Short Fiction Month: Elliot Wrote - Nancy Kress

I have read quite a few pieces of short fiction by Nancy Kress. She seems most comfortable writing novella length pieces (to the point where many of her novels are three novellas put together) but there are quite a few short stories and novelettes as well. She regularly ends up on award shortlists with her shot work. This particular story did not get nominated and I can see why. It did not have the same impact some of her stronger stories had on me.

Eliot's father is a mathematician. A man of numbers, of reason, and of science. One day, he has a religious experience after seeing the image of Zeus on a strawberry toaster pastry. It upsets him to such a degree that he is admitted to a mental hospital. They offer him a treatment that will remove the memory from his brain. Elliot wants him to have this treatment, but since he is still under age, he cannot give permission. The only person who can is his aunt, who in many ways is the opposite of his father. Rationality plays no part in her decision, and this frustrates Elliot greatly.

What Kress does in many of her stories is explore the impact of some piece of science, biological, genetic, or in this case neurological, on an individual. In this case it is a procedure to remove memories. I have no idea if it is based on some real or proposed procedure. The description is so vague that I suspect it isn't. The human mind is still very poorly understood, and it will not come as a surprise to the reader that it has side effects. Elliot, who believes in numbers and evidence, has trouble accepting that people base decision on feelings or statistically insignificant occurrences. Elliot is pretty extreme in this, and that makes him a somewhat unlikely character.

What I did like about the story, is the way in which he keeps looking for the right metaphor for the human brain. It is a nice illustration of him grappling with something that is not understood, something that perhaps can't be understood. Where his father tries to capture god with numbers, Elliot tries to capture the brain with words. Where it drives one to give up, the other realizes the importance of the attempt.

There is a lot of potential in the story but for some reason the elements don't really fall into place. Where in Kress' best work, the consequences of a scientific discovery for the main character, or the society they live in, is central to the story, here it seems to be the nudge for the main character to gain insight in the way people perceive the world. The father who is actually undergoing the procedure and the change that comes with it, is of lesser importance to the story. His situation is probably just as interesting as that of the son however. Although I am having difficulty pinpointing it, the story leaves me with the feeling that Kress missed an opportunity somewhere along the way.

Story Details
Title: Elliot Wrote
Author: Nancy Kress
Language: English
Originally published: Lightspeed, May 2011
Read in: Lightspeed Year One, edited by John Joseph Adams (2011)
Story length: Short Story, approximately 4,700 words
Awards: None
Available online: Lightspeed

Yesterday's Kin - Nancy Kress

Nancy Kress is one of those writers who, in my opinion, does better at writing short fiction than novels. Her best length appears to be the novella, of which she has produced a number of memorable ones. The best known is probably Beggars in Spain, which formed the basis for the novel of the same name. A few years back I also read Act One, which garnered her a number of award nominations. I was quite pleased that I was able to get an advance copy of her new project Yesterday's Kin through NetGalley. Like After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall it is either a short novel or a novella. I don't have an exact wordcount but I think it falls short of most definitions of a novel. Novel or novella, it doesn't really matter.  Yesterday's Kin is a very interesting read.

Aliens have made contact with Earth and parked a spaceship in New York City. Talks between the United Nations and the aliens have been going on for a while but what they actually want remains unclear. Geneticist Marianne Jenner has paid little attention to these events, absorbed as she is in her work. With the publication of her latest article, announcing the discovery of a thirtyfirst haplogroup in humans, she is suddenly contacted by the aliens. Slowly, the reason for their visit becomes apparent, Earth is about to pass through a cloud of alien spores that could drive humanity to extinction. A race against the clock to find a treatment for the virus begins.

The Jenner family, Marianne and her three children, represent the full range of responses to the arrival of the aliens. They are seen as an invasive species, a threat to public security, a source of information on how to deal with the oncoming crisis or a new culture to be embraced completely. In short, Earth is hopelessly divided on how to deal with the situation. Kress keeps a strong focus on the impact events have on the family. It's one of the things that set her writing apart. Where many writers would be tempted to zoom out, look at the political drama in the background or include more action scenes. Kress keeps things closer to her characters, making the tale more intimate and also more focused. It's not a style suitable for sprawling novels but for the novella length it works very well.

Kress again drew inspiration from genetics in this novella. The genetic research the main character is involved in does not only shed light on the development of humanity but also has a link to the aliens. There is quite a bit of population genetics in the story. Concepts such as haplogroups, mitochondrial Eve and the population bottleneck of 70,000 years ago show up in the story. When you read this story it really hits home how much genetics have been able to contribute to our knowledge of the development of the species, supplementing branches of science such as archaeology and paleontology.

The author doesn't limit the science to genetics though. A fair bit of ecology sneaks in between the lines as well. I do think that Kress didn't quite manage to integrate the view of the aliens as an invasive species (in the ecological sense). With transport of people and goods around the globe at an all time high, accidental introductions of species that can upset an entire ecosystem is becoming a huge problem. That is on top of the trouble already caused by the species that have been purposefully introduced. A single species not involved in a particular ecosystem can alter it radically, usually leading to great losses in biodiversity. The idea that an alien species might cause something like that is plausible but we don't get to see any of that. Social disruption yes, but no ecological havoc. In fact, considering what Kress tells us of the origin of this alien race and the speed at which evolution takes place in complex organisms, it may not be all that big a risk. When Kress eventually reveals why she included that particular idea, it made sense but didn't come across as particularly convincing.

That being said, I did enjoy the science Kress put into this story an awful lot. The use of genetics in science fiction is widespread but I can't think of any other author in the field who takes her inspiration from recent scientific research in the field like Kress does. The life sciences are a very important part of her story but she consistently manages to keep her stories quite close to the everyday life of the characters. It is not the sense of wonder Kress is looking for, but the impact on everyday life. They are a combination of fascinating science and well drawn characters. Stories that are both emotionally powerful and thought provoking. In many ways Yesterday's Kin is a signature Kress novella. If you liked her other work, you can't really go wrong with this one.  I have read Kress stories where the elements of the story fall into place more convincingly but it is still a high quality read. I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up on a few award shortlists next year.

Book Details
Title: Yesterday's Kin
Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Pages: 192
Year: 2014
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-61686-176-3
First published: 2014

Steal Across the Sky - Nancy Kress

I've been deeply impressed with Nancy Kress' short fiction ever since reading her collection Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories in 2008. It's another of those books that have been on the list for a review for years now. Short story collections are very time consuming to review however, and since I don't have the time for that right now, I settled for a reread of Kress' 2009 novel Steal Across the Sky. I read it shortly after its publication but never got around to writing the review. To date, I have only read two of Kress' full length novels, the other being Beggars in Spain,  but from those, I get the impression her approach works better when applied to short fiction.

In the near future a group of Aliens make contact with Earth. To make their wishes known, the put up a site on the Internet with a message saying they have wronged the human race in the distant past and with to atone for their actions. They are looking for twenty-one volunteers to visit seven planetary systems and 'witness' for them. What they mean by that remains unclear but there certainly is no lack of volunteers. Soon the Witnesses are on their way to see what the aliens have to atone for. It's a trip that will change the travelers as well as the rest of humanity profoundly.

Steal Across the Sky is a remarkably fast read. It's the kind of book you can read in one sitting. That is not to say it is a light read. Kress packs a lot of information into the text, alternating chapters seen from the point of view of several different characters with short texts showing the response of society to the revelation the aliens bring. It's one of the ways in which you can tell she is good at making the most of the space available. In fact, the novel is more or less structured like a series three of linked novellas, rounded off with a short epilogue.

The core concept of the novel is that the Atoners, as the aliens are referred to, taken something out of the human genome in the distant past, thereby changing the course of history and human evolution. They proceeded to set up a series of double blind experiments with human populations with and without the trait. It is a monstrous crime to steal a part of someone's heritage. Kress links it to the loss of one of the five senses, although after millennia, the loss is not felt as clearly it would be if the entire human population suddenly went blind.

Unraveling the motives of the aliens could have been the main subject of this novel, in fact, Kress has written stories like that before. It is only part of what she is interested in however. One could even say it is a minor part. The largest part of the novel deals with the effect this revelation about the human genome has on the population. Earth has changed and dealing with this change is hard on society. The Witnesses are protected and most of them are shielded from the worst of it but various groups who see the message of the Atoners as support for their previously held beliefs create quite a stir. From terrorist assaults to increased rates of suicide, the level of violence unleashed by the Atoners' revelation weighs on the Witnesses.

Seen as a novel of ideas, the story works quite well but with Kress' attention spread out over a number of point of view characters, most of them are very much in the service of the plot. Lucca for instance feels like twp dimensional rich kid who feels he is held back by his obligations to his family. I couldn't really feel form him despite the loss he suffered. Cam is elevated to a level of fame and influence beyond what her intelligence and education can support. She knows this and yet falls into the same trap time and again. Frank is holding a grudge and just about everything he does is motivated by how society, or rather the police force, wronged him. The only character who I felt was a little better fleshed out was Soledad.

In some ways Kress presents the bare bones of a novel here. John Clute calls it sober in his entry for Nancy Kress in the SF encyclopedia. That is a fitting description. In some respects it is a very well written piece. The style reminded me a bit of The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller I recently read. It is effective in the way it works what the reader needs to know to understand what is going on in the story. Many readers will prefer a novel with a little more meat on its bones though. I enjoyed it, but where I think many of Kress' shorter pieces are exceptional, this novel is merely very good. It is well worth reading but not the best Kress has to offer.

Book Details
Title: Steal Across the Sky
Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 317
Year: 2009
Language: English
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-7653-1986-9
First published: 2009

Fountain of Age - Nancy Kress

I ordered a copy of Nancy Kress' latest collection as a present for my girlfriend. She has recently read an enjoyed Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (2008) so this one seemed like something she would like. I am a fan of Kress myself, especially a her short work, so I borrowed it from her during my recent visit to Norway. Fountain of Age contains nine pieces of short fiction, all published between 2007 and 2009. Five stories appeared in Asimov's, two in Jim Baen's Universe, one in Fantasy Magazine and the final story is originally part of the anthology Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders. Kress won a Hugo award with the first story in the collection and got a Nebula for the last one. In short, I was expecting some good science fiction when I opened the book and I wasn't disappointed.

This review is very spoilerish, you have been warned.

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall - Nancy Kress

Recently, I won a copy of Nancy Kress' latest novel After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall over at the Little Red Reviewer. It arrived in record time (thank you Andrea!) but unfortunately I lost it almost as quickly, when my girlfriend snapped it up to read. She has developed a real appreciation of Kress' writing, quite unusual for someone who doesn't read a lot of science fiction. Fortunately it is a quick read so I got it back in a few days and have managed to read it myself. It is an interesting novel(la?), one that can't have been easy to sell given its length, but I do have some reservations about it. I think it is not her strongest work by a long shot but certainly worth reading.

In 2035 a handful of survivors are all that remain of humanity. Rounded up in a structure called the Shell, they are protected from the radioactive wasteland that is all that remains of the earth. A race of aliens known as the Tesslies built this shelter and has provided the inhabitants with the basics necessary for survival. Despite their best efforts, prospects are not good. Too few to prevent inbreeding in the long run and crippled by radiation related genetic damage, humanity looks doomed. One piece of Tesslie technology that may change all this is a time travelling device that allows the survivors to travel to before the fall and snatch children or supplies. The Grabs, as these expeditions are called are getting closer together and more frantic. Time is clearly running out for the survivors.

In 2013, the kidnappings have not gone unnoticed. Brilliant mathematician Julie Khan is working with he police on finding the perpetrator. She believes there is a connection between the disappearances, a mathematical pattern that allows her to predict the next attempt. As she gets closer to the truth, her mathematics leads her to even more disturbing discoveries.

After she finished the novel, my girlfriend said there were a few things I should ignore to really enjoy the book and she was right. Kress does two things in this novel I don't like. It all comes down to personal preferences mind you, it doesn't necessarily make the book a poor one.

First, Kress wrote a time travel story. I generally don't like those, simply because they always lead to paradoxes and other impossible situations. It generally makes my suspension of disbelief collapse pretty quickly. I kept wondering why nobody in the shell ever thought of trying to warn people in the past for instance. Time travel stories somehow always tie themselves in knots. I must admit Kress writes a structurally beautiful story though. The switches between the sections in 2013/4 and 2035 are woven into each other in such a way that it appears to be told in a chronological fashion. A very odd experience when you think about it and it also shows how unfair I am being towards this book. If Kress had separated the characters spatially rather than in time, and then introduced a way of quickly covering this distance, it wouldn't have made think twice.

The next bit is spoilerish.

Act One - Nancy Kress

Ever since reading Kress' wonderful collection Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories I've been keeping an eye out for her short fiction. A number of her short works won Nebulas and Hugos, the most recent was a Hugo in 2009 for her novella The Erdmann Nexus, which unfortunately I haven' t read yet. Act One was nominated for the Hugo, Locus and Nebula award but won none of them. It was originally published in Asimov's in 2009. Last year Kress reached an agreement with publisher Phoenix Pick, who made the book available in print and various e-book formats. In January they offered it for free download (you may still be able to get it) so I took the opportunity to finally read it. As usual, it is a thought-provoking and moving story.

I always have trouble reviewing shorter works without giving too much of the story away. The text below is a bit spoilerish.

Barry Tenler is the manager of the ageing and in recent years none too successful actress Jane Snow. Still, there is a new opportunity waiting and Barry believes this role will do Jane's career a lot of good. To prepare for the part, which involved the consequences of recently introduced genetic engineering techniques, Barry and Jane have arranged to meet the members of The Group. An underground organisation willing to go a lot further down the path of genetic modifications than current legislation allows. They are considered terrorists by the authorities and have some very far reaching ideas on the future of the human species. The meeting goes well enough or so Barry and Jane think. It takes a while for the reasons of The Group for agreeing with the meeting to become clear however. And when they do, Barry and Jane realize they are in trouble.

Kress stuffs quite a lot of questions about genetic engineering in this novella. There's the ethical aspect of experimenting on human beings, altering them in ways that are not fully understood without them having a say in it. There is also the question whether or not the product of such can still be considered human. To explore these issues, Kress uses three main elements in the story. Barry, our narrator is the first. He has his own troubled relationship with genetics. Barry suffers from achondroplasia, a mutation that causes dwarfism. A life in a world created for taller people have given him a unique perspective when it comes to genetic engineering. It has also lead him to the decision in his life he regrets most.

The second element that illustrate the main questions the novella poses are the children who have had the benefit of genetic treatments. Kress introduces the Barrington twins, among the first to receive what advocates of the technique call Arlen's Advantage. A genetic modification that makes the children hyper-emphatic. It is almost impossible to lie to them or to even hide your true feelings. This deeper understanding of other people's feelings would make them more sensitive, cooperative and better behaved. As the twins show, the treatment has side effects. The twins, who possess radically different personalities, also serve to point out a problem in genetics that still poorly understood. How much of a certain trait is due to genetic predisposition and how much to nurture. When you read this novella, compare the twins' use of their ability with the natural empathy of Jane and Barry's gradually shifting moods. The way Kress shows us that genetic engineering is more complicated than switching a couple of base pairs in a specific gene is very well done.

A third strand in this story looks at the effects on a larger scale than the individual. Genetics is scary to a large part of the population (think of the ongoing discussions of whether or not to allow genetically modified crops) and the Group's disregard of legislation and the opinions of other people poses a threat to public order. The final part of the story is partly dedicated to showing how such fear and anger can lead to violence and, reaching back to the individual level, how it affects Barry and Jane.

Act One is quite a dense piece of writing, I needed a couple of days to reflect on this story before I began this review. It's one of those stories one should savour, it's not a long text but one that demands some time to read it properly. It is definitely one of the stronger stories by Kress I have read. She must have had some fierce competition to miss all those awards. It's an emotionally intense look at some of the questions raised by advances in genetics. Recommended reading.

Book Details
Title: Act One
Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Pages: 77
Year: 2010
Language: English
Format: E-book
ISBN: 978-1-60450-413-2
First published: 2009

Beggars in Spain - Nancy Kress

My appreciation for short fiction is a relatively recent thing. I used to prefer novels but after reading a few collections a couple of years back I have been paying more attention to short fiction. One of the collections that drew my attention was Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories by Nancy Kress. I've been meaning to read more of her work ever since reading that book in 2008 but so far I have not made much progress. A few more short stories and one of her more recent novels, Steal Across the Sky. For my next attempt to get better acquainted with her work, I picked one of Kress' better know novels, Beggars in Spain. The novella this book expands upon won Kress both the Nebula and Hugo awards in 1991 and 1992 respectively. The novel deals with some pretty disturbing views on society making it an interesting but not necessarily comfortable read.

Leisha Camden is one of the first people whose parents have opted for what is believed to be a huge step forward in genetics. Her genetic material has been extensively altered but the most striking alteration is in the fact Leisha does not need to sleep. As a side effect of this alteration she is also unusually intelligent and psychologically stable. In the same treatment a second egg is fertilized. Leisha's sister Alice does not have the same genetic improvements and is in effect an unwanted by product. As Leisha grows up to be a promising lawyer, Alice is mostly ignored by her father. A situation that reflects a number of developments in society at large.

Early in the twenty-first century a new and clean power source becomes available that dramatically changes the world's economy. Patents on this invention makes the US enormously rich. At the same time a generation of bright, sleepless citizens in maturing ready to take advantage of their superior education and skills. Unfair competition the sleepers feel. Hatred and jealousy flare as society splits in a class of productive, rich and intelligent class and a class who's empty lives are supported by a minority an decreasing minority. Not a situation people on either side of the divide are happy with.

This reprint edition includes an introduction by Kress in which she explains something of her influences. Normally I am tempted to skip the introduction but this one is very enlightening. Kress uses ideas of Ayn Rand and Ursula K. Le Guin, in particular those expressed in her novel The Dispossessed. I have read neither Rand nor The Dispossessed (that last I mean to change sometime soon) but what I have read about Rand and Le Guin was enough to see some these influences. It might be interesting to read all three if you consider picking up this book. I'm not entirely sure I can overcome my hesitation to try Rand myself though.

Part of the novel relies pretty heavily on an ideology based on Rand's Objectivism. She does this in the guise of the teachings of Yagaiism, a school of thinking advocated by Kenzo Yagai, inventor of the cheap Y-energy (John Galt anyone?). It links dignity to what an individual can achieve through his or her own effort and that (voluntary) contract is the basis for society to operate. To put (part of) in in the words of Yagai himself:

"No, the only dignity, the only spirituality, rests on what a man can achieve with his own efforts. To rob a man of his chance to achieve, and to trade what he achieves with others, is to rob him of his spiritual dignity as a man. This is why communism failed in our time. All coercion - all force to take from a man his own efforts to achieve - causes spiritual damage and weakens a society. Conscription, theft, fraud, violence, welfare, lack of legislative representation - all rob a man of his chance to choise, to achieve on his own, to trade the results of his own achievements with others. Coercion is a cheat. It produces nothing new. Only freedom - the freedom to achieve, the freedom to trade freely the results of achievement - creates the environment proper to the dignity and spirituality of man."
Book One - Leisha 2008 - Chapter 3

The some of the highly productive and increasingly threatened Sleepless are great believers in this philosophy. Combined with their increasing isolation, in most cases of their own choosing, a head on collision with a society where an huge part of the population is basically living of what a minority produces, appears inevitable. Where Leisha and Alice come to some sort of solution of the problems in their relationship, there seems to be no fix for what ails US society. I thought the rift in society was portrayed very much in terms of absolutes. Especially in later parts of the novel everybody seems to be either highly talented and absurdly productive, or a lazy, uneducated leech of society.

I must admit my reaction to the book is coloured in part by my dislike of Objectivism. I think the idea too extreme to be practical, especially on a planet as densely populated as ours. To an extend, it also fails to take into account the fact that people are social animals, which means dealing with people even when you don't want to or feel they are not entitled to your consideration. What really bothers me about it though, it not so much the idea itself, but the extremes to which some of its supporters seems to take it. Frankly, some of the things proposed based on Objectivist thinking make for disturbing future. A future that could very well hold some elements of the conflict described in Beggars in Spain.

Fuelling this movement is the side of society that lives of welfare without contributing anything. These people are described as a group that is quite happy to take what the government offers, and it offers a lot in the prosperous late twenty-first century USA. It kills any curiosity or drive they may have had to improve their lot or develop their talents. This is a well known criticism of welfare systems and one not entirely without merit but the extend to which this phenomenon is displayed in this book is hard to believe. These two elements and the way they feed on each other in the book makes for disturbing reading in several places in the story. Which, all things considered, shows how powerful Kress' writing can be.

Impressive this clash of ideas may be, for me the part of the novel that deals with the relationship between Leisha and her sister Alice is more interesting. Especially early on in the novel when the two are growing up and growing apart, Kress manages to create a very intimate view of what it is the be Sleepless and how much of a benefit this modification is and what this does to Alice's personality. We see most of it through Leisha's eyes. Especially the young Leisha does not seem to be capable of fully understanding the burden the inevitable comparison to her brilliant sister is for Alice. They are two wonderfully contrasting characters.

There is plenty of food for thought in this book. I've only covered some of the ideas covered in the book and barely touched upon the applications of genetic manipulation that are mentioned in the story. It was not a very comfortable read for me though. The way Kress describes a lot of these issues is pretty confronting I suppose and rarely in a way I agree with. Kress meant this as an exploration of ideas and not so much a statement of what is right in her eyes so don't let this put you off. Beggars in Spain is a thought-provoking read, one that will make you reconsider your own convictions. There are two more novels in this series. I'm curious to see where Kress intends to take all this in Beggars and Choosers and Beggars Ride.

Book Details
Title: Beggars in Spain
Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Eos
Pages: 400
Year: 2004
Language: English
Format: Mass Market Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-06-073348-3
First published: 1993