Tomorrow’s Kin Is a Character-Driven Sci-fi Mystery About the End of the World

Like something out of a 1950s sci-fi flick, an alien spacecraft touches down in New York harbor in the near future. Dr. Marianne Jenner, an evolutionary biologist, is brought in as part of a team making first contact with the visiting beings. The team is informed by the aliens—who claim to be unable to leave their ship do to the harsh gravity of Earth in contrast to their home world— of an incoming spore cloud in space that will envelope our planet. Offered the best technology and resources to research a possible vaccine for the resulting illness that comes from exposure to the cloud, an international team of scientists from varied backgrounds boards the alien vessel to start working. Further complicating this upheaval, the United States has pursued a policy of economic isolationism, making coordinating communication with the aliens particularly volatile.
The narrative primarily follows Dr. Jenner, with occasional sections from the perspective of her youngest son Noah, her assistant Sissy, and later, her grandson Colin; these additional point-of-view characters mostly serve to provide additional depth to Dr. Jenner, and give us a window onto the wider world as it grapples with change on a monumental scale. After all, Jenner doesn’t have much time for reflection—the teams of scientists must work at a frantic pace, as the spore cloud will hit in less than a year.

Despite the familiar first contact elements, Tomorrow’s Kin is really a story about humanity—both the lighter side—those inspired to discover that we are not along in the universe, and that we have so much more to lear—and the darker one. The side driven by fear and greed.
Kress gives us characters who mirror parts of ourselves and those around us. What will motivate us, once our place in the universe is challenged? What move us, in the wake of a world-altering event? It’s the same cultural upheaval we’re witnessing now, in the real world, writ science-fictional. Kress catapults the current conversation into an uncertain future, postulating where we are headed and how we might handle something as seismic as a visit by aliens when coupled with a potentially catastrophic natural event.
There are two mysteries within Tomorrow’s Kin, one from the stars, and one that starts much closer to home. As we follow Dr. Jenner as she works to solve them both, we find more questions mounting, and not all of them will be easily answered. This is the beginning of a trilogy, after all—book two, If Tomorrow Comes, arrives in March 2018. Assuming we make it that long…
Tomorrow’s Kin is available now.