Yesterday's Kin

Review: YESTERDAY'S KIN by NANCY KRESS

Prolific long-time multiply award-winning science fiction author Nancy Kress reliably and consistently delivers writing of the utmost quality, science-grounded, philosophical, and literate. One doesn't close a Kress story and forget: no, that story will linger on; it has made itself a part of us, and entwined us with itself.

Such is the case with YESTERDAY'S KIN, a novella I.read several days ago, and am still contemplating and recollecting. Ms. Kress starts with the standard "First Contact" trope, then rips it down to first causes and reconstructs it in a whole near format--kind of like observing Buckminster Fuller constructing the first new Geodesic dome: first it wasn't there--and then it was.

Nancy Kress' s imagination is far-ranging, and she gives us an alien premise unlike any I've seen.

Do they really 'come in peace'?

Yesterday's Kin is a sci-fi adventure about alien contact being made in New York, told through the varying reactions from a family who finds themselves in close contact with these beings. Marianne, acclaimed scientist and mother if three, and her aimless addict son Ryan are the narrators if this interesting tale.

I enjoyed how plausible this story was. From the public's reaction, to the reticent nature of the aliens, their cultural differences and the aliens' physiology, this book had an ironically 'down to earth' feel.

In fact, one of the most implausible elements of the book was the way every member of the family became involved with the extraterrestrials, albeit I'm very different ways. Still, I guess this was necessary to frame Marianne's experience of the aliens, especially as the book straddles a novel and novella in length.

To summarise, Yesterday's Kin is a compelling mystery that is worth many a sci-fi fan's time.

Disclaimer: I received this ebook from netgalley and Tachyon Publications

Fast read that raised explored interesting issues. Novella length whetted my appetite for a full blown novel from Ms. Kress. She couldn't write a dull story if she tried.

Ms. Kress and I have had a long an tortured history. While I was amazed by Beggars in Spain, other works have let me down in the past. Despite this, I'm always willing to give her another chance and when I was offered an advance copy of Yesterday's Kin, that chance came around again. When I first started reading it, my eReader told me the story was just 115 pages and by page 10 I just couldn't figure out how a story such as this could only be that long. Maybe, there was a part 2, that would reset the page count. The further I read, the more hooked I was, and as the page count climbed, I kept saying to myself "there's got to be more." Unfortunately, the story did wrap up in those 115 pages and wrapped up well for that story that I'd been reading. But I wanted more. There's a next stage to this story that I desperately want to read. You may view that as a complaint, but I offer it as high praise. By the end I card for these characters so much, that I wanted more. Let's hope that Ms. Kress writes the sequel.

“Yesterday’s Kin” was published in 2014 (September) and was written by Nancy Kress (http://www.sff.net/people/nankress/). Ms. Kress is a Nebula and Hugo award winner, and has published more than 25 novels as well as many novellas and short stories.

This novel is written in the third person and is set mostly in New York, New York at sometime in the near future. I would rate this novel as PG only because of some violence that occurs. The primary character is Marianne Jenner Phd. She is an evolutionary biologist at a small university in New York. Other principal characters are he children Ryan an environmental biologist, Elizabeth a federal border patrol officer and Noah her youngest with drifting interests.

Aliens, the Deneb, have made contact with Earth, and have set up an “Embassy” in New York harbor. They seemingly have come in peace, but have said very little. After four months of little communications, they suddenly request a handful of humans to visit the Embassy. The group is made up of the UN secretary General, the Russian and Chinese representatives to the UN, and most unexpectedly Marianne.

The aliens reveal that the Earth is facing a biological disaster from space in only 10 months. The Deneb have come to warn Earth and ask for Earth’s assistance. The Deneb have already lost outposts to the biological threat, and their home world will be facing the threat in only 25 years.

As Earth scientists begin to work with the Deneb at the Embassy, tension rises around the world. Marianne’s relationship with her children is strained, and surprising discoveries are made regarding the Deneb’s origin.

I enjoyed the four hours I spent reading this novel. It was well written and the characters had depth to them. I thought that this novel had a different twist on first alien contact and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I give this novel a 5 out of 5.

Other book reviews I have written can be found at http://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/. My book reviews are also posted on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com).

The first book I read by Nancy Kress was Beggars In Spain and I loved it so I was very glad to have the opportunity to read this one. First contact stories are a favorite of mine and this one didn't disappoint though I did have a feeling throughout that there wouldn't be enough time to tell a satisfying story. I must admit that my worry was mostly for naught. By the end, it felt fairly complete and I chalk my want of more answer to some things (Noah and the sugarcane, why people with the extra haplogroup get the invites to the Deneb homeworld) to being a greedy reader. I won't spoil but I will say that I didn't exactly see the twist with the Denebs coming and it was a well done reveal. I also liked how Marianne's family and their relationships to one another played out. It felt uncomfortably real.

I'd definitely recommend this to fans of Kress & also to science fiction fans in general. It was a very quick read and is the sort that stays with you, hovering in the back of your mind for some time after you've read it. Absolutely well done. As always, time spent reading Kress is time well spent and I look forward to her next.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

My review will be published in the October 2014 issue of Perihelion Science Fiction ezine (new issues go live the 12th of every month).

For now, I'll say I love this story. I love novels that explore the fascinating history and human ramifications of DNA. I loved it in Gina deMarcos's "The Neanderthal's Aunt," in which scientists try to clone a Neanderthal baby from ancient DNA samples. Nancy Kress explores an all-together different facet.

Good science fiction leaves me wondering how much of the science can be found online and explored further. That event 70,000 years ago - did Kress make it up, or do our geneticists wonder about it in real life? Gotta go off to google that one.

The characters are well drawn. How humans might react to the presence of aliens is spot-on. Kress mocks us without demeaning us.

Acutely, I felt the mother's sense of abandonment when her youngest child ventures down a new path, never mind that it may (ahem) alienate him from his family. This theme is familiar to countless moms who bade farewell to those brave souls who left the Old World for a new life in America, never to be seen or heard from again.

I have to laugh at the term "sugarcane' for an addictive drug. All these anti-sugar diet experts tell us the white stuff is as addictive as cocaine, and we need to kick the sugar habit. (Can't deny it: I'm addicted.)

The writing is superb. Kress has masted deep point of view, as well as the irony and humor that come with "unreliable narrator," one of my favorite types.

The ending has a surprise twist that rings oh, so true.

More to come in the October issue of Perihelion...

Aliens among us, and actually sharing our DNA! This is a new spin on alien culture genre and this tantalizing start is highly readable. It does use a few characters to tell the story of two entire cultures and it does this in a fairly short novel, although its a part one. This technique, also used by Orson Scott Card in his Ender series and many others, always has me thinking, come one, it's got to be way more complex than that, and yet, I love it and keep reading. Accessible to those new to speculative fiction, too, as the earth is quite recognizable.

What if: Aliens have finally come to Earth and they are us? Now they are here, how long do we have to get to know them before everything we love is gone forever.

Nancy Kress has written a fascinating book about what motivates people: family, survival, greed, fear. She centers her story on a family consisting of a mother, geneticist Marianne Jenner, her children, Noah, restless, addicted to a personality changing drug called sugar cane, Elizabeth, a tough law enforcement officer, and Ryan, an environmental scientist who studies invasive species. When the Deneb appear on Earth with their enigmatic message that they come in peace, it ignites a chain of events that will change how you view First Contact profoundly.

What a fantastic story!!

I'm ashamed to say I've had this book to review since August. The 23rd to be precise. There it's sat, waiting to be read and reviewed, and there it did wait, for I slowly came to realise I'd taken too much on, and though I tried to keep up I just didn't manage to get to it. Until now, when I have, amusingly enough, even more on, and I've run back to it partly out of guilt and partly to procrastinate on other work.

Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down - it was impossible. I've read work by Nancy Kress before and loved it - been utterly spellbound and unable to put it down, so hopefully I've learnt my lesson. Nancy Kress = books you just can't put down.

But on to the actual book.

Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress introduces us to Dr Marianne Jenner. She's at an age we don't see too often in speculative fiction - she's old enough to have three children of her own, a deceased husband, and as we see throughout the novel, two grandchildren. It's refreshing to see a mature woman in the lead, strong and resilient, in a tough field for a woman yet never spoken down to or ridiculed for being female.

We see her being congratulated for a paper and suddenly threatening men from the government burst into the room and escort her away - because aliens have landed, and they've requested her presence specifically.

Set in New York, we learn that aliens have touched down right in the harbour. They come to tell the humans that a biological disaster is on its way to Earth, and shall hit in 10 months time. The aliens, known as the Deneb have come because the same disaster shall hit their own world in 25 years, and they too need a cure. They provide information and a state of the art lab for the humans to do their research, and Dr Marianne Jenner is one of them.

Throughout the novel we also meet her children - the cold Elizabeth who works for federal border patrol officer, the favourite son Ryan - an environmental biologist, and then the black sheep of the family, Noah, a drug user and all-round a bit hopeless. All are difficult as Marianne has devoted so much of her life to her work, yet at the end of the day they are all family, something the Deneb take very strongly. Throughout the novel we come to see just how strongly these themes run, and how they reflect upon each other.

In addition, this is a bleak novel that shows just how humans take to disasters. Economies rise and fall, mass suicides take place, as well as suicide bombers and those who simply believe it's all a Government hoax. It doesn't help that the Deneb aren't being entirely truthful, and that further family issues spring up just when Marianne needs it the least. This is a novel that's hard to put down, as you come to care for the characters involved. We don't have heroes here that you come to love and hope for - this is a bitterly stark novel of what it could actually be like, and none of the characters are entirely positive or wholesome. I found the social commentary to be fairly accurate, and the characters intriguing. From start to finish this isn't what you really expect, and the ending is quite a surprise, but it's also steady and reliable - realistic.

Overall this is an excellent novel and I can't wait to see what Kress comes out with next. I know at least I won't wait months to read it next time!

Kress has a long history of quality science fiction writing, and this inventive, but plausible tale is no exception. Marianne, a research scientist, has discovered a new haplogroup of mitochondrial DNA, split off from humanity’s common female ancestor 150,000 years ago. Just as the celebrations for the ground-breaking research are starting, aliens land on earth and want to communicate with Marianne and various other scientists. Kress builds a tale, of intrigue, science and family and yet the tension is high with an impending biological plague from outerspace which is going to wipe out the species. It was very inventive, but what I liked most was how the various characters Kress had built reacted to the events she created. This is clearly the work of an experienced writer with an excellent understanding of how humans respond in a range of situations. Good science and believable characters.