Science Fiction Book Discussion 1/7/16

This month, our SF dicussion group read Nancy Kress's 2013 Nebula winner, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. We had a good discussion about it, I think, but I feel a little guilty.

I have never read anything by Nancy Kress, so I went into the book with a good deal of anticipation. I really enjoyed her writing style, it moved the story quickly. Kress really uses language well. I am a sucker for the inter-weaving timeline gimmick too.

However, I finished it and had nothing but questions. This is where the guilty part comes in. I really had a fit in the discussion (jokingly, of course) but I was pretty emphatic about the lack of resolution. What, where, and when were answered pretty much but for me at least, no answers came for who and why. So I kind of felt like I hit on those things too heavily and maybe stifled some other opinions. I hope I didn't, because our group has had pretty strong opinions about almost everything we have read.

I think the consensus was that we might need to read something else of Kress's fairly well-decorated body of work to know what ways After the Fall... is representative of the whole.

Personally, I would recommend it for the writing style, but not the overall tale.

I am fully prepared to admit however, that maybe I just didn't "get it" if someone can answer the "who" and "why" questions I have about how the story played out.

For next month's discussion we are reading Richard Matheson's I Am Legend