Walking to Aldebaran

Written by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I'M LOST. I'M SCARED. AND THERE'S SOMETHING HORRIBLE IN HERE.

My name is Gary Rendell. I'm an astronaut. When they asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, "astronaut, please!" I dreamed astronaut, I worked astronaut, I studied astronaut. I got lucky; when a probe exploring the Oort Cloud found a strange alien rock and an international team of scientists was put together to go and look at it, I made the draw.

I got even luckier. When disaster hit and our team was split up, scattered through the endless cold tunnels, I somehow survived.

Now I'm lost, and alone, and scared, and there's something horrible in here.

Lucky me.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781630154431

Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, has practised law and now writes full time. He’s also studied stage-fighting, perpetrated amateur dramatics and has a keen interest in entomology and table-top games. Adrian is the author of the critically acclaimed Shadows of the Apt series, the Echoes of the Fall series and other novels, novellas and short stories. Children of Time won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, Children of Ruin and Shards of Earth both won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel and The Tiger and the Wolf won the British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Reviews for Walking to Aldebaran

[NicholaAnkeMillen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is brilliant. I loved the two time lines woven together.

[Henrik Persson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great novella! Suspenseful, different, refreshing, funny and dark. Author does a great job of reading his own work in this audiobook.

[Timothy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a superb story with rich undertones and overtones. Moreover, few writers possess the gift of narrating their own work so well. There are many aspects that I'd have liked to highlight but that might spoil the journey for some. Far more to this tale than meets the eye. Indeed "something horrible in here".

[Rueben Canales · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a delightful foray into the universe both fantastical and dreadful in balanced measure. The author did an excellent job of narrating the carefully balanced themes.

[CB · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is creepy all the way through. Relentless. Written as a first person narrative, the author does an excellent job in the narration, the grim gallows humor of its hapless astronaut and his British stiff upper lip.

This is a first alien contact story like Rendezvous With Rama meets Stargate meets Predator but original, fresh and gripping. Not a bedtime story.

[Shaun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved it. Great story with a dose of dark humour. Excellent narration.

[John W Bjerk · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dark, nihilistic, British humor in a rather weird sci-fi setting.

[tuusannuuska-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[dcunning11235 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lol, okay, I (1) did not see that coming, (2) thought, "Oh, wow, okay, I see," and then (3) did not see that "joke" until the last 5%.

Mother. "Gary Rendell."

Well played, sir. Well played.

[iansales_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

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 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.

[guide2_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Interesting initial concept for this novella, but not enough resolution to make it worthwhile.

[dokfintong · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Recalls some other worksThis novella reminds me very much of Harlan Ellison's "I have no mouth, and I must scream" from 1967. Read them yourself and see if you don't agree. There is a lot of Southern Reach here too. I received a review copy of "Walking to Aldebaran" by Adrian Tchaikovsky from the publisher Rebellion through NetGalley.com.

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Space horror novella. When humanity finds an alien artifact beyond Pluto, the expedition to explore it goes very badly indeed; a surviving astronaut is deeply altered both physically and mentally. Appropriately creepy and much more horror-focused than Pohl’s Gateway to which it has some bare bones plot similarities.