Synopsis:
The Future Is The Journey.
The vastness of space, the endless ribbon of time, worlds beyond our own: humanity has always been driven to explore, to pass the horizon and enter the unknown. For too many, that drive is what ultimately destroys us.
In three critically-acclaimed novellas, the “British master of science fiction” (Reactor) takes you into a mysterious artefact at the edge of the Solar system, to the very last day of time, into a world apparently born of children’s stories, with fearless – and sometimes hapless – explorers… and shows us why sometimes it’s best to stay at home.Collecting Tchaikovsky’s critically acclaimed novellas Walking to Aldebaran (2019), One Day All This Will Be Yours (2021) and And Put Away Childish Things (2023) for the first time, Terrible Worlds: Destinations gives you three glimpses of the limits of reality.
Review:
At this point, you could just plan to read only Adrian Tchaikovsky books for the rest of 2026 and not only would you not run out of reading material, a significant amount of those books would have 2026 release dates. He’s already released a few books (Children of Strife, Pretenders to the Throne of God) and has another few on the horizon (Green City Wars out on June 23, Preaching to the Choir on Aug. 11, and Elder Race on Sept. 1). The latest release from him is a great addition for Tchaikovsky completists, but if you’re a super fan, you’ve most likely already read the three novellas in Terrible Worlds: Destinations. Either way, the collection is a fantastic exploration of sci-fi and fantasy themes and tropes with delightful twists in each story.
I’d previously read the first story in the book, Walking to Aldebaran, but I gave it another run through when I cracked this book open. The story is a sci-fi first contact story with more than a dash of fantasy thrown in. As I’ve grown to discover with his books like Alien Clay and Shroud, Adrian Tchaikovsky handles his alien species as truly alien. There is little to humanize or even anthropomorphize with them, taking their form, their appendages, even their reasoning so far beyond what we typically see in space-going stories. Most aliens in Star Trek have two arms and two legs with similar goals and dreams as humans. You won’t find a lot of that here, and with Walking to Aldebaran in particular, some of those expectations cause us to miss the big curveball that Tchaikovsky is just waiting to throw at us. Some great dark sci-fi/horror vibes to this one.
The middle story, One Day All This Will be Yours, is a great take on time-travel. I think the first time that Doctor Who used the term “timey wimey” was in the classic David Tennent episode Blink. In it (and frankly many episodes still to come at that point), it was kind of a hand-wavey note to say, “all this stuff doesn’t make a ton of sense if you try to reason it all out, but time is messy, especially when you loop back on yourself over and over again.” I suppose that’s about one of the closest analogies I would have to this story. Time travel, especially when you go back over and over and over again, constantly correcting and uncorrecting things, doesn’t make a lot of sense. If time travel has eliminated your parents, then how do you still exist? Can you exist in a perpetually frozen moment in time, as one of the Doctor’s companions does (spoilers!)? Here, we’re presented with the consequences of a war that utilized time travel and our main character takes it upon himself to make sure time travel isn’t abused again. No matter the cost. Eventually, his world is turned upside down, but what does he do with what he has when it’s all in danger of being taken away? I had a lot of fun with this one, especially a moment when our protagonists were creating an “Anti-Avengers” from the worst of all of human history.
And the final novella in Terrible Worlds: Destinations is a great twist on C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series. With And Put Away Childish Things, Tchaikovsky explores the innocent joy, as well as the lingering terror, of having a make-believe land where you are royalty. A land with friendly fauns and scary spiders, magical creatures and a…clown of all things? The story doesn’t shy away from the Narnia comparisons, and instead leans into them with a magical wardrobe as the portal to the kingdom. But the question that Tchaikovsky tackles in this is, “What happens to Narnia when no one visits for a few generations?” and he goes in a wickedly creepy direction with it all.
I don’t think you should go into any of these stories expecting “happy” endings, especially if the name of the collection is Terrible Worlds: Destinations, but I suppose some of that may depend on what your definition of “happy” is.
I’m a fan of everything Tchaikovsky puts out and Terrible Worlds: Destinations is no different. None of these stories are new, but if you missed one or two over the years or if you just want another Adrian Tchaikovsky book on your shelf, this is a fantastic collection of three wonderful novellas that will tickle that speculative bone.
Thank you to Solaris Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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