First contact with aliens comes in the form of a web page. In Steal Across the Sky, alien Atoners set up a moon base and hook into the Internet looking for Witnesses via a Craigslist style job posting ad. Thousands of years ago, the Atoners visited Earth and somehow wronged humanity. They want to show the witnesses what they did. Presumably they will then atone for their crime.

I’m usually a sucker for lost colony stories, and this is no exception. Though in this book’s case, they aren’t so much human established colonies as worlds where the Atoners dumped proto-humans without knowledge of their ancestry. Each of the twelve worlds gets one witness. Each has to just sit there and watch until he or she figures out what it is the Atoners did. The Atoners did not hint as to what it was.

I think the genius of the story is just how alien both the Atoners and our lost human civilizations are. One of the faults with lots of science fiction is that it often contains thinly anthropomorphized aliens. Think Star Trek and Star Wars for a moment. Even beings as strange looking as Jabba the Hutt, Chewbacca, or the Ewoks have very human motivations. Greed, loyalty, or mischief. In Star Trek, Q has very human motivations. Contrast Q with Doctor Manhattan of the Watchmen. Formerly human, this (nearly) all powerful being very often behaves incomprehensibly. While he still has some human like qualities, he’s far less connected with motivation as we understand it than the Q.

The two human colonies that appear in Steal Across the Sky are very odd. Not completely alien though. One group does seem to be very concerned about power and status, but what confers status makes no sense to the witness present. The other group is nearly completely incurious. While both have very human like qualities, both have social characteristics that would require years of study by anthropologists to understand. There’s no 5 minute dilettante epiphany here. And that’s a plus.

The Atoners are even more inscrutable. Skip ahead for there are minor spoilers here. It’s very obvious they conducted classic double blind type experiments on humanity. Beyond that, why they’ve done it is a mystery. Why are they atoning? Why do they want an elaborate witnessing rather than just telling humans, or showing them a video? When they rectify the crime, why do they keep the atonement a secret? Why do they prevent several of the humans from implementing the fix themselves? No one knows! Kress doesn’t explain. And I think that’s awesome! Not only are there no pat answers, there’s really no answers at all. In real life, god does not appear in a vision to reveal life, the universe and everything.

I’m a little torn by how much the book explores its big revelation among the population as a whole. Perhaps because the idea has been explored so many times before, Kress didn’t want to delve into it that much. Worldwide one group embraces the idea and its members begin committing suicide. Another loathes the idea and foments violence against the witnesses and Atoners. What exactly they hope to accomplish isn’t really explored. Neither group really gets much in-depth treatment.

What does get in-depth treatment are a few of the returning witnesses. One refuses to believe the evidence he saw himself, preferring an alternate explanation that doesn’t satisfy the test of Occam’s Razor. Another understands the revelation only superficially, but seeks out the spotlight to spread the message on her return. One is a working class Catholic who has both his religious views vindicated but also feels cheated out of his religious birthright. This is one of the better character studies in science fiction that I’ve read. It’s a genre that often neglects its characters. Kress hasn’t.

Between the excellent characters and the inscrutable aliens and lost colonies, I found much to like about the book.

Some blogged reviews:

• King of the Nerds!!!
• Brenda Cooper

Title: Steal Across the Sky
Author: Nancy Kress
Cover creator: John Jude Palencar
Imprint / publisher: Tor / Macmillan
Format: Hardcover
Length: 317 p.
Publication date: February 2009
ISBN-10: 0-7653-1986-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-1986-9
Subject: Human-alien encounters — Fiction
Subject: Life on other planets — Fiction
LC classification: PS3561.R46 S67 2009

Planet of Exile is one of Le Guin’s earlier works. In fact, this 1978 edition includes an introduction in which the author spends a few paragraphs defending her lack of feminism in the book, explaining she wrote it before feminism got its hooks in to her. Like Rocanon’s World, the plot, settings, and characters are all pretty clunky. Le Guin found her voice and improved her writing skill as she endured as an author.

It’s a lost colony world, as I believe many of Le Guin’s books are. Man is abandoned on Werel. Another humanoid race also lives there, who call themselves man as well. The two groups are somewhat antagonistic, but the formerly starfaring humans have dwindled in number over the centuries and now number only several thousand. The locals (hilfs in English) have quite a few more people.

A northern tribe has begun to assemble an empire rather than conduct themselves according to standard ways of attacking and retreating to their own territory at the end of a season. They are on the march toward the humans and nearby hilfs. Can the groups get along to fight off the horde?

The complicating matter of course is that the leader of the humans picks the eve of the fight to start schtupping the daughter of the hilf tribe.

There’s not a lot to the book. The plot is pretty standard and pretty boring. So are the characters. But, even in this early work I can see a bit of the ways Le Guin would be changing the face of science fiction in later years. For instance, the humans are black. That they are black is hammered home several times. For another example, a traditional sign of respect among the tribes is the act of listening. Members of antagonistic groups will pointedly state that they do not hear their counterpart when he speaks. Just a small way of wording a thing like saving face, but it says so much about what Le Guin might consider important.

I wouldn’t really recommend the book except to those who are studying Le Guin or are completists of her works. But it’s also not a horrible way to fill time if you happen on a copy either.

Title: Planet of exile
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Series: Ekumen; 3
Imprint / publisher: Harper & Row
Format: Hardcover
Length: 140 p.
Publication date: 1978
ISBN-10: 0-06-012559-4
LC classification: PS3563.E42

At the start of Tobias Buckell’s Crystal Rain I wasn’t sure if I had picked up a science fiction novel or a fantasy novel. Azteca are coming over the mountains, invading Nanagada for fresh sacrifices for their gods, who have physical form. John deBrun lives in Brungstun, the first town from the mountains, where he gets separated from his wife and son. He must go on a quest for the mythical Ma Wi Jung, which will save Nanagada from the Azteca and their Teotl gods. Sounds very fantasy like. Slowly Buckell introduces more technology, steam age level stuff. Some dirigibles. Trains. Still could be fantasy, much like China Miéville has industrial revolution level technology in his books.

It is science fiction though. The Nanagada are a polyglot collection of colonists and refugees from Earth. Or rather, the descendants of those people. The largest group of people are Caribbean-descended, which gives this series it’s dominant speech patterns and culture. They vaguely remember they came from the stars, and groups of Preservationists spend a lot of time digging up old technology and looking to put it to use.

The gods are the Teotl and the Loa. All are forms of an alien species. Teotl have set themselves up as gods of the Azteca, and model the society on the bloodthirsty Aztecs. The Loa have priestesses, but aren’t worshiped in the same manner by the Nanagada. While not requiring sacrifices, they do try to prevent people from recovering more old-father technology, a policy that leaves Nanagada vulnerable to the Azteca.

While I don’t think this will be considered a classic S.F. novel along the lines of an Ender’s Game or Neuromancer, it’s a pretty damn good read. The pacing for action is pretty fast, but kept slow for characterization. I thought the slow reveal of John deBrun’s background along with the history of the world was fairly expertly accomplished. The world and it’s culture were really interesting. Too often I think when S.F. includes a different culture as a basis, it’s a very white-ified version. Nanagada’s people are black (mostly), they are intelligent, and they are mostly non-stereotypical. They don’t act like white people with bad accents. I liked the slow turn for Oaxyctl, the Aztec spy. He humanizes them, and I liked that he didn’t dehumanize his opponents. He’s pretty much the only insight into the bad guys in the novel. For the most part they remain a faceless overwhelming menace.

On the negative side, the transition from star-faring humanity to industrial level technology left some gaping holes that didn’t make logical sense to me. Perhaps Buckell answers some of these questions logically in book two, Ragamuffin, or on his blog. Why would one group of humans voluntarily (more or less) take up Aztec sacrificial ways? It’s sort of explained, but I don’t think it makes a whole lot of sense. How did the history of the downfall get lost when at least one group of people has lived for the entire four centuries since it happened? If the councilors didn’t lose all their memory, it would seem like far more of the history would be available (though not the technology).

I’m pretty happy with the book though. I’ll definitely be picking up the sequel (when it comes out in mass market form that is, I’m spending too much on my trade paperbacks and hardcovers).

Title: Crystal rain
Author: Tobias S. Buckell
Cover creators: Todd Lockwood (artist)
Series: Benevolent satrapy; 1
Imprint / publisher: Tor / Tom Doherty / Macmillan
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 358 p.
Publication date: June 2007 (originally February 2006)
ISBN-10: 0-7653-5090-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-7653-5090-9
LC classification: PS3602.U2635 C79 2006