Sunday, July 16, 2017

"Tomorrow's Kin"

Nancy Kress is the bestselling author of multiple science-fiction and fantasy novels, including Beggars in Spain, Probability Space, and Steal Across the Sky. Her SF has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her most recent book is Tomorrow's Kin, an expansion of the Nebula-winning novella “Yesterday’s Kin,” which takes the story forward several generations. Her fiction has been translated into multiple languages, including Klingon.

Kress applied the Page 69 Test to Tomorrow's Kin and reported the following:
How representative does a single book page have to be to count as “representative”? Page 69 of Tomorrow’s Kin depicts part of a confrontation between Noah Jenner, wayward son of protagonist Marianne Jenner, and an alien. Only the alien isn’t, exactly—he’s the descendent of humans taken from Earth 140,000 years ago by unknown beings. DNA analysis has verified this. Noah feels a shock of recognition, however, that goes beyond the 6,000-generation-ago family tie. The shock has to do with something going on in Noah’s brain caused by his heavy use of a drug called sugarcane. The recognition will have major plot consequences. So—I guess that page 69 is, if not representative, at least heavily congressional.

Tomorrow’s Kin is based on my Nebula-winning novella, “Yesterday’s Kin,” and extends the story for ten more years. It is the first of a trilogy, all of which are written, because the novella turned out to be only the start of a complex story that I very much wanted to tell. It involves two planets, three global disasters, and four generations. They get around, those Jenners. And in doing it, they alter the course of human history.
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--Marshal Zeringue