Kress, Nancy: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall (2012)
Written by: Nancy Kress
Genre: Novella/Science Fiction/Post-Apocalyptic
Pages: 192 (Kindle)
Why I Read It: I was quite interested in this title when it first came out. The premise really caught my eye, and I'll admit, I loved the cover. But I've not had great luck with Nancy Kress' work. I recognize it's good, but it doesn't engage me on an emotional nor intellectual level. So I put off getting it, until now. Now I'm wanting to read the stuff I think might contenders for the Hugo, and Kress' novella was one of the first things I thought of.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: The year is 2035. After ecological disasters nearly destroyed the Earth, 26 survivors-the last of humanity-are trapped by an alien race in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell. Fifteen-year-old Pete is one of the Six-children who were born deformed or sterile and raised in the Shell. As, one by one, the survivors grow sick and die, Pete and the Six struggle to put aside their anger at the alien Tesslies in order to find the means to rebuild the earth together. Their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool. Meanwhile, in 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings. Suddenly her predictive algorithms begin to reveal more than just criminal activity. As she begins to realize her role in the impending catastrophe, simultaneously affecting the Earth and the Shell, Julie closes in on the truth. She and Pete are converging in time upon the future of humanity-a future which might never unfold. Weaving three consecutive time lines to unravel both the mystery of the Earth's destruction and the key to its salvation, this taut adventure offers a topical message with a satisfying twist.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay. Normally, I don't like to spoil short things, but the structure is such that I want to talk about how the three (really two) story-lines weave together and resolve. So if you want to remain spoiler-free, please skip to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
Discussion: It's not a novel. It's a novella. Why on EARTH the author or publisher or WHOMEVER stick "a novel" after the title? The only reason I know it's a novella for sure was because I was reading the comments to Tor.com's discussion of the book, and the reviewer learned definitely from the publisher that the novella was, indeed, 36,000 words, placing it firmly in the novella category according to SFWA, which is what the Hugos use to determine eligibility. Also, adding "A Novel" after a title is a very literary fiction thing to do, and unless Kress was marketing to that crowd, it's rather pretentious. It would've made more sense to put "A Novella" after the title so that when people saw the cover, it'd grab their attention. After all, how many authors publish NOVELLAS outside of digital or Subterranean copies?
Anyway. This book is eligible for Best Novella, NOT Best Novel.
So the novella is divided between three timelines as the title suggests: BEFORE gives us the POV of Julie, a woman who's helping the FBI investigate mysterious kidnappings by creating an algorithm that predicts where the next one will take place. DURING doesn't give us a solid POV, but rather a nature's eye view of what's happening. AFTER gives us Pete, one of the kidnappers who lives in the shell and utilities the technology provided by the Tesslies to either bring young children to the future to ensure the future of humanity (because genetic diversity is needed, as are kids whose genes aren't torched with radiation), or to bring supplies (it all depends on where the Grab machine sends them).
Yet these three timelines interconnect in a such a great way: Pete goes back to Julie's time, and Julie's time is so close to the Fall itself that it's not long before Julie is out of BEFORE and living in DURING. And of course, the big confrontation between Julie and Pete happens DURING. It's quite nicely constructed. I was reminded a few times of Mira Grant's Hugo-nominated novella Countdown in that we got to see how nature was taking its course (in Grant's novella, it was the virus) and where everything was happening. I think what grounds this novella and makes it tighter is Kress' use of POV and structure: while DURING gives us a hodgepodge, we're always in Julie's head for BEFORE and always in Pete's head for AFTER. We really get to know the characters and their situations and their worlds, so that when everything comes to a head, we're tense, ready to see what happens and why.
And it's no surprise to learn that Julie ends up giving her baby to Pete. At first, I thought the child would grow up to be McAllister, and when that theory was dashed, I worried that perhaps the Grab machine would send Pete TO Julie and her daughter. Instead, Julie gets to be a proactive character, using her algorithms to predict where Pete will be. Originally, she just wants to get proof of what's happening, but because the world is literally falling apart all around her, because a tsunami is getting ready to wipe out everything, she sacrifices her daughter (well, she wanted to go with Pete too, until she learned that you have to be a certain age to survive the time travel). What's more is that once her daughter is gone with Pete, Julie doesn't wait around to die. She kills herself, and that's powerful.
In truth, Julie's story was the most powerful and enjoyable of the whole novella. A woman who, after getting pregnant from an affair, decides she wants to keep the baby and doesn't need the daddy's help is admirable. Not because she had an affair, but she's not the sentimental sort. She's practical and pragmatic, recognizing the affair for what it was, recognizing the baby for what it is. She knows what she wants and does what it takes to get it, without any disillusions about what life's going to be like. I really, really liked her. I'm not sure we'd get along in real life, necessarily, but as a character, I really, really liked her.
How can you not, with statements like these (page 40):
Julie had felt it absolutely necessary to paint her mother's old chest of drawers, after which she would apply decals of bears. The ultrasound showed she was having a girl. But no Disney princesses or any of that shit; Julie's daughter would be brought up to be a strong, independent woman. Bears were a good start.
Pete, on the other hand, was a bit harder to sympathize with. He wasn't a bad character, and he's very much a product of his world, which is a good thing. I just didn't relate. As a teen boy full of hormones, he's obsessed with McAllister, and his pride rubbed me the wrong way. However, I really liked his plan to defeat the Tesslies (page 113):
"Wait a minute," Pete said. "Is the Tesslie an alien inside a bucket-case or a robot?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes! If it's a robot, then you hold it and I'll find the battery case, open it, and pull out the batteries."
That made me laugh. Poor Pete's grown up thinking the Tesslies were responsible for the ruin of the world, just as the Tesslies are responsible for the Shell that the humans live in. I do like the sense we get that it's the alien invaders preserving us, like we're a zoo, but as the book progresses, we learn what really fueled the Fall was the Earth itself: all natural causes (the Tesslies, whatever they are, just happened to be around to pick up the pieces and save what they could. The novella's kind of vague on this point). Earth went into self-defense mode, and in doing so, because humanity had to blame SOMEONE, all the countries turned against each other, leaving the world in a nuclear winter. Kind of crazy, but I like how Pete gets to learn the truth from Julie, so that he can share it with McAllister and the other adults at the end, and they can all absorb that in order to make plans for a better society in the future.
Mind you, I'm not optimistic about their future. I don't think they've got enough to survive, but hey, I'm a cynic.
I had a few nitpicks: one was format: I felt like I was missing something on page 167. We go from the President demanding more information to Julie and Pete confrontation without a scene break or anything. Anyone who has a physical copy of this book, can you confirm that's indeed what it is? Like I said, I really feel like I'm missing something.
Also, and this is SUPER nit-picky, but when Julie loads up to go on the run, she talks about the gun she's bringing, how she's licensed to carry. I'm glad Kress noted she was licensed to carry, but I wondered what state. It only matters to me in that every state has different requirements, and some states are impossible to get licensed in.
My Rating: 7 - Good Read
I rather enjoyed this novella from Nancy Kress. The braided storyline was well-handled, and it was reminiscent of Mira Grant's Countdown but more grounded in POV and structure. I liked how the story let me make predictions and re-evaluate those predictions while reading, so that in the end, I had it figured out what was going to happen, but not in a way that made me feel smarter than the book, if that makes sense. For a post-apocalyptic tale, it's unique in that we see the before, during, and after all at once, and it's also unique in that it doesn't rely on the usual suspects for the disaster. Perhaps its a little preachy in that regard, but I didn't mind too much. It's a good read, and one that I'll consider for "Best Novella" when I finally make my Hugo nominations.
Cover Commentary: LOVE IT. I love the coloring, I love the graphics, I love the font and the font-placement. I'm actually really disappointed that this book was only published in trade paperback, because this would make a super-cute hardcover. Alas. But that's okay. This cover does exactly what it's supposed to do, and that's grab my eye and stay burned in my memory until I finally give up and get the thing!
Next up: The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells