I didn't really intend to read Steal Across the Sky all in one evening, it just sort of happened. It's the first of my books for a challenge which I might or might not fully participate in, the Worlds Without End female writers challenge for 2013. I've meant to read Nancy Kress for ages, and I actually have Beggars in Spain somewhere to read, but on impulse I chose this one.It's an interesting concept, or bundle of concepts: people are chosen to bear witness to the results of a crime committed b...

OK-the one sentence version of this book is that some aliens thousands of years ago altered our genes and kidnapped some humans and repopulated a few other planets with them in sort of a 'double-blind' study where some were left with the gene that allowed us to communicate with the recently deceased. Modern humans are sent there to 'witness' this firsthand, and the resulting news creates a lot of chaos.Although I like the premise and the writing, I didnt connect to any of the characters, and cou...

After I received book recommendation, I checked the GR information and I confused. The rating of this book is pretty low, around 3.4. After I read it, I understand why. The idea of this book is fresh, and it is the main strength of the book. The problem is at the execution.The beginning is pretty interesting, and the story builds the stake up and up, then WHAM! Major revelation with Great Climax at 40% of the book. Until this point, this novel is perfect 4 or 5 star. Then the later part is pale

Mysterious aliens come, set up base on Moon, put a Web ad: "need 21 humans to send as Witnesses/Observers in groups of 3, 1 on each of a twin planet, 1 to coordinate from orbit; we kidnapped humans 10k years ago and set up colonies on those worlds but also we committed a grievous wrong against humanity; safety and return passage guaranteed; they will know what is to Observe when they see it"Millions apply and they select 21 young people but otherwise on a random - at least to us - basis regardin...

Kress's new novel will be a Nebula nominee in 2009. The best SF takes a fundamental human basis of viewing reality, challenges it with an alternative premise, and uses this premise to explore human behavior. Like Beggars in Spain, Kress is quite successful with a 'previously unused' concept for SF. Don't buy the idea that SF constantly recycles ideas that were first used decades ago. There are plenty of un-used ideas that keep the genre fresh.It's very difficult to write more about the novel wit...

An interestingly different setup with aliens. Aliens appear and want human to witness their unnamed crimes. But the pov characters were annoying. And the plot got way too complicated and went completely off the rails. Talk to the dead or telepathy. Whatever. Bits were good and it was readable most of the way through. But in the end too confused to recommend.

In 2020 an alien base appears on the moon, and the alien "Atoners" confess to having committed some crime against humanity in the past. They solicit a small number of human observers and send them to sets of planets where descendants of humans kidnapped from Earth 10 thousand years ago now live. The story moves within a few pages to the landing of two observers on two worlds, with the backstory told retrospectively. I was hooked immediately by the triple mystery 1) What is going on on Kular-A? 2...

Steal Across the Sky is not an alien story nor about life after death, though both those figure in it. Rather it is about the nature of truth and preconceived notions of what is—or can be—real. Nancy Kress explores these with great imagination and honesty. Her characters are realistic precisely because they are so blind—sometimes infuriatingly so—to their own faults.So why only three stars (and that a gift)? Because Kress’ writing is so poor. She’s mastered creative writing; she needs Writing 10...

This is ....... Cute. Hopefully, that doesn't mean you thrust this aside as not important or interesting enough. But it is very cutely humorous, in the manner of a mild movie romance satire starring Hugh Grant. It is similar to a farcical romance with a cute meeting, confusion, dislike, chase scenes and accidental follow-up meetings, attractions, misunderstandings, satirized cultural commentary on family, in-laws, women and men, plus wedding stresses, but I must stress now this is not a movie lo...

The premise was fascinating and drew me in at the beginning, but somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the way through I just gave up and started skimming to see how it turned out. There just wasn't enough drama or suspense. The plot didn't go deep enough, despite being centered around one of the most central and controversial questions of the human experience and the mystery of the aliens and their motivations. I read the end, and still didn't feel much about the book or any of the characters, excep...

This is not science fiction. This is a fantasy book where the afterlife is real. At the dawn of homo sapiens, aliens visited Earth and removed the gene that allowed humans to see dead people, like in The 6th Sense. No, really. It's a total joke. I normally like Kress. But you can and should skip this one.

Kress' Steal Across the Sky can be thought of as a book with two separate parts. In the first part, aliens choose individual humans from earth to travel across the stars to other alien planets, and Witness (capital W) the crime that the aliens performed on humanity. This part of the novel does some culture-building, with Lucca going to a planet with simple, nomadic people, and Cam going to the nearby planet that features a more medieval society that revolves around around skillful manipulation o...

Nancy Kress excels at expanding on "what if" scenarios to reveal their ramifications across many axes - social, political, psychological, economic, religious, scientific, and so on. I love how she manifests these big ideas in interesting, fleshed-out characters worthy of hanging a story on. Steal Across the Sky doesn't quite rise to the expectations I'd built up following her Sleepless trilogy ( Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers, Beggars Ride), but it was still a science fictional treat -...

Aliens who call themselves Atoners have sent a message through the internet that they'd like to interview volunteers for a mission of "atonement" for a wrong that the aliens did to humanity thousands of years ago. Since the message is sent online rather than through a government entity, all sorts of people volunteer, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason to who they take: a loud-mouthed girl living on welfare, a teacher whose wife recently died, a former policeman framed for a crime he didn't...

I wanted to love this book, because I highly value Nancy Kress' books on writing--I use them a lot. But based on this novel only (it's the only one of hers I've read) she's showing the "John Gardner" syndrome--when a writer's books about how to create good fiction are, in fact, superior to her fiction. Here's what dismayed me: in this story set in the nearish future, an alien race of "Atoners" recruits Earthlings to visit various planets on which they, the Atoners, stranded human beings 10,000 y...

Nancy Kress sets up a fascinating premise in this novel. Aliens, who refer to themselves as Atoners, set up a website and email address for humans to apply to become "Witnesses" to a mysterious crime the Aliens committed against humanity 10,000 years ago. Millions apply, but only 21 are selected, 15 coming from the United States. This seems to be a theme in Nancy Kress's books, briefly mentioning other areas of the world (a greater acknowledgement than some other US writers) but ultimately focus...

I'm giving the book a low rating based on personal preferences and scientific / consistency issues. This is not a critique of its literary attributes.I voted for this to be BOTM, but would not have if I had been aware of the underlying premise - which seems contrary to hard SF sensibilities. I was not only disturbed by the premise, but also the implausible attempts at scientific justifications. It's one thing to have implausible tech in SF, it's another to keep beating the reader over the head w...

...In some ways Kress presents the bare bones of a novel here. John Clute calls it sober in his entry for Nancy Kress in the SF encyclopedia. That is a fitting description. In some respects it is a very well written piece. The style reminded me a bit of The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller I recently read. It is effective in the way it works what the reader needs to know to understand what is going on in the story. Many readers will prefer a novel with a little more meat on its bones though.

In the not-very-distant future, aliens calling themselves The Atoners contact humanity. Millenia ago, they wronged humanity--and now they want humanity to know about it. They choose a few dozen people to travel to colonies of humans the Atoners established around the universe, and "Witness." What the "Witnesses" are supposed to see or do is left up to them--they are told that they'll know it when they see it. By the end of the first third, both the reader and the characters have discovered what

When an alien base appears on the Moon, the aliens, who call themselves the Atoners, approach mankind via the power of the internet with a confession that they have done the human race great wrong and now wish to atone for it. Twenty one young applicants are selected as witnesses and sent off to twin planets on which kidnapped humans have developed societies. They are told that they'll know what they are looking for when they find it. Cam, Soledad and Lucca are the team that is sent to witness o...