Nancy Kress's "After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the year 2035, all that is left of humanity lives in the Shell. After ecological disasters have nearly destroyed the Earth, twenty-six survivors are imprisoned in a sterile enclosure built by an alien race. Fifteen-year-old Pete is one of the six children who were born in the Shell. Though he possesses birth defects common to the Six, including sterility, Pete is resolved to lead humanity to a new beginning.

However, as one by one the adults of the Shell grow mysteriously sick and die, Pete struggles to control his dangerous anger at the aliens. Though the Earth appears to be slowly healing itself, the survivors may not live long enough to repopulate it. Their only hope lies within randomly brief time-portals into the recent past, where Pete and the Six are abducting children to increase their gene pool.

In the year 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn is working with the FBI to track the seemingly-random kidnappings. Her predictive algorithms and investigatory intuition are beginning to reveal more than just criminal activity. As Julie nears the catastrophe about to happen both on the Earth and in the Shell, she is closing in on the truth, and realizing that she may have to make a terrible sacrifice. Julie and Pete are rapidly converging in both the past and the future-a future that might never unfold for humanity.

Learn more about the author and her work at Nancy Kress' website and her blog.

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The Page 69 Test: After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.

--Marshal Zeringue