleshed out characters, it would have been amazing. However, this is a novella, or a long short story, and should be read as such.

Alas, my expectations were geared toward something this wasn't even trying to be, and the story didn't quite reach.

Children of Time made me love Adrian Tchaikovsky as an author. Walking to Aldebaran made me want to hangout with him and devise a way to become his best friend. Exactly my kind of wit, mixed with a sci-fi story filled with cool original ideas. Did I mention it was hilarious? But not to the point where it became a comedy. It was like a normal sci-fi story, but it made you (or at least me) laugh a lot. Looking forward to the other books in this series, though I don't see them on Libby so I may never get to them.

Yes, I am Toto and I adore this book.
Is it weird that I found this cozy?

One of my favorite scenes set that is weirdly wholesome:

The stranded astronaut stumbles into a somewhat oxygen rich fold inside this dark crypt he's been hopelessly lost in. The glass flowers- beautiful. The massive whatever the hell that was creature that strode past him - strangely comforting. The mechanical little eggs on legs which may or may not contain little humanoid aliens but we'll never know because it would be rude to open them up you know - utterly adorable. And then they set off in a direction predestined and our Astronaut Rendell and by default, Toto (us, the readers) follow along but not curiously, for companionship on that desolate place. I loved show more this.

Just picture this lone astronaut walking at the center of these little moving Egg-Men machines and their shiny lights. He is a huge bipedal monster but he is their bipedal monster.

"They Bring the light and I, Gary Rendell of Earth, bring the muscle. Two-fisted space action!"

Geez Tchaikovsky, give others a chance to be great writers too. What the hell man.
Hit after hit after hit. show less

Some time around 2028 or 2030, British science fiction will consist only of books published by Adrian Tchaikovsky. But there will still be several hundred such books published each year. I’ve no idea how he manages to write so much. True, Walking to Aldebaran is a novella and, it has to be said, clearly written quickly. I’ve not read much of Tchaikovsky’s fiction, but certainly the other works I’ve read were quite huge novels with much better prose than this. Walking to Aldebaran is narrated by Gary Rendell, an astronaut who was part of a mission to explore an alien object discovered in the Oort Cloud. A team is landed in an opening in the artefact, and it becomes clear it’s some sort of space/time gateway that provides show more access, via tunnels and corridors and chambers, to an uncountable number of planets scattered throughout the galaxy. The novella is told in alternating chapters, in which Rendell describes how the mission to the artefact, called the Crypts, came together, and his experiences since the mission landed on/in the Crypts. Unfortunately, Walking to Aldebaran reads like someone wandering through a dungeon – the tunnels are apparently made of stone, which makes no sense… until you realise it’s just a dungeon. The final twist – that the narrator has become a dungeon monster themself – really does little to redeem a dungeon-exploration story layered onto a fairly standard Big Dumb Object. This is a series of well-used fantasy RPG tropes given a science-fictional spin, with no real resolution. show less

You know those times when you are reading Harlan Ellison and you say to yourself, "Where are all the newer writers doing DARK FREAKING TWISTS in their SF, full of humor, horror, and anxiety?"

Ah, good news, ya'll! This one fits the bill. :) In fact, I think I should make a little bookshelf named "MUAHAHAHAHAHA".

Yep. Expect a first-contact scenario playing out in flashback, wry and disturbing humor as we catch up with our poor pedestrian walking through the halls of the Frog God, and explore distant worlds and galaxies by foot. Expect, hunger, thirst, SO MANY OTHER aliens in the same boat, and especially...

A wonderful twist or two.

Come on. If Tchaikovsky is channeling Harlan, YOU KNOW it has to come. :) Ah, transformations. Well-rounded show more characters. Muahahahahahaha.

So fun. :) show less

The author was reading the book to me himself and I have to admit he was doing it well. Not only reading was good but the writing too stood out. Imaginative, erudite, ironic, full of suspense and unexpected twists - I could hardly ask for more in a sci-fi novel! Think of walking to the distant stars, the galaxy made small and human-sized at last! How would humans fare with such an unexpected discovery? Well, you'll need to read the book to find out (or ask the author to read it to you). It may turn out you knew the answer before setting off on the journey...

'Aldebaran' is a red star whose name comes from the Arabic word for 'follower,' because it seems to follow the Pleides. Interesting choice, although like others, my reading eye slurred it to 'Alderaan,' Princess Leia's world, and I had to wonder if Tchaikovsky is playing with us, just a little. In this novella, scientists have discovered an unusual object and sent a team to explore. It contains some of the best of sci-fi: astronauts, exploration, discovery. Oh, and some of the worst of what can happen.

I have no idea how to review this without spoilers. That's probably okay, as the person telling the story puts spoiler warnings in as well (which was hysterical!).

I was riveted.

I'll re-read it.*

Any comparisons may well turn out to be show more spoilers, so I hesitate to say what this book reminds me of. For those that want an atmospheric idea from other books: I'd say "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Plath crossed with "The Martian" crossed with "Leviathan." It also reminded me of "The Luminous Dead." . But I will note that while Tchaikovsky might have been inspired by Mark Watney from "The Martian," he went in entirely different directions.

For those that read it, I'd be interested to discuss (thematic spoiler) Do you think the build-up to the 'twist' was justified? I appreciated the back-and-forth timeline, as it prevents a lot of info-dumping, but I wonder if the coherence of the retrospective detracted from the growing technical insanity? My first inkling of strangeness was at the planet when he toyed with becoming a god, but I thought he was mostly joking around. Ok, HUGE spoilers follow; don't read if you intend to read the story. did the narrative actually seem like he was getting more and more crazy? It felt--in review--like it kind of stuttered. The beginning, he was witty and intelligent, relating to an interested audience 'where things went wrong,' so we were primed for bad things to eventually happen.

And then as we went through the maze, we experienced the dead air, the other aliens trying to kill him, and perhaps the ones trying to help him, which all seemed kind of reasonable, actually. Again, in review, perhaps my first inking that our narrator was unreliable was when he went on the other planet and considered staying there. I remember him joking being a 'god,' and that it seemed sort-of-but-not-really-joking in tone.

Then the stutter, and we went to the skittering in his head, the scritch-scritch noise that started to bother him. That seemed legit, both the distraction and the irritation.

For me, the leap into attacking the humans seemed a bit TOO quick.

Four and a half aliens, strictly because it doesn't quite suit my must-own requirements.

*I did re-read it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for the arc. show less