Book: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Cress
Format consumed: Ebook, also available in hard copy (Fishpond, Booktopia)
Plot summary (Goodreads):
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 post-apocalyptic thriller offers a topical plot with a satisfying twist.
I don’t think I agree with the plot summary in Goodreads. I’d rewrite it as follows (unless I read a completely different book).
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 and sterile and raised in the Shell. The original survivors are growing old and sick, and some have died. Pete and the Six blame the alien Tesslies for the end of the world and their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool, and supplies to make their lives more comfortable.
Meanwhile, in 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings and thefts. With each new data point her predictive algorithms are more accurate and she can predict where Pete and the Six will appear next.
Weaving three consecutive time lines to unravel both the mystery of the Earth’s destruction and the key to its salvation, this taut post-apocalyptic thriller offers a topical plot with a satisfying twist.
This novella was nominated for several awards and won some too (Goodreads):
Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella (2013), Nebula Award for Best Novella (2012), Locus Award for SF Best Novella (2013), Endeavour Award Nominee (2013)
Type of post apocalyptic story: This one is interesting. It’s written both immediately before the world as we know it is ending, has the moment the world is ending, and also in a now that is the future. The chapters swap between the past and present, working towards the moment the world as we knew it ended.
Review
This story is certainly ambitious, and the writing is of high quality. The characters were all equally unlikeable, and I think that’s why it rates so poorly. Pete is an obnoxious, aggressive, sex obsessed teenager with entitlement issues and Julie is a determined loner who wants to do it all on her own, bugger the consequences. I certainly didn’t feel any empathy for either of them, mostly I wanted to shake them and tell them to grow up.
I did like the story mechanic. I would have much preferred that the story followed one of the survivors versus Pete, but the gradual collapse of all the time lines to the main event was done really well, and the urgency was surrounding the events was well captured.
World Building: Basically the world is Gaia, a self regulating mechanism, and she/it gets pissed off with humanity and wipes us all out. The book is set in the Northern Americas which is convincingly wiped out. I’m still not sure Australia was affected. We’d be protected from Yellowstone exploding by trade winds, and any resulting tsunami from that event would wipe out the Pacific Islands and PNG, but Australia would be mostly ok. The tsunami from the Canary Islands collapsing in the Atlantic wouldn’t affect Australia. If a major earthquake happened off the coast of Chile, then Western Australia would still be ok. Australia is special that way. I’m not sure anything happened in the Indian Ocean either, so all the countries in that part of the world are probably ok too. However, there is another element to the plot which means that humanity would die off regardless of what continent they lived on.
I’m nit picking, and really when the end comes, it comes quickly enough that news about what is happening doesn’t have time to spread. So I’ll just say that everyone but the survivors died, and the story went from there.
Character Building: I didn’t like any of the characters. I didn’t like their motivations, I didn’t connect with them, I thought they were all insufferable. This is not a ringing endorsement.
Women: So Julie is really smart and capable. The women survivors are resourceful and have worked hard to build a new life for themselves with the male survivors in the Shell. The survivors are a bit 2 dimensional because they’re not main characters in this novella.
Non-white characters: So they’re there, but most are not central to the plot. The survivors in the Shell were all the the US at the end of the world, but are not all white. There is a Chinese man, someone with Latino/a heritage, and Julie’s surname suggests that she has South Asian heritage. It’s a good reflection of the diversity of the US.
Disabled characters: So the Six have various birth defects, for undisclosed reasons, which have meant that they all have a disability of some form. The story does not go into this in much depth, but Pete is described as having a head too big for his body and a weak shoulder (which is wrenched from time to time when he’s kidnapping children or fighting).
Queer characters: There is no mention of any queer characters in the book at all. LGBTI people do not exist in this world.
Final thoughts
Pete is such an obnoxious character. He really ruined the story for me as he was so self obsessed and entitled. I find it rather weird that he grew up that way given the survivors had the choice to change the ways they did things (including raising children). Pete wanders around with such a huge chip on his shoulder, and believes that he should get what he wants in relation to sex.
Oh and the angry sex he has with one of the Six makes him even less palatable. I don’t recommend this story at all.