Nancy Kress: Tomorrow’s Kin

[bibliogramma]

The first section of Nancy Kress’ novel Tomorrow’s Kin is essentially the same as the novella Yesterday’s Kin. A combination first contact/approaching apocalypse/medical thriller, it’s the story of aliens arriving on Earth, only to announce that they are humans, somewhat altered by tens of thousands of years of evolution on an alien planet, where their ancestors had been settled, seeded by an unknown ancient race, and that they have come to warn their distant cousins that the path of the solar system is about to pass through a deadly cloud of alien spores.

The story focuses on the family of scientist Marianne Jenner, a geneticist who has discovered the existence of a rare and very ancient human haplogroup - one which is almost extinct on earth, but from which all the aliens are descended.

This first section tells the story of the first contact between the humans of Earth and the humans of World - who have been incorrectly called Denebs from the part if space from which their spaceship approached earth. Offering to help a group of human scientists in a frantic search to develop a vaccine against the spores - which have already destroyed two Deneb colonies - the Denebs have not given the inhabitants of Earth one vital piece of information - that the Earth has already passed through the cloud once before, and all human in Earth are descended from the survivors, and hence immune. It is only the Denebs, taken from Earth before the first passage through the cloud, who are vulnerable. And the samples they have obtained from human tissues during the joint search for a vaccine will enable the scientifically advanced Denebs to save themselves before their planet enters the cloud.

Leaving Earth just before it enters the cloud, the Denebs reveal the truth of their mission on Earth, and in return fir the help of humans, they leave the secret of interstellar travel. With them are several Earth humans, all members of the rare haplogroup the Denebs represent, including Marianne Jenner’s adopted son Noah.

The rest of the novel deals with humanity’s reaction to this first encounter with their distant cousins.

Unfortunately, the Denebs had only been partially correct. Most humans were immune - but a mutation in Central Asia had left hundreds of thousands in that region without genetic protection, and their deaths had been horrifying. Several other mammalian species had also lacked protection, including most rodents, and their loss had initiated an ecological collapse. The world is in chaos, and many feel the Denebs were to blame. And they are angry.

Marianne Jenner is now working for Star Brotherhood, an organisation that is attempting to build support for building spaceships and going out among the stars to find their kin again, joining an advanced interstellar society begun by the Denebs, or Worlders as some are now calling them. But most of the people of Earth don’t want anything to do with the Worlders. And some want to go to World, only to destroy it. And Marianne and her family are, as they have been since the first meeting of Earth humans and Worlders, right in the middle of everything.

Like the novella, Tomorrow’s Kin is a compelling blend of first contact and science thriller narratives. There’s urgency - the planet is in ecological and economic collapse - and conflict, and scientific mysteries - children are being born, post spore exposure, with altered brains and vastly increased sensitivity to sounds at both higher and lower frequencies than normal humans. And plots within plots to influence, in one way or another, the future of relations between Earth and World.

Looking forward to volume two of the trilogy.