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Adrian Tchaikovsky

Firewalkers: Signed limited edition hardcover from Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky Hardcover – 14 May 2020

by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Author)

175 ratings

"Firewalkers brims with intelligence and excitement." The Waterstones Round Up

Firewalkers are brave. Firewalkers are resourceful. Firewalkers are expendable.

The Earth is burning. Nothing can survive at the Anchor; not without water and power. But the ultra-rich, waiting for their ride off the dying Earth? They can buy water. And as for power?

Well, someone has to repair the solar panels, down in the deserts below.

Kids like Mao, and Lupé, and Hotep; kids with brains and guts but no hope.

The Firewalkers.

"Tchaikovsky sharply addresses the connection between class and climate, weaving pressing ethical questions into a thrilling adventure." - Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"This is a great story; it has a lot to say, and wraps its larger themes in a compelling narrative that kept me reading all night, even as I didn't want it to end. This is great stuff, and you really should read it" - Sci-Fi & Fantasy Reviews

"The world building is stellar. The writing is exciting, and the slightly-horrific atmosphere is on point." - Fantasy Inn

"Firewalkers was a thoughtful read with many twists and turns. Short, precise, and abundant in ideas with a masterful gritty execution" - The Nerd Daily

"A masterclass in concise storytelling" - SciFi Now

"Wonderfully vivid throughout" - SFX

Print length

208 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Solaris
Publication date

14 May 2020
Dimensions

15.56 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm
ISBN-10

1781088489
ISBN-13

978-1781088487
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Product details

Publisher : Solaris (14 May 2020)
Language : English
Hardcover : 208 pages
ISBN-10 : 1781088489
ISBN-13 : 978-1781088487
Dimensions : 15.56 x 2.54 x 23.5 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 579,199 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2,171 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- 2,174 in High Tech Science Fiction
- 5,772 in Dystopian

Customer reviews:
175 ratings

Product description

Review

Tchaikovsky sharply addresses the connection between class and climate, weaving pressing ethical questions into a thrilling adventure. --Publishers Weekly, starred review

This is a great story; it has a lot to say, and wraps its larger themes in a compelling narrative that kept me reading all night, even as I didn't want it to end. This is great stuff, and you really should read it. --Sci-Fi & Fantasy Reviews

About the Author

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son.

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Customer reviews

5 star		49%
4 star		35%
3 star		13%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from United Kingdom

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Tony H

Not one of his best but worth reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 September 2020

Verified Purchase

Loved Children of TIme & Ruin, and Cage of Souls, which were my first experiences of the author. This one was good but compared with the others, a little disappointing, Much less deep and intriguingly complex, more shallow characters and more like a snack than the previous excellent and filling banquets that the others were for me.

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Kindle Customer

Short and compulsive

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 August 2020

Verified Purchase

Science Fiction that is highly accessible and with elements of familiarity that strike home. Clever twists, sympathetic characters and a quickly developing plot. The end came quite suddenly and threads of the story were tied satisfactorily but at a much faster pace than the main narrative. Necessary perhaps but a bit disappointing. A really fine read. I love his books.

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Kindle Customer

Future imperfect

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 October 2020

Verified Purchase

A good read with interesting ideas and characters. More of a young teen rather than adult book and felt too short. Both the action and the ideas were worth further exploration.

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Kelvin A White

A fitting ending

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 July 2020

Verified Purchase

Took a while to get into the story, The ending is one of sweet revenge

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marcus kane

Beautiful story

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2020

Verified Purchase

Fantastic experience

Helpful

A Compulsive Sci-Fi Novella & A Damning Indictment On Humanities Mismanagement of Our Planet

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 May 2020

Don't believe it's possible for fiction to be enthralling whilst also addressing urgent topical issues? Then let Mr Tchaikovsky prove you wrong in Firewalkers. Not only does it explore the links between class and climate change but it discusses capitalism and its issues, the vastly different lives of the rich and impoverished and the often brutal unfairness of life, all within the context of this compulsive standalone science fiction novella. Earth is now a post-apocalyptic wasteland due to significant climate change whereby the sun has scorched the planet almost turning it to desert and the wealthy have managed to use their money to build spaceships on which to leave a destroyed Earth behind to linger someplace more inhabitable. Of course, those with little to their name bear the brunt of it all and haven’t the means to keep their families fed and clothed never mind being able to afford the luxury of simply upping sticks and leaving it all behind. They live in the hope that one day they'll be able to join those who are more fortunate.

It follows Firewalkers Mao, Lupe and Hotep, a group of youngsters who are sent to repair vital infrastructure or retrieve items from the searing hot desert when necessary. Their employment is secured by promises of money, food, water and medicine, fuelling their hope that they will be able to leave soon too. This is a superb and exhilarating read right from the beginning and has both a stellar plot and impressive characterisation; it's what we've come to expect from Tchaikovsky and he never seems to let us down. Surprisingly for a novella, the cast is well fleshed out and come alive on the pages. It's a captivating, disturbingly bleak and all too real tale and one that cuts very close to the bone in that it captures impeccably how we are at a crossroads where we must make a decision as humans for the good of humanity whether we simply carry on in the way we have been or change our ways to save our planet. A sophisticated and thought-provoking piece. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Solaris for an ARC.

2 people found this helpful

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David Harris

Gritty, enthralling near future SF

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 June 2020

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

Nguyēn Sun Mao is a firewalker, that is, a fixer who, with a trusted crew, will venture out into the withering heat of near future, global-heating afflicted tropical Africa to mend tech.

The little community he lives in - Ankara Achouka - owes its existence to a rich-person project to escape the heat and death. Ankara it, literally, the site of the Anchor (or one of them), the foot of a space elevator that serves the building starship Grand Celeste. Workers were gathered from around the world ('There'd been plenty out of Vietnam who'd needed somewhere that wasn't underwater right about them') to construct it, repopulating zones previously abandoned as the temperature rose.

Scattered around in the desiccated countryside are the abandoned villa estates of the monied who got together to fund escalator and starship, the labs and research stations where it was designed, and square kilometres of solar panels to power everything. It's all pretty much abandoned now as the last few passengers drive, stay briefly in Ankara and make their way to their berths. Mao and his ilk scratch out a bare living keeping those panels running to serve the hotel and town, and fixing this and that.

Of course, this book involves a trip out of town into the heat and into danger, a trip that will change things for ever...

Tchaikovsky packs a great deal into this short book. There's the closely observed relationship between Mao and his team - Lupé, who 'just liked the feel of the metal under her fingers', Hotep, 'the space girl', a young woman expelled from the Celeste because she didn't fit in ('She laughed at the wrong times, cried at the wrong things, took the wrong message from jokes,,,') - one of the elite, born, in her view, to be an astronaut, but now to be left behind, she's an ambiguous figure ('she had a right to be mad, maybe, but that didn't make her the avenging champion of the world either'), which is reflected in the way everyone around her behaves.

There are heartbreaking, truly fearful descriptions of the ruin of Earth, the dry river beds, dusty plains and long-gone animals and and trees (trees are now just something strange you see in old pictures- were they ever real?) The repellant, processed food. And, everywhere, the legacy of the rich who, rather than try to fix things, squandered resources on building themselves an escape route.

It is a really grim vision, but in these times of one rule for the powerful, one for the rest of us, it hardly takes much persuasion that these might be the consequences, this might come true.

There is, also, of course, a mystery driving events here. Just what's causing the power drops that Mao is sent out to fix? The job takes him and the team way, way out into the badlands, to areas rumour populates with the strange, dangerous relics of experiments, where possibly labs still run on auto, tampering with who knows what. Mao is chosen for having survived one nightmare trip already but this time he faces different challenges.

There is some beautiful (and clever!) writing here ('the libido faction in Mao's personal government tabled a motion', 'They were heading for the Heart of Brightness', a sun 'the head of a white hot rivet just driven in by some celestial smith'). I loved the way that Mao's, and his crew's, expectation of the ruined, abandoned villas they discover, and the civilisation they represented, is all mediated through popular dramas which themselves don't comprehend what they're portraying, or the grimly realistic cultural attitudes embedded in the text, exposed when Lupé finds a working mirror screen that, to flatter, smooths the blemishes from her skin - and renders it 'a good few shades lighter'.

While there's a SF core to the novel in its background of climate disaster, space travel and future tech, the events are all driven by the consequences of flawed humanity as we know it and can see it today. There's no redeeming hero trying to fix things, indeed from what we see of the powerful here they're all about to begin a scramble over each other for escape, leaving Mao and his like to wither in the heat.

Which is what makes it - despite the temperatures experienced by Mao and Co! - still a chilling read. It's a book I'd recommend, as temperature records fall and we hear talk of colonies on Mars which, I'm sure, won't be for you and me...

One person found this helpful

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