Genre: Sci-fi, Novella
Published: Solaris & Tantor Audio, August 2024
My Rating: 4/5 stars
Adrian Tchaikovsky has fully embraced his “speculative biology-era”, and I’ve done nothing but cheer him on from the sideline ever since. For far too long, the science-side of hard sci-fi was dominated by physics, and I love Tchaikovsky’s way of bringing alternative biology to that same height, and out of the realms of “Searching for Bigfoot-novels”.
This year, he brought us not one, but two releases within this niche: Alien Clay and Saturation Point. Although I enjoyed both, it’s undeniable that the two read extremely similar, almost as if written from the same outline, but focusing a slightly different evolutionary concept.
Saturation Point is set in a dystopian future where the Earth has been wrecked by climate change and global warming, making large parts of the globe uninhabitable to humans. The constant threat of new contagions and viruses keeps communities isolated, whilst large corporations do their best to find ways to make a profit within the increasingly hostile natural environments around them.
Our story follows a female scientist, through a series of briefing notes, as she recounts her experiences within “The Zone”; a band of wild rainforest around the equator where heat and humidity make it impossible for warm-blooded animals to survive. Combining her recounting of her first trip into the Zone, mixed with her latest upcoming mission, we get a glimpse into a truly hostile world of nature, corporate greed, and the insignificance of humanity in the face of both.
What I Loved:
As mentioned: Tchaikovsky is a master of this style of sci-fi. What Alien Clay did for the biological concept of symbiosis, Saturation Point does for thermoregulation. Elements of horror, thriller and action are combined into a cohesive whole that feels like an incredibly complete story, despite its short length of under 200 pages. Because of Tchaikovsky’s strong grasp on the biology behind his world, he’s able to bring the world to life without overexplaining it to you as the reader. Perhaps even better within his novella’s than his full-length novels, he balances showing-vs-telling, especially when it comes to the ethical questions he brings up. This is climate fiction that is scary without being preachy, which is something I can always appreciate.
What I didn’t love:
Epistolary or “interview-style” novels are often hit-or-miss for me, but the protagonists narrative voice, brought to live brilliantly by the audio-narrator Emma Newman, really pulled me in.
That leaves me with only a single valid point of criticism, which is that Saturation Point felt so similar to Alien Clay. And in that comparison, Alien Clay wins by a long stretch. Luckily though, this isn’t an evolutionary competition where only the strongest may survive. I’m happy to have both Alien Clay and Saturation Point next to each other, and think Saturation Point, for its shorter runtime, makes for a perfect entry into this authors extensive backlog.
Many thanks to Tantor Audiobooks for providing me with an audio-ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Readalikes: Alien Clay (obviously, for aforementioned reasons) and a mix of Annihilation and Predator, but without the charming campiness of the latter.
You can find this book here on Goodreads.
