Adrian Tchaikovsky

Adrian Czajkowski (spelt as Adrian Tchaikovsky for his books; born June 1972) is a British fantasy and science fiction author.

He is best known for his series Shadows of the Apt, and for his Hugo Award-winning Children of Time series.

Adrian Czajkowski was born in Lincolnshire in Woodhall Spa in June 1972.

He is of Polish descent.

He studied zoology and psychology at the University of Reading.

He then qualified as a legal executive.

He was employed as a legal executive for the Commercial Dispute Department of Blacks, Solicitors, of Leeds.

In 2008, after Tchaikovsky had spent fifteen years trying to get published, his novel Empire in Black and Gold was published by Tor Books (UK) – an imprint of Pan Macmillan – in the United Kingdom.

The series was later published in America by Pyr Books.

Tchaikovsky expressed desire that the Polish editions of his novels feature the original Polish spelling of his surname, but these too used "Tchaikovsky".

Children of Time was awarded the 30th Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2016.

Author James Lovegrove described it as "superior stuff, tackling big themes – gods, messiahs, artificial intelligence, alienness – with brio".

In late 2018 he became a full time writer.

He lives in Leeds with his wife and son.

The series was continued with Salvation's Fire by Justina Robson and published on 4 September 2018.

Warhammer 40,000

Tchaikovsky's first Warhammer 40,000 novel Day of Ascension (2022), like his short story "Raised in Darkness" from ''Inferno!

Volume 6'' (2021), concerns the insidious Genestealer Cults.

On 23 January 2019, Tchaikovsky was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of the Arts by the University of Lincoln.

Tchaikovsky revealed the basis of Shadows of the Apt in an online essay entitled "Entering the Shadows" at Upcoming4.me.

Whilst studying at the University of Reading he managed a role-playing game named Bugworld.

The game concerned the story of the insect-people of the Lowlands, threatened by the encroaching Wasp Empire.

From this original scenario the entire series of books grew.

Tchaikovsky still uses role-playing games to help develop his stories, but now also uses live action role-playing, which assists in describing the numerous action and battle sequences in his books.

He is currently involved with the LARP game Empire.

Tchaikovsky has regularly expressed his intention regarding the Shadows of the Apt series not to make science better than magic, or vice versa: "This is another key element, really: the magic/tech divide is a concept that turns up here and there in fantasy, but usually one side is good (mostly magic) and the other (dirty polluting tech) is bad. With the world of the kinden, they’re basically both as bad as the people who use them, whether it’s blood sacrifice in a Mantis-kinden grove or the Wasp Empire’s city-levelling weaponry."

Tchaikovsky has received the following literary awards and nominations:

Shadows of the Apt

Main novels

Tales of the Apt (short story collections in the Apt universe)

Children of Time

Echoes of the Fall

Bioforms

The Tyrant Philosophers

The Final Architecture

Standalone novels

After the War series

Redemption's Blade (Solaris Books, 2018), ISBN 978-1-78108-579-0, is the first book in a multi-author series.