Walking to Aldebaran by Adrian Tchaikovsky Book Review

 Walking to Aldebaran 

By Adrian Tchaikovsky 

Published Year: 2019 

Page Count: 100 pages [ Novella ]

Medium Used: Kindle Paperwhite 

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Space Opera, Alien Contact, Horror, Speculative Fiction, Loneliness, 2026-read. 

Rating: 4/5 

The narrator is an European astronaut, who having aspired to become an Astronaut that gets to navigate space and meet aliens, since childhood has his dream come true. Then what remains for him is nothing but pure regret. Because he gets lost in a maze like Crypt, an alien artefact, separated from his crew members and wandering/walking forever and sustaining/snacking on the meat of bugs and squishy, mushy alien creatures stuck in the labyrinth like him. 

The narrative plays in two timelines - one is recounting his experiences with different alien creatures and how indefinite walking in the labyrinthe has altered him psychically and physically. The other tells the series of events that took place leading him to his current position. We see he is not the same person as before entering the maze and I got real curious as to know how this alteration took place. The author very effectively conveys the discomfort and longing the lost man feels for communication/solidarity with some intelligence similar to his own. He yearns to go back home in whatever way possible. He has entered the dragon's lair and there is no way out. He either must walk forever - there is a mystical experience for him in the Crypt that keeps him from starvation or getting poisoned - or die there. 

An alien structure, named the Crypt, located on the fringes of Outer Planets, past Neptune, makes its presence known to the ESA and this triggers a near war between different countries over who should go there first and to whom it belongs. Then they find reason to wonder and speculate that it might be a wormhole or a bridge between galaxies and all the countries cooperate and send a probe to investigate. The probe sends back little information but obviously it is interesting and tantalizing that it warrants the need for sending a manned expedition. One of the crew members is Gary Randall who is our narrator. Shortly after entering the Crypt, most of the crew die and Gary escapes death but gets lost in the maze. He keeps searching for his crew and killing and eating the creatures that lay traps for him. He helps few alien creatures like the Egg Men and politely refuses the welcome offered by the Pyramid Men, choosing his walk and solo search instead. The ending seemed open to me - does he die from exsanguination or does the Machine Mother( the alien power that seems to be governing the maze ) offer him a life prolongation? I think it will be the former because the second alternative even if granted, only accounts for a listless and futile life, led walking to nowhere, from nowhere right?! Unless he is also privy to a way out!

I think the author has enough material and a good topic to have drawn the book into more than a novella. I read other works by the author and liked them. Just like this one. This man, Adrian Tchaikovsky, is a force to recon. He has a super stimulating mind that is contagious and makes the reader think hard on life's toughest questions. The ones asked here, for me, are :  is it wrong to aspire for experiencing the unknown? Is it wrong to take the first step in a direction that is not usually navigated? What happens to a human mind if left to itself in loneliness and isolation for long? What would a person do to survive and not die, even though his pursuits are pointless? Is something looks too good to be real, maybe it isn't. The Crypt seemed like a wormhole but the probes that were sent in were showing odd behavior, so why didn't the humans/crew take more caution??  An intelligent man, the narrator, having figured the truth about the nature of the Machine, why didn't he resort to death than walk endlessly? Hope seems a bad thing almost! He would have never stepped out right! Even if he did really meet his lost/other walking mates?! 

I didn't really know this. So I had to do some web search. The title indicates the oddity and the impossibility of a person reaching a distant star like the Aldebaran by walking. Although this is precisely what the crew did aspire to do. How unlikely it sounds! This book raised more questions than answers but sure made me think!