Shroud
This is a Tachikovsky short story that exemplifies the best of what Tachikovsky has to offer. A brand new universe, almost always a dystopian universe, and a world/moon that is so utterly alien to what we usually assume life can begin, that most of the book is about exploring what alien life can arise in such an inhospitable (to humans) environment.
The premise as usual, takes a bit of suspension of belief to start, but as with everything Tachikovsky there’s a great reason to start with that suspension of belief as it then takes you to places you couldn’t possibly imagine. Rather than placing human relationships in an imagined situation, this is really more about human alien relationships in a first contact type scenario. About the only thing that really bugged me was that the aliens were a bit too competent, because I guess the only story would be about humans squashing life.
The take on this aliens this time is echolocation and you can figure out what type of your favoriet animals might have such a skill but then the intelligence behind it is almost hive-like. Its an interesting take on an alien species because its like, what would happen if you turn up echolocation to 11, and what could you do or not do with that. Some of the biology probably wouldn’t happen the way its laid out in the book, but you can ignore that for the plot it has to service.
As usual, there’s a sort of happy ending to the end of the book. All in all, a great short story that I enjoyed from Tchaikovsky. He’s probably this generation’s asimov or clarke in terms of both volume and vision.