Nancy Kress: Eleven Recent Novels and Novellas

[Joe Bernstein]

Months ago, I found a recent novel by Nancy Kress available as an
"uncatalogued paperback" from a public library where I live. I
realised that I'd read a lot of her early work, and then nothing.
It turned out that I could get hold of seven of her novels and
novellas of the 2010s from that library and one other, and one more
from the local university library. The latter is keeping very
limited hours, and I got a job just as I was finishing the other
seven, so this whole project sat on ice for nearly two months.
By the time difficulties with the job gave me some free time and I
finally read that last book, I'd learnt of three more novellas...
Basically, this post has gestated for way too long.

So. I read at least seven of Kress's first books - six novels and at
least one collection, maybe two. All or almost all, through 1993.
The books at hand are eleven of her twelve most recent book-length
fictions, no collections although several have come out during the
years covered, from 2012 forward.

The books:

<After the Fall Before the Fall During the Fall>, 2012

This is the first of three novellas published by Tachyon Press in
this set. I found it difficult to read, but it really cleaned up
in awards, winning the Nebula and the <Locus> poll, and getting
nominated for the Hugo and the Sturgeon.

It's set in 2013-2014 and in 2035, and it follows two protagonists
and one series of events. We first meet Pete, who abducts children
from 2013 through time to the "Shell" in which he lives, in 2035.
Then we hear about bacteria mutating in Brazil, in 2013. And then we
meet Julie Kahn, a mathematician helping the FBI try to solve the
abductions in 2013. The events in Julie's timeline happen before the
Fall, those in Pete's mostly after, and the events narrated between
their chapters *are* the Fall, in which, as far as anyone in the book
knows, everyone alive dies except those in the "Shell".

<A Bright and Terrible Sword>, published as by Anna Kendall, would go
here, except that it's the third book in a YA fantasy trilogy which
appears to have been published mainly in the UK.

<Flash Point>, 2012

This is the last of Kress's four YA titles 2010-2012, the
only separate one (the others are that trilogy) and the only one
published much in the US. It's a peculiar story set maybe four years
after a "Collapse", in which First World economies, or at least the
one in the US, went south much more emphatically than in 2008-2009,
so much so that maybe 2/3 of the US population is grindingly poor; I
*think* (don't have a copy to hand to check) that it's explicitly
dated not too much later than publication date. Our protagonist, Amy
Kent, who fell from the academic middle class to poverty in the
Collapse, survives auditions for a new reality TV series. This
series's premise is that viewers vote to predict the cast's moves
when the latter are placed into extreme situations; one of the book's
main themes is what Amy learns, that people aren't as predictable as
she'd thought. She learns this partly from her castmates and the
show's staff, but also largely through events surrounding the show,
which isn't the book's main focus. This is the book I had to read at
a university library; I suspect I want my own copy.

"One", 2013

A boxer wakes up from an operation to remove a brain tumor, and finds
that he can predict others' actions. It seems to be a relatively
short novella, with few characters. It nevertheless rings changes on
a major speculative theme. I think Kress was uncomfortable with the
protagonist; she mostly succeeds with him, but stresses, a bit more
than *I* was comfortable with, his academic ineptitude, "stupidity",
etc. All the same, I was perfectly happy to skim it again just to
establish that it actually is dated, if one reference is taken at
face value, as spanning 2018 to 2021.

<https://www.tor.com/2013/07/17/one/#more-101489>

"Annabel Lee", 2013

This novella, which I had to buy in its original publication, not
being, AFAIK, available in any other form, should've been a novel.
It tells the story from 2013 to 2030 of the titular protagonist, who
develops a different major speculative theme, and then gives us a
brief epilogue set 25 years later that seems to have the rest of the
novel that doesn't exist as its backstory. Anyway, like "One", it
works with few major characters, although lots more minor ones, and
again these are dominated by the protagonist's family. But most of
the minor characters participate in a collapse in America resulting
both from economic decline and from a tidal wave of revulsion against
reason; much of the missing second half seems to be about how the
protagonist helped bring those circumstances to an end. I'm croggled
that this broken story was nominated for a Nebula.

Its original publication was in a series that strikes me as obviously
a writer's idea, a series edited by Mike Resnick in which established
authors' novellas were paired with novelettes by "proteges". Kress's
choice was a writer who's still published little, but who'd reviewed
a couple of Kress's books. Therese Pieczynski's "Strange Attraction",
although essentially a horror story, actually worked better for me
than "Annabel Lee" because it told its whole story. The book title
is <New under the Sun>, and copies are fairly cheap online. But
thanks to the availability issue, "Annabel Lee" delayed this post
considerably.

<Yesterday's Kin>, 2014

This is the second of Kress's three Tachyon Press novellas of the
decade in question; it, too, won a Nebula and the <Locus> poll, and
was nominated for the Sturgeon. It presents ten months in New York
City, sometime not too far in the then future, as seen by a woman in
late middle age and her youngest child, Marianne and Noah Jenner.
Marianne is a geneticist recruited at the start of the book to work
with the aliens who had arrived a few months earlier. It spoils only
half of the longest, first, chapter to note that the aliens turn out
in fact to be humans from a population planted on a quite different
world about 150,000 years ago. They are here "To save you all from
destruction."

This book turned into the first third of the next, which begins
Kress's most recent trilogy. It's difficult to write about the
trilogy without spoiling this book, which is fine with me now,
because months later, I don't actually have time to re-read the
entire trilogy. Suffice that the threat is biological - in fact,
Kress unnervingly accurately predicted much of the structure of the
human response to the recent pandemic in these books - and that at
book's end, it transpires that Earth humanity will in fact survive.

Much of the book is set on the non-Earthlings' landing craft, and
although that has wonderful expandability that Kress carefully
hand-waves later on, still, it's pretty claustrophobic. We're seeing
through the eyes of one family primarily what happens on one ship.
The book is, of course, also tense, though primarily science fiction
rather than a thriller. I have basic problems with the character of
Noah Jenner, who seems to have turned his inability to "fit in"
(something I share) into a far more crippling psychological problem
than I've experienced it as. So I think whether the book deserved
its award in my eyes would depend on its competition that year, but
it is, over all, a very good book, well worth reading.

<Tomorrow's Kin>, 2017

Kress very lightly revised the novella into the first third of this
book, mostly scattering references to a man through the part, so that
it doesn't come as such a surprise to find Marianne Jenner living
with that man as the second part begins.

The rest of the book depicts an Earth whose ecosystems, and so
economies, haven't in fact come through the biological threat wholly
unscathed, though the US, at least, has come through better than in,
say, <Flash Point>. So the harm was distributed unequally, and as in
our world, that makes many people determined to increase it. Each
new part is set across one year in the decade after the novella's
events, and each features a new POV who works better for me than Noah
Jenner, although both new POVs were risky for an old white woman to
write. Part 2, pretty short, depicts Marianne Jenner as a public
crusader for peaceful space travel, partly through the eyes of a
young black woman who works for her. In part 3 the new POV is
Marianne Jenner's youngest grandson, a young child, who becomes her
ward while she works with a private spaceship builder. Over all,
though, this book sees primarily through her eyes.

I find the new parts the least of this trilogy. There's lots of
skulduggery, related to various spoilers, and I tend not to enjoy
that kind of thing much. Your mileage may vary.

<If Tomorrow Comes>, 2018

This is a very different book. In it, an Earth spaceship finally
reaches the other human world, only to find that ... guess what ...
it faces destruction. But the world is very different in many ways
from the Earth the expedition had left, and from our Earth too. We
see this different world mainly through three POVs, one of whom is
Marianne Jenner; but the other two are men, one a doctor, the other
part of the expedition's military complement, the latter the book's
most prominent POV, but with only about 40% of the pages. We also
get a few pages from the POV of a woman who'd come to this planet
from Earth a decade earlier, and quite a few more from a teenager,
her nephew, who'd done the same.

The plot is complex, and again features people who want destruction
to win; both the military man and the teenager have ambiguous ties to
such people. Jenner, having moved pretty much beyond romance, is
mainly our eye on the scientific issues; other characters set up a
love triangle rather bitterer than sweet. Unusually, in this book
Kress produced a middle trilogy volume that I liked better than the
first. I think I want to own this trilogy, but am not sure in what
format, and this is the central volume in that decision.

<Terran Tomorrow>, 2018

The trilogy's third book, and for me probably its best, concerns what
the travellers from Earth in book two find on their return. Because
they didn't know how to account for relativistic time dilation in the
spacecraft they'd used, they'd arrived on the other planet much later
than they'd expected, and back on Earth, when they return, decades
have passed. (This book gives us the best evidence for the dates of
the trilogy. <Yesterday's Kin> can't be set earlier than 2015, and
this book is 38 years later.) Marianne Jenner remains a POV, but
gets the fewest pages of the book's four. Most pages instead go to
her elder grandson, who commands the military base the spaceship
lands near, and to a scientist who works in that base. Finally,
Kress for the first time tries to write from the POV of a native of
the other planet, a young woman who prompts conflict between Marianne
Jenner's grandsons.

The Earth they find is a bleak place. A plague different from the
one from <Yesterday's Kin> has wiped out most of humanity. In the US,
what remains is open war between the US military, decaying without
its tradition of civilian control, and an alliance of survivalist
Bad Guys; what normal people remain try to fit themselves into the
interstices of this war.

Because the commander takes his job seriously, and the scientist
takes his status as a husband and father seriously, much of the book
winds up being about responsibility, decision-making, and other such
things that I found more appealing than the good vs. evil conflict
that drives the entire trilogy. And the young woman's romantic
career is cleaner than the antinomies that define that of the woman
in book two, partly because this woman takes her own responsibilities
seriously. Plus, Kress, in what I suspect is a signature move, saves
a few gigantic science-fictional tropes for the final pages, so she
ends the book on a gosh-wow high. My reward for slogging through two-
thirds of <Tomorrow's Kin> was mostly in this book, though also in
bits and pieces of the previous. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

"Semper Augustus", 2020

This novella tells the story of Jennie Flint from her birth in 2024
to, I think, 2046. Except for the first page, from the perspective
of her mother, it's entirely in Jennie Flint's POV.

Flint grows up poor, but going to school in a series of illegal
classes for the gifted and talented. This series would end on her
arrival to high school; conveniently, before that can happen, the
woman who raised her is murdered by robbers, and that woman's
daughter, a fashion designer, takes Jennie in. Jennie becomes the
first supermodel after a time in which only androids were used as
models, and then when the vogue for her passes, goes to college.
There she learns of the depths of hatred and dehumanisation to be
found in how the rich of this version of the US think of the poor
(who are much of the population), so she leaves to join an armed
resistance movement. But that proves not to be her final destination
either.

What I've left out of this outline is that in Jennie Flint's world,
aliens land in China in 2024 and provide a ton of technology that has
the effect of collapsing the world's economies, or again, anyway the
American one. This is why there's class warfare in this US.

<Asimov's>, where this first appeared, and which provides it online,
rather misleadingly notes that Kress elsewhere writes "about genetic
engineering", but here "is concerned with something else". Some
large category of plots that could be described as "genetic
engineering" includes at least major elements of every book in this
list except <Flash Point> and "One", but I think <Asimov's> idea of
the "something else" - "automation has profoundly affected the nature
of work" - is too narrow. In any event, I like this novella a good
deal, and am grateful to have been able to read it.

<https://www.asimovs.com/assets/1/6/SemperAugustus_Kress.pdf>

<The Eleventh Gate>, 2020

We are not very far in the future. Two old POVs are great-great-
grandchildren of the first settlers of the "Eight Worlds"; by my
estimate, that's two centuries, although Kress calls it 1 1/2.
These worlds were settled via a network of ten gates that for no
reason anyone understands form mainly near habitable worlds. Three
formed near Earth just before it became a place where "[a]lmost
nothing existed". One now leads to Polyglot, which has the largest
land mass and most of the successor cultures. The other two lead to
the two major powers - a Libertarian set of societies dominated by
the Landry family, and a corporatist set dominated by the Peregoy
family, each with three settled worlds. Finally, there's a mining
and scientific outpost on the one uninhabitable world.

Our old POVs are Rachel Landry and Sloan Peregoy, the current heads
of their families. A Peregoy military protege is the third main POV
of the book's first part; the fourth is a mystic who gets mixed up
with a series of Landrys. In the second half, the mystic is
transformed into a much less communicative being, and although the
military protege becomes much more prominent, there's also a new POV,
a Landry woman.

The discovery of the titular new gate becomes the pretext sought by
specific warmongers on each side for the first interstellar war.
As this progresses, each side finds that biowarfare is their optimal
strategy, essentially because of an almost literal deus ex machina,
whose final coup de grace, capping a complex military situation
filling much of the final third of the book, is stunningly
imaginative and effective. Meanwhile, where the first half focused
on familial and romantic love gone wrong, the second features a
romance in the unlikeliest of places. This book, the one I found as
an uncatalogued paperback and so can hang on to indefinitely, is a
lot more fun than most of Kress's novels I've read, and I certainly
recommend it.

<Sea Change>, 2020

Kress's most recent novella known to me is the only book in this set
written in first person. Our narrator changes names a lot, but was
born Renata Black, in apparently 1983 or so. She tells in flashbacks
her story from 2005 to 2027, but more than half of the book is about
events in October 2032, with an epilogue reaching a year later.

This book has a lot in common with "Semper Augustus". The flashbacks
essentially explain the narrator as we first meet her, which is as a
member of a cell in an underground organisation. She lives in a US
where, as in "Semper Augustus", automation has rendered poverty a
more or less majority status. However, there are no aliens here, and
apparently none of the class warfare in that book; Kress spends only
a few sentences on why not. Instead, Black's organisation works on
genetic engineering, which has been classified as terrorist activity
ever since a genetically engineered drug killed hundreds of kids
around 2022.

Black's earnest advocacy of small-scale organic farming, this time
with the help of genetic engineering, pushes buttons of mine; I have,
after all, lived through an era in which people have constantly
talked up small organic farms, but in which giant corporate farms
instead control most of the land. So maybe I'm the wrong person to
review this book, but its premise doesn't work for me. I find its
narrator more interesting. Kress didn't give us a classic
*unreliable* narrator, but instead gave us an overly self-confident
one, who lands remarkably softly from the plot her hubris sets up.
I re-read it to write this, and don't know whether I'll try to read
it any more times in future.

Summing up

Kress does write a lot about genetic engineering, yes, but what
stood out for me in these books is instead her constant assumption
that the sky is falling. In every one of these books except "One",
some sort of apocalypse occurs, or has occurred, or takes all the
characters' efforts to prevent. In some it's worldwide - <After
the Fall>, the trilogy (two worlds). In others Kress displays
typical American tunnel vision - <Flash Point>, "Annabel Lee". In
<Sea Change> she picks something Europe and her America would have
in common, but ignores wealthy countries in Asia. But in the years
when she went from 65 to 72, she foresaw not only personal but at
least national, and often global, destruction, again and again.

Kress has never been the kind of writer who becomes central to my
life, whose writing I gladly re-read many times (though her first
novel, <The Prince of Morning Bells>, is on a longer list of that
sort). But in these books she's given us a grown-up version of a
genre that used to figure heavily in my reading, the apocalypse and
post-apocalyptic. So I may come back to them more often than to
other of her books. And anyway, I haven't seen these books talked
about here, and thought it was reasonable to discuss them. Anyone
who's read this far, now it's your turn.

Joe Bernstein

--
Joe Bernstein, clerk and writer <Kdeu...@gmail.com>