Adrian Tchaikovsky – a British fantasy and science fiction writer – is the next invited guest of the Literature Zone at Pyrkon 2024!

Adrian Tchaikovsky – who is he?

Adrian Tchaikovsky – or actually Adrian Czajkowski – is a British fantasy and science fiction writer of Polish descent. He studied zoology and psychology at the University of Reading, although professionally he was dealing in law for many years. Since 2018, he has been working as a full-time writer. The author is also an enthusiast and avid player of RPG and LARP games, he also has training in stage combat, and in his spare time he becomes an amateur actor. This wide range of interests translates into his books, on the pages of which issues related to ecology and entomology in particular appear frequently. 

He made his debut with the novel “Empire in Black and Gold,” the first in a series of books called “Shadows of the Apt,” but his most popular is his science fiction series “Children of Time” – not yet published in Poland. It tells the story of the fate of a civilization created by jumping spiders, whose evolutionary process was artificially accelerated by a nanovirus, and the collapse of a human civilization doomed by its actions. The story touches on themes of divinity, artificial intelligence, otherness, ecology and what it means to be human, for which it has been praised by critics.

Adrian Tchaikovsky – awards

The author’s credits include a BSFA award, Arthur C. Clarke award and Hugo Award nominations for short stories and for his “Children of Time” series. He made his debut with the novel “Empire in Black and Gold,” the first in the “Shadows of the Apt” book series in 2008, heavily based on an RPG campaign he ran during his college days. His subsequent series were created with less reliance on campaigns, but the author still relies on RPGs and LARPs to develop action and battle scenes. The “Children of Time” series was nominated for a Hugo Award, which it won, but due to controversy and ambiguity regarding the process of selecting works for nomination and the voting process itself, the author decided not to accept the award.