Walking to Aldebaran

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Length: 3 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's Summary

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.

©2019 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2019 Tantor

Recommended

I liked Children of Time so well that when I saw Walking to Aldebaran available I purchased it. The author did a very good job with the narration. The story held my interest and it's a story I will re-listen to (something I don't do often). I prefer longer books but one of the most memorable books that I have ever read was a short story The Mist by Stephen King. Thirty five to forty years later that I still remember that story. IMO this was worth the price. I gave the story and performance 4 stars, unlike a lot of other reviewers I don't slap 5 stars on every book I listen to.

Well written but pointless

Too many questions and too unresolved. Good performance and good prose keep you going, but why?

Enjoyable short story with great narration

Definitely a "short story" in terms of depth but fun writing and great narration really elevated it - hope Adrian narrates more of his work!

Riveting!

I love everything about this one! Adrian Tchaikovsky delivers magnificence yet again! Tchaikovsky performed his own work brilliantly! I have great respect for an author who also does the voice acting too!

I love Tchaikovsky’s style!

Being a big fan of Children of Time/Children of Ruin series, I was very excited to read/listen to this book, and was not disappointed. I love the way he plays with ones perspective and or prejudices and gives something unexpected. Although, I must admit, I had figured it out before the ending.

Surreal, pointless, and pointlessly violent

And then the cannibal says, "if they didn't want to be eaten, they shouldn't be so delicious." If that's something you're interested in, read this book. Otherwise, maybe skip it. The science fiction ideas are pretty thin. There's a magic portal that opens up for humans and also lots of other alien races. The portals meet in a big network of chambers so these creatures can bother each other. For some reason, nothing constructive or collaborative happens. Just a bunch of violence.

A unique read

I really did love it. I was looking for a space thriller and settled on this because the reviews said it had a good twist. I was pleasantly surprised with the humor, it wasnt what I was originally looking for or expecting but I found myself literally laughing out loud at certain parts and it really made the story more enjoyable. It is a quirky story but it still satisfied the craving for a space thriller because there was suspense and gore. It is not very long, but that is fitting for the story.

Intriguing, funny and surprising!

Good lead character who's fun to spend time with. Countless great ideas, lines, details and surprises (!). And brief--you could read or listen to this book in one night. In any case, after you do you'll want to read it again!

So delightfully disturbing!

Being someone who has actually been lost in a wilderness for days, this book was eerily familiar. Such creative concepts and as the proragonist morphs and changes because of his experience, you morph and change as a reader as well. We, the readers, become Toto and he is dead on with his interpretations of the emotional transition Toto makes. What a fun and disturbing book! Great read!

amazing (per usual)

fantastic story, per usual. well rounded plot with good science fiction, humor, and enough depth to make you care about the characters. has a real HHGTTG vibe but not afraid to explore darker and more serious emotions. author does a fantastic job narrating his own story. highly recommend!!!!

I bought this because of a 1 star review

It’s difficult to get past a bad review. I deliberately bought this because of one, and the first half hour (of what is a 3+ hour story) was a struggle between the review and what I was listening to. In the end the story, and narration, won over, and I very much enjoyed this.

Worth a listen!

A peculiar outer-limits style of a story, with the a good twist. I get the 1 star review's reasoning about the humour/style but it's not THAT bad surely. There is a flippancy in the main protagonist but that may be more of a manifestation of his mental state, a coping mechanism. Read/listen, you should understand what I mean.

I enjoyed it. Thanks Adrian.

Lost astronaut

This is an interesting story about an astronaut, Gary Rendell, hopelessly lost in the bowels of a strange planet in pitch darkness full of alien monsters. Read by the author, so I was expecting great things, especially as I absolutely adored his other space books. You'd think Gary would have succumbed to a few feelings of honest despair, depression, terror or loneliness?? (like CS Lewis's Ransom in his interplanetary travel series). But (apart from mentioning his loneliness in a rather emotionless, jokey way) he appears relentlessly set on a tone of cynical humour throughout. Interspersed with chirpy annoyance. It gets a bit wearing. And also, you can't properly get to know the character as he never allows you into his heart. He always holds you at arms length with this artificially brave humour. He never breaks down or tells you how he's really feeling. Even describing the violent death of his colleagues, the voice of Gary remains relentlessly upbeat and chipper. There's just no variation in tone. Even if read in a different voice, with inflections of pain, madness, anger, frustration, that would have made this better.
What killed it for me was when he finally finds his way out and discovers his fellow crew members alive after all, he shows no emotion, no relief at seeing ACTUAL HUMANS again after so long. All he does is attack an alien and carry on being fake humorous. FFS.
So yes, this is interesting and sometimes funny, but ultimately.... rather shallow.
And as a side note, if you can't do a Scottish accent Adrian, don't bother having a Scottish character. Please.

Short but great!

I would have listened to this non stop if life and work didn’t argue otherwise. Terrific story and excellent narration. Adrian’s voice is very similar to Neil Gaiman’s but is far more pleasant a listen - as if Neil’s voice was suddenly equipped with intonation and vibrancy. Neil should leave narration to the experts or (as in Adrian’s case) better skilled.

I found that this story is faintly reminiscent in setting to “The Man in the Maze” novel by Robert Silverberg but with far more (and laugh out loud) humour and horror, and far less misogyny. It is also very up to date with casual cultural references that made me feel that it was written yesterday. I have been entranced, entertained and shocked by this story and will definitely read more by this author!

Update: And now that I have finished the last 15 minutes of the book, I can see that it is a sci fi retelling of an Old English epic poem. Very, very clever!

Great reading of a great adventure.

Being the author of a book often does not mean they are the best one to read it; but here, I loved the reading. The story was completely believably read, yet at the same time wildly imganative.
A unique take on first-contact.
Please read more of your work Mr Tchaikovsky 😀

An alternate view of humanity

This book tells the story of one man, originally part of a team sent to investigate an alien presence. As they get closer, the alien thing appears to follow no known law of physics, seeming to be in many places, and times and dimensions simultaneously. This is the story of a man, the effect he has on the alien artefact and the effect it has upon him.

The story unwraps slowly, each piece fitting perfectly together to tell, not of a man descending into the madness of knowing that he will die alone on an alien spaceship, but the frightening embracing of that madness, encouraged by something, be it mechanical, organic or biblical.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and it left me wanting to know and understand more. What I love move about Adrian's writing is that you start one of his books and your brain starts to think it can predict where the books is leading you. It can't, and this book, like "Dogs of War" and "Cage of Souls" by the same author are an absolute masterclass in imaginative story telling where the real story is concealed and enhanced by many other stories that all interact together in the same book to become part of the the whole story arc.

Enjoyable play on Grendel in Beowulf

Equal parts hilarious, horrific and a fascinating sci fi location that engages the imagination and makes me hope for further novels set in the Artefact — great premise! A reader doesn’t need to know a thing about Beowulf to thoroughly enjoy this but if you are familiar with it, you’ll get even more layers of enjoyment out of an English astronaut named Gary Rendel (with G Rendel the name tag on his spacesuit). Excellent reading by the author

Ending is missing?

Just goes silent for the last 2-3 chapters. What a let down. Not worth it, even free.

Engaging

Enjoyed this short story and will now look for others by this author who narrated it very well.

Essence of Grendel

Humorous and despairing in equal measure but an enjoyable short yarn. Man’s futility against the cosmos on display in the usual great prose from Adrian Tchaikovsky.

Adrian is also a great narrator for this tale.