The novel “Steal Across the Sky” by Nancy Kress was published for the first time in 2009.
An expedition carrying three Witnesses reaches the Kular system. The aim is to observe two human populations that have lived on two twin planets for about ten thousand years. They’re the descendants of humans transported to those planets by aliens who call themselves the Atoners, who want to somehow remedy a grave injustice.
Camilla “Cam” O’Kane and Luca Maduro take the two shuttles to descend to the two planets while Soledad Arellano remains on the mother ship to coordinate the operations. Something goes wrong and Luca’s shuttle lands violently, causing him to break a leg. He’s rescued by the natives, and after some time, he realizes that they’re convinced they can speak to people who have recently died. Initially, things seem to be going better for Cam, but on the planet, she discovers that she has ended up near a city ruled by a decidedly unfriendly king.
“Steal Across the Sky” is set in what was a near future when it was published, but now it’s an alternate future. It begins in 2020, when three Witnesses selected by the Atoners reach the Kular system. These are three people who seem ordinary and unprepared for their mission, as they don’t seem at all ready for contact with civilizations that have remained isolated from those on Earth for ten thousand years.
The beginning is of the classic type that occurs in the middle of the action, and only later, various flashbacks start shedding light on the Atoners and the mission of the Witnesses. The Atoners remain a mystery, in the sense that they arrived on the Moon, contacted the Earthlings mentioning the injustice committed ten thousand years earlier, and selected Witnesses to send to various systems where they had transferred humans taken from Earth.
If it’s essential for you to know the motivations of the aliens, this novel will disappoint you. Even at the end of the novel, practically nothing will be clarified about the reasons behind all their actions, neither those done ten thousand years ago nor those done to remedy that injustice.
Nancy Kress focuses on the human characters. The initial part, set in the Kular system, sees Cam, Luca, and Soledad as protagonists. Actually, even of the civilizations existing on the two planets of the Kular system, in the end, we discover very little. The game called kulith is what struck me most because it’s considered something that goes far beyond the game. I wondered if Nancy Kress was inspired by “The Player of Games” by Iain M. Banks.
At the end of their mission, the Witnesses return to Earth, and Frank’s point of view is added, a very religious Witness who was sent to another system. This part of the novel tells the consequences for humanity of the Witnesses’ stories and, above all, the revelation of what injustice was committed by the Atoners.
The portrait of humanity that emerges from the novel is rather bleak since, in most cases, humans seem to act and react to events and discoveries in an irrational way. The protagonists are the first to be made this way, with the consequence that their different interpretations of what they have seen during their mission even lead them to clash with each other.
This novel was published in 2009, before the importance of social media became comparable to today, but hoaxes and conspiracy theories spread on the Internet are described. Nancy Kress developed these elements in a similar way in “Tomorrow’s Kin” a few years later. Even some elements of the plot are similar, and perhaps, the author thought about developing them differently from “Steal Across the Sky” to make it a trilogy.
I don’t feel the need to have all the answers and explanations when I finish reading a novel, but “Steal Across the Sky” gives very few of them, even for my level of tolerance. In the end, the aliens serve to highlight humanity’s problems, so it’s a novel that can appeal to readers interested in stories based on interpersonal relationships and the food for thought that human reactions to the events narrated provide. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
