Tildes Book Club discussion - April 2025 - Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Elder Race explores Arthur C Clarke's third law: "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".

This story is both sci-fi and medieval fantasy; with the same events described differently from each of the two main characters' points of view. This is most entertaining when those characters try to have a conversation; the scientist cannot even explain his greater understanding of the world, because the words to do so do not exist in his companion's language. This leads to hilarious translations like "I'm not a wizard, I'm a wizard".

In an interesting twist, the 'demonic' threat faced by our heroes turns out not to be a recognisably technological one after all. It really is a malign influence from another universe, and beyond the scientist's understanding of physics. Even to him, it may as well be a demon.

I liked this one a lot. I wouldn’t say that I loved it, but it gets a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up from me.

In terms of genre preferences, I strongly like sci-fi, and have a pretty strong dislike of most fantasy, so this was an interesting blend. Instead of only liking half of the book as you might expect, the blending of the sci-fi into the fantasy made the fantasy palatable for me.

I thought that aspect was very cleverly done, and it reminded me of the video game Broken Age. That game features two different playable characters that it trades off between, each in a different setting: one fantasy and one sci-fi.

It also reminded me of Split Fiction, though I haven’t played that one yet.

Nyr should have been a resonant character for me, as I myself have depression, but I didn’t find myself emotionally gripped by the book too much. It honestly felt like I had my own DCS up while reading it, which very well might be the case. I think mentally I’ve had to put up some blockers recently on account of, you know, everything, and I also started taking SSRIs again not too long ago (which thankfully is going much better than when I first took them nearly twenty years ago). I did wonder as I was reading if the DCS was intended to be just on-demand mood meds.

Despite my relative lack of emotional connection, I still thoroughly enjoyed the book. I loved the way you could see the overlap between the two different perspectives. The different language and lore was interesting. I loved that the satellite was his “familiar” in the fantasy land. I think Tchaikovsky was really smart in how he constructed the story to work from both angles while also underlining the idea that neither one was fully “correct.”

I think it’s easy to think Nyr was the more “accurate” perception on account of how we tend to privilege science ourselves in the real world, but the story involves him going against a force he can’t explain scientifically, as well as having to artificially modulate his own perception of the world through the DCS. The story has lots of thoughtful flourishes, but the idea that neither perspective can capture the absolute truth was especially interesting to me.

Also, you know when you’re searching for meaning in something and then you kind of stumble on something that might be completely silly or completely significant, and you can’t tell the difference?

Well, I did that with their names.

We’re introduced to Lynesse and Nyrgoth, and then we later get them shortened to Lyn and Nyr. The book makes a big deal out of names as a gauge of familiarity, as well as the significance of being called what you prefer, so the shortened versions aren’t just cutesy throwaway nicknames but have some weight behind them.

When we combine this with the above idea I talked about where there isn’t any one single perspective that’s accurate, and if we extend that to encompass the idea that only through witnessing both can we get a complete picture (an idea reinforced by the ending of the novel), then we can combine Lyn and Nyr to get… Lyn-Nyr, or “linear.”

How do you make a line?

By connecting two points, of course.

It simultaneously feels too on the nose and also like I’m a conspiracy theorist playing fast and loose with associations in order to force meaning where there is none.

I’ll leave it to y’all to decide if I’m being perceptive or daft on this one.

Things I liked about the novella:

• I went in blind, and the initial reveal on Nyr's first chapter that this wasn't just a typical fantasy and also had sci-fi elements was really cool. (The mix of fantasy and sci-fi in general was neat. I've never read anything like this before.)
• I like that there was no explanation or even hinting at what happened to Earth or why Nyr was abandoned. Leaves room to speculate.
• Along the same line I like that the nature of the "demon" was largely left up to speculation as well.
• I thought Lynesse was a great character, easily the best in the story for me. Clear motivations, very sympathetic.
• I thought the world building was done quite well, introducing different groups of humans with different traits (and getting the guesses at how things came to be from Nyr's perspective was a neat angle).

Things I didn't like:

• I thought the translation gimmick was a cool plot device, but the full origin story of the colonies told by Nyr with a second column showing how it was interpreted felt like it was going too far. I preferred the more subtle hints at it given by having conversation crossover between the two viewpoints.
• Nyr's DCS is a neat idea, but I feel like it deadened him quite a bit as a character. When he turned it off and actually experienced the emotions I had a hard time buying it or really empathizing at all.
• The world building was maybe done a little too well, possibly trying to cram too much into a short novella. This is more of a vibe thing than having concrete examples, but one is that I think Esha could have been fleshed out as a more interesting character if some of the backstory of her people and the water breathing genetics or whatever was dropped (which I didn't feel really served the story other than interesting science stuff for Nyr to ponder on during his chapters).

Fashionably late again, but at least this one was a shorter read (part of why I nominated it...). I'm glad to finally be working through my backlog and catching up in these threads. I will likely skip a couple months though, then try to rejoin later so I'm no longer running behind.

Elder Race is tightly written and makes effective use of its limited page count. It still provides us backstory and context for this alien world, but much of the world-building emerges naturally through the alternating perspectives of Nyr and Lyn. Each provides their own unique understanding of this world, and we learn about their histories mostly through their own personal context.

Rarely did the book backtrack. While it might have been interesting to contrast their thoughts in every situation, it would have slowed the pace too much. For those few moments we did see things in stark contrast though - it really did highlight just how differently these characters saw the world.

I found both characters' perspectives enjoyable to read through, but I found that Nyr was especially humanized through his personal struggles. His years alone in his tower and utter loneliness are not unfamiliar to many of us. I found his dealings with "the beast within himself" to be a very honest depiction of depression. Difficult to describe, and yet impossible to ignore. His depression was never at the forefront of the story, but it was always lurking within him, and coloring every decision he made.

The DCS was also a good way of exploring the issue further. More than just being an interesting scifi gadget, it demonstrated an advanced form of bottling up one's feelings. Somehow, eventually, they will find a way to spill out. It seems that even with advanced technology, mental health is not something that can simply be ignored.

While Nyr felt closer to our own perspective, he was still unknown to us. He would occasionally remind us of this fact by employing his human augmentation or a futuristic toy. It was almost like contrasting our past and future, and we're stuck somewhere in the middle, not quite understanding either one.

The world though clearly belongs to Lyn. It is one of swords and shields, kings and queens, valor and bravery. At least, that is the world as she sees it. I liked that even here, the world that Lyn sees is very different from the one her mother sees, and closer to that of her grandmother.

Tchaikovsky saves time by leaning on some fantasy tropes, but I think that's perfectly reasonable for a novella and helps keep the pace up. I would have liked to learn a little more about some of the unusual differences alluded to, like the aquatic people and their role in facilitating trade. In a way, they seemed a mashup of this "historical" fantasy period, and the technological future that allowed their genetic modification in the first place.

I appreciated the attention to cultural norms: the weight of names, the taboo of touch. Nyr is an anthropologist, but even he struggles to pick up on some of these rules despite studying these people for many years (or storm seasons).

The demon was a very interesting baddie. The "invisible communication" with no detectable mechanism was genuinely creepy to me, since it violated my own understanding of the world. The metaphor of a seal being under the ice was a nice way of expressing that. The entity never felt malicious, exactly. It was no different than a virus or parasite: something just doing what it was programmed to do. Whether that is genetic programming or one of intelligent design is a question left unanswered.

I found the ending was slightly predictable, as the whole "nuke my body from orbit" thing had been foreshadowed a few times at that point, but it didn't feel cheap. I'd argue there was room left for a potential sequel though.

I actually found Nyr's resolution quite satisfying. He finally makes the hard decision to cut ties with his old life, and chooses to integrate into the society that until now, he's only studied from afar. To specifically do so as a "court sorcerer" feels like an acceptance of that world. To him, it may just be science, but it's magic to everyone else. And after being humbled by the unknowable demon, he's seemingly come to realize there may be no practical difference.