Nancy Kress: Yesterday’s Kin

[bibliogramma]

I read Nancy Kress’ novella Yesterday’s Kin because I wanted to know what seeds she started from in adapting that initial story to what is planned to be a trilogy of novels, the first if which, Tomorrow’s Kin, I anticipate reading.

Yesterday’s Kin is a combination first contact/approaching apocalypse/medical thriller story. Aliens arrive on Earth, only to announce two equally starting facts. First, they are in fact humans, somewhat altered by tens of thousands if years if evolution on an alien planet, where their ancestors had been settled, seeded by an unknown ancient race. Second, they have come to warn their distant cousins that the path of the solar system is about to pass through a cloud of alien spores, which has already killed the inhabitants of two of their colonies.

They offer assistance in helping to find a vaccine, or at least some form of treatment. They also seek members of their closest human kin, a rare and very old haplogroup that us almost extinct in Earth, but which all of their people are members of.

The story focuses on the family of scientist Marianne Jenner, the geneticist who discovered the existence of this rare haplogroup on Earth. The aliens ask her to take charge of finding other members of their haplogroup, and so she and her team join other researchers on the alien’s space ship, moored in the New York City harbour.

The science of the story is fascinating, as is the exploration of different responses to the presence of the aliens, the news they bring, and the actions they take. There are several not entirely unexpected plot twists - if you’re reading carefully you figure them out just a bit before they happen - and a lot of potential for the story to continue.

I’m very much looking forward to the expanded and extended story.