Steal Across the Sky-Nancy Kress

Steal Across the Sky
Nancy Kress
Tor, Feb 2009, $25.95
ISBN 9780765319869

The alien Atoners race came from deep space to establish a base on the earth’s moon. They use the Internet to inform humanity that they committed a heinous crime against mankind ten millennium ago that they cannot rectify. Instead they ask for twenty-one English speaking volunteers to serve as witnesses to see the results of the crime they committed by witnessing and testifying first hand what has occurred on seven planets in which they seeded abducted earthlings. Safety is guaranteed to and from the planets visited.

Cam, Lucca and Soledad respond to the Internet advertisement and are selected by the Atoners as human surrogates. They are escorted to the moonless twin planets of Kular A and Kular B. The humans living on these orbs treat life as expendable as they believe that life does not end with death. What the three human visitors learn they bring back to an earth already reeling from the alien visitation.

STEAL ACROSS THE SKY is an exhilarating cerebral science fiction thriller that asks profound questions about humanity’s development, religion, and social interaction through the Atoner (apropos descriptor for this group) intervention. The three earthlings represent mankind visiting two planets in which each orb can be seen in the sky of the other; while the Atoners remain mysterious almost Godly due to their superior technology, knowledge, and humble need to atone for their mistake. The residents of the two deep space orbs also seem real even as their culture (their existence actually) on the Kular twins is owed to the Atoners, which makes for a fascinating religious relationship between the settled and those who performed the deliverance. Nancy Kress provides plenty of action, but it is the thought provoking questions to include defining what a crime is that make this a great tale.

Harriet Klausner