Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky - A Review

Adrian Tchaikovsky has done it again.

Fans of his work love to immerse themselves in the marvelous descriptions of alien life that flow from his keyboard like Niagra Falls. Shroud is no exception to this trend.

Warning: there may be some spoilers as I introduce the story. If you'd rather avoid these, go read the book and come back to this blog post later.

In this far-flung future scenario, a ship called the Garveneer arrives at a moon with such a dense atmosphere that no light reaches the surface. As such, it is named Shroud, as everything there is shrouded in darkness.

The ship builds a space elevator and begins exploration. They send probes and are surprised to find it is inhabited by huge creatures - some of them almost sauropod sized - which defy description. They are crustaceans, of a sort, except their skins are made of metal, not bone.

As they do not think this life is intelligent, they begin extracting the moon's mineral resources. They also design and build pods to explore its surface. Juna Ceelander, a scientist tagged for the expedition, thinks this is a bad idea, and her engineer, Mai Ste Etienne, agrees. Yet the away mission proceeds anyway. Their boss, Captain Oswerry Bartokh, accompanies them in a separate pod. (And if you don't appreciate the delicious poetry of a man named Tchaikovsky writing about a character named Bartok, you don't know your classical music!) But on the way down, they collide with a mis-aligned shipment coming up. (Or so it seems. The exact nature of the accident is told poetically, and leaves the details somewhat opaque.) The pods tumble to the surface and are damaged, but still somewhat functional.

On the surface, they encounter the alien creatures, who don't know what to make of these odd intruders. More out of curiosity than malice, they crack open the pod of Captain Bartokh, killing him. Juna and Mai flee in their pod, and the aliens, now referred to as "The Shrouded," pursue. But during the pursuit, Juna makes a breakthrough about the electromagnetic nature of The Shrouded, and attempts rudimentary communication. The Shrouded, for their part, cease being hostile and instead turn to being curious at a distance. They even fend off other alien predators, protecting the humans' vessel.

Then the story shifts, and it is told from the perspective of The Shrouded. They describe their impressions of these strange creatures dispassionately, as Tchaikovsky expertly weaves in the details about what Shrouded life is like. Here is the author's true genius: he depicts the aliens' hive-mind in a relatable way, letting the reader feel what its strange thought processes are like.

The story shifts back and forth, going from The Shrouded's point of view to the humans' point of view, thus allowing the reader to see the story unfolding from both sides.

With some deft figuring, Juna and Mai determine how to reach the anchor of the space elevator. But it is a long journey, spanning over one-quarter of the moon's circumference -- and they cannot see the terrain. Nevertheless, they try anyway. Along the journey, Juna keeps trying to communicate, determining that these aliens might actually be intelligent. Meanwhile, The Shrouded, and the other native life forms on the surface, continue to observe, probe, and sometimes attack the pod. The Shrouded eventually make their intelligence obvious by crafting a near-exact copy of one of the probes which was sent earlier. The implications are severe.

When Juna and Mai arrive back on board the Garveneer, they are not greeted as heroes. Instead, their recognition of The Shrouded as being intelligent is a direct threat upon profits. The investors directing the Garverneer order them to continue mining the moon with no further scientific inquiry. Juna and Mai are put back into cryostasis.

But The Shrouded learned a great deal during their encounter. They learned how human technology works. And, as The Shrouded are nearly machines themselves, they learned how to tap into the ship's communications systems via the space elevator. Slowly, they work their way into the ship's computers and systems. Before the humans realize what has happened, they become trapped on their own vessel.

In a daring countermove, Juna and Mai (brought back out of cryo) jerry-rig a device that will pick up Juna's brain-waves and transmit them to The Shrouded on their EM frequency. The hope is that The Shrouded will recognize a kindred intellect and desire coexistence.

This story is grim, serious, pessimistic, and pugnacious. This is not one of Tchaikovsky's fun little romps like Service Model. This is humanity at both its best and worst, and a beautifully depicted alien mind, which also shows its virtues and evils. This is a tale which brings science fiction back to its most basic roots:

What might alien life really be like?

In recent years, sci fi has gotten away from this basic question, seeming to abandon the "sci" in favor of the "fi." But the joy of scientific exploration has always been the deepest root of the genre, and no amount of psychic ability or magic can fully escape it. Thus, Tchaikovsky's story is not just a tale, it is a homecoming -- a return to the fundamentals that made such stories great.

And a continuation of depicting our deepest hopes and fears at what alien contact might be like.

Eric

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