Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Czajkowski (spelt as Adrian Tchaikovsky for his books; born June 1972) is a British fantasy and science fiction author. He is best known for his series Shadows of the Apt, and for his Hugo Award–winning^[a] Children of Time series.^[2]

Adrian Czajkowski
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Born	1972 (1972) (age 53) Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Author and legal executive
Language	English
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Reading
Period	2008 – present
Genre	Fantasy and science fiction[1]
Subject	Zoology and psychology
Notable works	Shadows of the Apt series Children of Time Dogs of War
Notable awards	Arthur C. Clarke Award (2016) Hugo Award for Best Series (2023)[a]
Children	1
Website
www.adriantchaikovsky.com

Children of Time was awarded the 30th Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016. Author James Lovegrove described it as "superior stuff, tackling big themes – gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness – with brio".^[3]

Biography

Adrian Czajkowski was born in Lincolnshire in Woodhall Spa in June 1972.^[4] He is of Polish descent.^[5] He cites the natural world as an early influence, along with naturalists such as Gerald Durrell and David Attenborough, and he was fascinated by the Natural History Museum. "From there", he says in interview, "wanting to understand the behaviour – the minds – of the nonhuman started to take precedence."^[6]

He studied zoology and psychology at the University of Reading although he eventually became disillusioned with the content of the course.^[7] He then qualified as a legal executive.^[8] He was employed as a legal executive for the Commercial Dispute Department of Blacks, Solicitors, of Leeds^[9] until late 2018 when he became a full-time writer.^[8]

Tchaikovsky's first foray into writing was in 1996 when he submitted several stories for publication in Xenos magazine. In the early 2000, he won Xenos's annual competition with the short story The Roar of the Crowd, only for the magazine to fold pre-publication.^[10]

In 2008, after Tchaikovsky had spent fifteen years trying to get published, his novel Empire in Black and Gold was finally published by Tor Books (UK) – an imprint of Pan Macmillan – in the United Kingdom.^[11] The series was later published in America by Pyr Books. Tchaikovsky expressed the desire that the Polish editions of his novels feature the original Polish spelling of his surname,^[12] but these too used "Tchaikovsky".^[13]

On 23 January 2019, Tchaikovsky was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts by the University of Lincoln.^[14]

He lives in Leeds with his wife and son.^[15][16][17]

Writing career

Tchaikovsky revealed the basis of Shadows of the Apt in an online essay entitled "Entering the Shadows" at Upcoming4.me.^[18]

Whilst studying at the University of Reading, he managed a role-playing game named Bugworld. The game concerned the story of the insect-people of the Lowlands threatened by the encroaching Wasp Empire. From this original scenario, the entire series of books grew.^[19]

Tchaikovsky still uses role-playing games to help develop his stories, but now also uses live action role-playing, which assists in describing the numerous action and battle sequences in his books. He is currently involved with the LARP game Empire.^[20]

Tchaikovsky has regularly expressed his intention regarding the Shadows of the Apt series not to make science better than magic,^[21] or vice versa: "This is another key element, really: the magic/tech divide is a concept that turns up here and there in fantasy, but usually one side is good (mostly magic) and the other (dirty polluting tech) is bad. With the world of the kinden, they’re basically both as bad as the people who use them, whether it’s blood sacrifice in a Mantis-kinden grove or the Wasp Empire’s city-levelling weaponry."^[22]

Themes

Themes in Tchaikovsky's books include: "the frailties of human bureaucracy and the difficulty we have in seeing beyond the human perspective,"^[23] and "the terrible things we do to each other and the dogged resistance offered by the victim-participants in the vile mills of misery that are totalizing governments and wars of aggression."^[24] Critics have commented positively on his "definitive" depiction of alien civilizations^[25] and his treatment of "huge themes about belief, artificial intelligence, legacy, discovery, alienness and much more."^[26] In an interview with Jon Sutton for the British Psychological Society, Tchaikovsky says that "Human perception of time is one of the biggest limitations of being human," and that this shortcoming lies behind many current problems, such as climate change.^[27]

Awards and nominations

Tchaikovsky has received the following literary awards and nominations:

Table key

§	Indicates a declined award

Year	Work	Award	Result	Ref.
2016	Children of Time	Arthur C. Clarke Award	Won	[3]
2017	The Tiger and the Wolf	British Fantasy Award for Best Fantasy Novel	Won	[28]
2019	Children of Ruin	BSFA Award for Best Novel	Won	[29]
2020	The Doors of Eden	Philip K. Dick Award	Nominated	[30]
		Sidewise Award for Alternate History for Long-form	Won	[31][32]
2021	Shards of Earth	BSFA Award for Best Novel	Won	[29]
2022	City of Last Chances	BSFA Award for Best Novel	Won	[29]
	Elder Race	Hugo Award for Best Novella	Finalist	[33]
2023	And Put Away Childish Things	BSFA for Best Shorter Fiction	Won	[29]
	The Children of Time series	Hugo Award for Best Series	Won§[a]	[35]
	Ogres	Hugo Award for Best Novella	Finalist	[36]
2025	Alien Clay	Philip K. Dick Award	Special Citation	[37][38]
	Saturation Point	BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction	Won	[39]
	Alien Clay	Hugo Award for Best Novel	Pending	[40]
	Service Model	Hugo Award for Best Novel	Pending	[40]
	The Tyrant Philosophers	Hugo Award for Best Series	Pending	[40]

Bibliography

Novels

Shadows of the Apt

• Main novels
  • Empire in Black and Gold (2008), ISBN 978-0-230-73646-7
  • Dragonfly Falling (2009), ISBN 978-0-230-70415-2
  • Blood of the Mantis (2009), ISBN 978-0-230-70416-9
  • Salute the Dark (2010), ISBN 978-0-330-51144-5
  • The Scarab Path (2010), ISBN 978-0-330-51145-2
  • The Sea Watch (2011), ISBN 978-0-330-51146-9
  • Heirs of the Blade (2011), ISBN 978-0-230-75699-1
  • The Air War (2012), ISBN 978-0-230-75700-4
  • War Master's Gate (2013), ISBN 978-0-230-75701-1
  • Seal of the Worm (2014), ISBN 978-0-230-77001-0

• Tales of the Apt (short story collections)
  • Spoils of War (2016), ISBN 978-1-910935-21-7
  • A Time for Grief (2017), ISBN 978-1-910935-46-0
  • For Love of Distant Shores (2018), ISBN 978-1-910935-71-2
  • The Scent of Tears (2018), ISBN 978-1-910935-93-4

Children of Time

• Children of Time (2015), ISBN 978-1-4472-7328-8
• Children of Ruin (2019), ISBN 978-1-5098-6585-7
• Children of Memory (2022), ISBN 978-1-5290-8717-8

Echoes of the Fall

• The Tiger and the Wolf (2016), ISBN 978-0-230-77006-5
• The Bear and the Serpent (2017), ISBN 978-1-5098-3022-0
• The Hyena and the Hawk (2018), ISBN 978-1-5098-3026-8

Bioforms

• Dogs of War (2017), ISBN 978-1-78669-388-4
• Bear Head (2021), ISBN 978-1-80024-154-1
• Bee Speaker (2025), ISBN 978-1-03590-145-6

The Tyrant Philosophers

• City of Last Chances (2022), ISBN 978-1-80110-842-3
• House of Open Wounds (2023), ISBN 978-1-0359-0138-8
• Days of Shattered Faith (2024), ISBN 978-1-0359-0152-4
• Lives of Bitter Rain (2025) (novella), ISBN 978-1-0359-1144-8

The Final Architecture

• Shards of Earth (2021), ISBN 978-1-5290-5188-9
• Eyes of the Void (2022), ISBN 978-1-5290-5193-3
• Lords of Uncreation (2023), ISBN 978-1-5290-5198-8

Standalone novels

• Guns of the Dawn (2015), ISBN 978-0-230-77003-4
• Spiderlight (2016), ISBN 978-0-7653-8836-0
• Cage of Souls (2019), ISBN 978-1-78854-724-6
• The Doors of Eden (2020), ISBN 978-1-5098-6588-8
• Alien Clay (2024), ISBN 978-0-316-57896-7
• Service Model (2024), ISBN 978-1-250-29028-1
• Shroud (2025), ISBN 9781035013791

After the War

• Redemption's Blade (2018), ISBN 978-1-78108-579-0, is the first book in a multi-author series. The series continued with two books by Justina Robson.

Warhammer 40,000

• Day of Ascension (2022), is Tchaikovsky's first Warhammer 40,000 novel, and like his short story Raised in Darkness from Inferno! Volume 6 (2021), concerns the insidious Genestealer Cults.
• On the Shoulders of Giants (2022), is a part of the multi-author anthology On the Shoulders of Giants and Other Stories, ISBN 9781836090014

Novellas

Expert Systems

• The Expert System's Brother (2018), ISBN 9781250197566
• The Expert System's Champion (2021), ISBN 978-1250766397

Terrible Worlds

• Revolutions
  • Ironclads (2017), ISBN 978-1781085684
  • Firewalkers (2020), ISBN 9781781088487
  • Ogres (2022), ISBN 978-1786185280

• Destinations
  • Walking to Aldebaran (2019), ISBN 9781781087060
  • One Day All This Will Be Yours (2021), ISBN 978-1781088746
  • And Put Away Childish Things (2023), ISBN 978-1786188793.

• Transformations
  • Saturation Point (2024), ISBN 978-1837861743.
  • The Hungry Gods (2025), ISBN 978-1837865512.

Standalone Novellas

• Made Things (2019), ISBN 9781250232991
• The House on the Old Cliff (Dyslexic Friendly Quick Read) (2021), ISBN 9781913603045
• Elder Race (2021), ISBN 978-1250768728

Short stories

• "The Final Conjuration" in Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets: An Anthology of Holmesian Tales Across Time and Space (2014) ISBN 978-1781082225, a collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories.
• "Where the Brass Band Plays" in Urban Mythic 2 (2014), ISBN 978-0-9573489-9-8^[41]
• "Shadow Hunter" in Grimdark Magazine, issue #1^[42]
• Human Resources (2025), is set in the world of Service Model, ISBN 9781250375933

Other collections

• Feast and Famine (New Con Press, 2013), ISBN 978-1907069543. This collection contains the stories "Feast and Famine", "The Artificial Man", "The Roar of the Crowd", "Good Taste", "The Dissipation Club", "Rapture", "Care", "2144 and All That", "The God Shark" and "The Sun in the Morning".

• The Bloody Deluge (2014), ISBN 978-1849977647. Part of The Afterblight Chronicles by Abaddon Books.

• The Private Life of Elder Things (2016), ISBN 978-1911034025. Co-authored by Keris McDonald and Adam Gauntlett. A collection of new Lovecraftian fiction about confronting, discovering and living alongside the creatures of the Mythos.

• Terrible Worlds: Revolutions (2023), ISBN 978-1786188885. Collects three novellas: Ironclads, Firewalkers and Ogres.

Critical studies and reviews of Tchaikovsky's work

The Doors of Eden

• West, Michelle (July–August 2020). "Musing on Books". F&SF. 139 (1&2): 88‒94.

Notes

1. Tchaikovsky has since disavowed the award due to the subsequent controversy regarding that year's Hugo ballot.^[34]