The book did a great job of combining hard science fiction with a well developed main character. My only complaint is that it wasn't longer.

A very interesting and detailed eco-novella, with deep research and plotting. When genetically modified agriculture is banned in the US, following a cross-contamination event that leads to the deaths of hundreds of children, an economic and societal Catastrophe ensues. Agribusinesses fail, but so do low-income societies around the wold that depend on GMO crops for basic subsistence. And there’s the twist: when GMOs are outlawed, outlaws will try to reintroduce GMOs to agriculture in ways that could, in the right hands, actually help people with less collateral damage to the surrounding ecology. The people are likable but not too detailed—the author’s stays focused on the ideas, both the main plot and the lead character’s sidelights, which keeps this a short but thoughtful read.

Thank you Tachyon and NetGalley for an eARC of Sea Change by Nancy Kress. This book is not what I expected. It opens in twenty years into the future with a broken down autonomous house, doubles back to the past to layer in history, steps forward to the present to weave in perspective, and then nudges slightly into the future to add the backstory of hysteria brought about misplaced blame on GMOs. Renata tells the story as she works for a secret organization to bring back GMOs to feed the global hungry and to restore the belief in science. Misinformation campaigns abound - sound familiar? - in this short but complex novel. The author had me hooked from the beginning.

I only made it about 60% of the way through this book. The concept was intriguing, and the writing good (though the pacing was a little all over the place), However, I found the way that Native people were included in the story to disappointing, and I hated the fact that the MC was literally being a white savior. I'd like to highlight that I speak only for myself. I'm Cree, and I certainly don't speak for anyone from Quinault Nation, and this is just my opinion and my feelings regarding the book.

Frankly, while I appreciate that the author was clearly trying to highlight MMIW, especially the inclusion of very real statistics, I think she should have taken a step back and considered whether she was an appropriate voice for this. Despite this, I still tried to continue on, and give her the benefit of the doubt, but what I found truly problematic, though not surprising, was the attitude of her main character towards the Quinault Nation regarding legal matters. I ignored the comment about there not being many indigenous lawyers (not true, and the Indigenous people I know tend to go to Indigenous lawyers, for obvious reasons), but I completely put the book down when the main character literally suggested that she knew better than the Quinault Nation Police on what was best for them to navigate the American legal system. That was when I was done. The legal systems in both Canada and the U.S. are literally created to screw Indigenous people over, and for some white woman to come in think it's her job to tell this nation how to handle their legal matters, that they inherently couldn't handle them. Just no. I couldn't do it, that's not the kind of book I want to read in 2020.

I won't be posting this review on my website or featuring this book. I"d rather not give it the air.

Thank you to Tachyon Publications for giving me a free digital galley of this book in exchange for feedback.

Not long ago, I was irritated by a book I'd read, which had a very self-consciously literary writing style but a tedious plot about awful people and their boring emotions. And I thought to myself, I DO think that good writing is important, but what I really like is well-written sentences by someone who, instead of focusing on how pretty their sentences are, is focusing on a strong, character-driven plot in which good people try to do good things.

And then I read this, and it's exactly what I got. Excellent writing, always in service to a good story about good people trying to do good things.

The mobile house on the cover is just an inciting incident - it kick-starts the action, but it isn't what the book is about. The book is about Renata, who is part of an extremely secret organization working illegally to try to make the world better than the dubiously elected government wants it to be. Renata, whose personal tragedy coincided with a national tragedy, and who decided that her best choice was to try to change the world. Renata, haunted and trying, working to figure out who was in the house, why it was abandoned, and whether her organization is in danger. I love her.

At this moment in history, with the world apparently on fire around me, I find that I'm in the mood for optimistic dystopia - books about how we'll build the good even in a world that has fallen apart, This book really worked for me, and cheered a week that was pretty gloomy on the news.

Sea Change is everything I love about speculative fiction. The story has a compelling near-future setting, is full of smart characters with sharply written dialogue, and is so thematically rich and progressive. It’s character driven, scarily close to reality, and covers topics often overlooked by other media.

Kress’s Sea Change centers on our world following devastation caused, primarily, by climate change, It's set in the 2030s in America and feels very true to a near-future picture of the country. Following a disastrous incident in the United States that causes many children to die, the government takes drastic measures to “protect” the people from GMOs. GMOs are completely outlawed at a time when GMO plants might be the one thing to save the world’s population from malnutrition, which has only worsened due to climate change.

Amidst these changes, an underground (and very illegal) movement crops up, full of scientists and activists devoted to saving the world through scientific innovations with vegetation, nutrition, and, yes, with GMOs. Our main character, Caroline, is a part of this secret organization, the Org. The story opens with Renata uncovering a mystery with unknown but certain ties to the Org, and follows her as she works to discover the truth.

Kress not only covers themes relating to climate change and politics, but also covers a lot of ground by having Renata tangentially involved with the native community on a nearby reservation. Not only is there meaningful representation of native characters, but the plot carefully covers issues relating to sexual assault on native girls and women, and also with the difficulty in prosecuting known offenders. Somehow Kress manages to tie her themes and story-threads together in a way that is both successful and purposeful, which makes her important representation feel like much more than just a casual reference.

I highly recommend this novella, and can’t wait to read more Nancy Kress. 5/5 stars and all the praise I can muster.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me an eArc of this novella in exchange for a fair review. Sea Change comes out on April 24, 2020.

I have posted reviews on Netgalley, Goodreads, Edelweiss, and on my blog (backshelfbooks.com).

Sea Change is the latest novella from author Nancy Kress, whose work I've heard about but never previously read. It's another in an unsurprisingly growing genre - works that showcase dark sorta-dystopian futures based upon potential developments based upon our current trajectory. In this case, it deals with a potential backlash to GMO-based food due to an unfortunate disaster and the results such a backlash would have.



Still, Sea Change is a bit more than that, as it also tries to showcase a protagonist who is bent on helping others through various causes, and one who is also trying to recover from tragedy of her own. It's lead character is very believable, as are its side characters, and you can easily see such a person in the modern world today. The novella has some issues, but it's well worth your time.





Plot Summary: 2032: "Caroline Denton" (real name Renata Black) works in Seattle for an organization working to develop genetically modified (GMO) crops to reduce world hunger, years after the Catastrophe resulted in the outlawing of work on GMOs in the United States. Haunted by her tragic past, she works double time both in her illicit role as part of the Org and in her public job as a paralegal helping those involved in Sexual Assault cases on the Quinault Nation reservation. But when she finds a deserted mobile house with the signal of the Org abandoned in the street, she knows something has gone wrong and soon she finds herself desperately searching for answers, before the cause doesn't come crashing down on her and the world....



Thoughts: Sea Change works really well because its protagonist is extremely believable as she was back in our time and in this dark future. Renata/Caroline's transformation from generic bleeding heart, but a genuine one, to one who is driven by tragedy to the cause of fighting for GMOs is realy well done, as the book alternates between telling her past and her present (our future). Even her love of her husband is done really well, a depressing story of love for someone who doesn't quite care for the same things at all. It's story about the dark future itself is executed well enough - and the book does an excellent job showing the need for GMOs to reduce world hunger - but isn't in and of itself done in a surprising way (particularly the thriller/conspiracy elements, which introduces unnecessary red herrings for no reason). But the character work brings this all together and makes the cause all the more poignant, for an effective novella overall.

Surprisingly, for all my years in sci-fi, I've never read Nancy Kress. I think it has often been a subject/person (me) mismatch, so when Tachyon Publications had a review copy up of Sea Change, a novella that focused on current issues in the environment, I jumped at the chance to give her a try. Expecting sci-fi, this has a strong speculative fiction feel looking at genetically modified foods.

The blurb promises "a smart, mesmerizing bio-thriller, with a hard, nuanced look at the perils and promise of technology," a advertisement it only partially delivers. Lengthy sections of text read like a piece for Sierra Club's magazine, significantly derailing any tension that the spy pretension develops. I wouldn't argue with the 'nuanced,' description, although I'd say it's a pretty one-sided presentation of the advantages. If I remember correctly, the GMOs are in reference to plans, for instance, not animals that might escape enclosures and bread with wild populations (salmon are a hot point issue on this). Lacking such finesse, I'm not sure I would call it particularly 'nuanced,' as much as a 'thought-experiment on what happens with a reactive public and equally reactive politicians.'

Regardless, what I hoped to read was a bio-thriller. Did it deliver? Sort of. The main character, Caroline Denton, is a middle-aged divorced woman who has become an operative in the Org. The Org is an underground group researching and applying genetic modifications and operates along the lines of splinter-cells. Caroline has been a life-long activist, but the Org has been her most serious work since a tragedy. The story moves back and forth between Caroline's earlier life and her current work in the Org as her cell is under attack. I found ignoring most of her internal GMO diatribe kept up the 'thriller' pace.

Prose was clean and focused, which I enjoyed. Caroline, also known in the Org as Renata, and her ex-husband definitely achieved the feeling of real, complicated people to me. In fact, at the end, I had to wonder if the true focus was the GMOs, or if it was more of a character study of Caroline. A quick read with a hopeful ending, it didn't quite scratch my enviro-disaster itch, but it was a solid character reflection.

Oh, and by the way, the moving house makes for a fabulous beginning, but it's a McGuffin. A taxi would have served just as well.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications for an advance reader copy. All opinions are, as always, my own, inasmuch as the assorted collection of partially remembered data and experiences processed through organic matter can be.

This novella, offered to me as an ARC from Net Galley, by one of my favorite authors is smart and tightly written. The world she builds is our world -or one soon to be. She uses real science and expects the reader to grasp some fundamentals of the biology of agriculture as well as the politics behind who grows the food and for whom. Maybe that doesn’t sound exciting but the story is compelling and moves quickly. And it makes me want to thank all dedicated activists who work to feed the hungry worldwide. 4.5 stars

In the very near future, the United States experiences a catastrophe that utterly changes their approach to food production. In the aftermath, GMOs are banned, and the US becomes critically unprepared for the changing climate. Ten years later Renata Black, AKA Caroline Denton, is a member of the Org, a group dedicated to continuing genetic modification research outside the bonds of agribusiness, focused on the well-being of all humans, preventing starvation, not making money. But growing genetically modified food is considered a form of terrorism, and the Department of Agricultural Security is on their trail...

There's a saying that goes around left-wing social media, sometimes attached to an image macro of Garfield: "You don't hate Mondays; You hate capitalism." The phrase can be adjusted to suit many different circumstances; in <i>Sea Change</i>, Nancy Kress makes the argument that you don't hate GMOs, you hate capitalism. And the argument seems reasonable. Renata and her fellow operatives are working to produce food that will not only grow in the harsher climates that global warming will create, but that also fight back against the more dangerous aspects of large-scale farming, like spraying pesticides, that cause even more damage to the environment. I found the arguments for GMOs in this novella very interesting; especially as Renata expresses support for labelling GMO products and helping people understand what they are eating. In the day since I finished reading <i>Sea Change</i> I find myself reflecting on it as if it were non-fiction about GMOs as much as a novella.

Despite these reflections, I still enjoyed the story of Renata Black. She's not the highest-ranking member of the Org, but she has her own connections with her ex-husband's family and within the Quinault Nation, for whom she does legal work. Following Renata's life from her undergraduate degree at Yale, through her ill-advised marriage, difficult pregnancy, and short period of motherhood as the world changes shape around her is a great way to get an overview of the recent history of the future Kress sketches. I found it a little weird that Kress has a character that was born around the same time as me complain so much about her age and her body failing her, but perhaps in 2032 when I'm in my mid-forties I'll understand better.

<i>Sea Change</i> was an interesting novella, diving into a topic with which I have only passing knowledge and presenting information to me in a way that drove the narrative and worked well as a story. I also thought that Renata's story was a great read, although it's not the part that stuck with me, it appears. If you like science in your fiction, <i>Sea Change</i> is highly recommended.

Nancy Kress is a master of short form storytelling.

I first (re)discovered Nancy Kress a few years ago when I was in an reading dry spell. I was listlessly perusing the library shelves feeling like I had nothing to read when I came across a copy of her then-just published novella After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall. I recognized her name from having read Beggars in Spain years before so I picked it up.

It blew me away. The book was a masterpiece. The author created a fully realized world, She didn’t need a thousand pages to do it. Up until that point I had been disdainful of shorter works; Nancy Kress made me realize just how much hard work and talent was needed to excecise economy when world building.

Nancy Kress writes hard sf. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Just because the hard science she’s basing her work on is usually biology instead of physics doesn’t make it any less hard.

I quickly sought out every volume of Ms. Kress’s short fiction I could find on my library’s shelves. Which brings me to today.

I was lucky enough to be granted an eARC of Sea Change (thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon Publications). It was, in a word, fantastic. Ms. Kress has crafted a brilliant and frighteningly realistic near future world where genetically modified foods are a crime and anyone trying to use science feed the hungry is hunted down by the government. It is a taut thriller that never slows down and leaves you wanting more.

The protagonist Renata is a beautifully drawn character, realistically flawed and hauntingly familiar. I don’t want to spoil any of her arc but I will say that the final revelation of how she is betrayed was both surprising and did not feel like a cheat.

Very minor spoiler: I wish the book had come with trigger warnings for death of a child/parental bereavement.

That being said I wholeheartedly recommend this. Buy it when it comes out in April. I bet it’ll be on your 2021 Hugo ballot! It’ll be on mine!

(I know there could be some mistakes in this review. I’m trying to improve my English, thanks)

I receive this book from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review, so here we go:

Sea Change in one phrase: In a near future, Renata Black is an illegal activist who fights for her cause despite her own personal circumstances.

I could seem that the author’s personal life is involved in the story. Well, all the authors do this to a greater or lesser degree. In this novel -narrated in first person- you can notice this in the personal issues dealt: divorce, the loss of the loved ones, the stubbornness of not giving up… But in second thought I think that this explanation is better: Renata Black is a very well developed character.

So, the novel can be understood as a good picture of the future quotidian life in the USA after a catastrophic event and I think this is a positive aspect. However, I do no like it. Why? I am not sure, maybe it is about the proportion of personal life/science fiction in the story. In both ways it's interesting, I do not deny this, but together, for me at least, it doesn't work completely.

On the other hand, although at a first glance the main premise of the book may look a bit absurd -there are a lot of stupid things in our world, and they exist and they rule our lives-, actually this is the best part of the book, the issues in which Nancy Kress excels. I mean her accurate hard future speculation due both to her scientific knowledge and her incisive imagination. These are some of the topics dealt: genetic modified organisms vs. natural crops, the danger about a genetic engineering in capitalism, irreversibility of climate change and how to deal with it, power abuse vs. civil society activism and the enemies of liberty (fear, ignorance & fanaticism).

Finally I must note a good aspect and two complaints about this novel. About the former, the absence of bloodshed: violence is not necessary to explain a good story. On the latter: Nancy Kress plays the deus ex machina card in the usual computer hacking way and second (a minor one), the USAcentric perspective, but I understand that this is a lot to explain in a short novel.

Review for publication elsewhere.
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Refreshing to see a near-future climate SF book where GMOs are the heroes and even, once separated from agribusiness, the underdog.

There’s a particular type of novel I want to call the “wait, was this actually a novella?” book, where for whatever reason I’m thrown or underwhelmed by the ending, which ends up feeling incommensurate somehow to the threads of plot and character being woven.

Sea Change did that to me, which makes me think it’s probably my fault as a reader. I liked that the protagonist was clearly driven both by personal tragedy and (as we see in undergrad flashbacks, at least if the accusation from her to-be-ex-husband can be believed) by this all-consuming desire to be part of some sort of activism.

Her priorities are off or at least deeply idiosyncratic, I think we’re supposed to think—although she doesn’t do anything anti-heroic or mistaken as a result, so maybe not.

The breadth of both “the Catastrophe,” the legislative results of it, and the things which happen to potentially turn the tides back right at the end are believably medium-scale.

“But if the eventual outcome wasn’t clear, individual battles still had winners and losers.”

When I think Nancy Kress, I think fast paced human-centric stories flavored with cutting edge science and social observation, and I'm glad to say that this story is no exception. Renata Black is a woman with a lot of identities. An activist, a mother, an agent in a secretive 'Org' that aims to genetically engineer crops in a near future United States where that is illegal.
It took me a while to cotton to the time jumps in this novella, but once I did I was pleased. There are three narratives going here, Renata's relationship with her son, her estranged ex-husband Jake, and her work with The Org. Be patient if you initially feel annoyed with the skipping around, the payoff is worth it.
If you're a fan of Kress' previous works, you'll definitely enjoy this novella.

3.5/5

"Sea Change" is something a little different, yet much the same and familiar, from Nancy Kress. The new novella, in addition to being smart science fiction is also something of a thriller. It also heavily relates to our times and our society, and gives the reader a scary look into what could be in store for not only our nation but the world in the very near future.

The subject is GMO crops. Carol Denton is an agent in the Org, a group of clandestine scientists organized into cells - you know the drill: cells are small, and no one knows where any other cell is, and who are the members of those cells, so that if one member is caught the entire organization doesn't fall - that is trying to convince the world that GMO crops are not only okay, but are necessary and essential if the world's population is to be sufficiently fed.

The issue is something called the Catastrophe, an event brought on by a genetically engineered drug caused the deaths of hundreds of children, which caused an economic collapse and all the rest of the things you might expect. The end result was that GMO crops were banned, and that trying to produce genetically engineered food was considered a crime. Carol has a personal interest in the situation in that Renata Black - Carol's real name - had her son die in the Catastrophe.

The story starts with Carol encounters a self-driving house (heck, we're still only working on self-driving cars) that is out of control and causing traffic problems. Carol recognizes a particular colored marker on the house that indicates that it belongs to the Org. She goes in to take a look, finds something unusual (come on, it's not every day your normal self driving house is out and about causing issues), and the story begins. From there we move on to political intrigue, romance, deception, and betrayal.

But the story is not just all about that stuff. In typical Nancy Kress style, we learn about GMOs because of her expertise in biological sciences. The infodumps, such as they are, really aren't. They're snuck into the narrative in such a way that the reader may not realize they are being educated about a subject that is import now, not just in the time of the story. Kress also weaves family concerns into the story as she normally does (see her recent Yesterday's Kin novels). So even though the trappings are not of a typical Nancy Kress story, it really is a typical Nancy Kress story. As usual, it's also well and smartly written in a style that makes it easy for the reader to get involved without that sense of being talked down to.

If I had to pick a nit about something, I would say that at novella length, the story is too short. It seems to me that there is a whole lot more there that can be expounded upon. The story is good. I expect that it could be a whole lot better if it was novel length. It would not surprise me if Kress was planning on expanding the novella into at least a novel, if not a trilogy, much like the Yesterday's Kin trilogy. The subject of GMO crops needs more room to breathe, and the public needs to know more about them. "Sea Change" is a really good start.

Sea Change by Nancy Kress- In a world where all forms of GMO food production are outlawed and people are starving, Caroline Denton- not her real name- strives to return her country and the world back to a planned, human approach to scientific food production rather than the excesses and misfortunes of agri-business, for profit, mishandling. To do this, she is part of a network of people dedicated to this cause, who must work their magic while being branded terrorists by their own government. A great catastrophe has reduced the world' food output and only her organization, small as it is, can hope to change opinions, foster research, and help bring the world back from the inevitable brink. Kress offers a lot of technical detail in her novella, but dresses it to appeal to the fast pace of her story. A cautionary tale? Yes! And a shatteringly believable one.

In a world that turned against GMOs after one went very wrong and killed a lot of kids, a woman who lost her own young son to a different biological disaster—one that was enhanced by global warming—works for a secret organization that tries to do GMOs better, without capitalist distortions and designed to feed a warming and desertifying world. There are mobile houses and retinal scans and pervasive government surveillance. And the only thing that really didn’t work for me was the relatively hopeful ending relying on “the truth getting out.” Kress tried to deal with the phenomenon of pervasive online misinformation, but ultimately ended up handwaving too much for my currently very pessimistic take on our likely future. Also non-explicit discussions of sexual assault, including of a child.

Set in Seattle and Portland this story deals with a number of cascading events that ultimately leads to the collapse of the world’s financial institutions. As a result the government responds with heavy-handed curtailment of civil liberties and severe restrictions on gene modified crops, which will eventually result in world wide famine.

Renata tells her story from first person point of view and details her joining the Org, a group dedicated to fighting the government.

I thought the story was very well researched. Character development was excellent. Ms. Kness is on top of her game as a writer; check out this line when commenting on Renata’s relationship with her lover: “It isn’t the past that creates the future. It’s how you interpret the past.”

I highly recommend this story.

3.5/5

It turns out that it takes only a few months to destroy an entire national economy and to see companies too big to fail go into bankruptcy. In Sea Change Kress touches on a lot of controversial topics, including GMOs, cybersecurity, or social order. Despite its short length, the novella contains powerful ideas, well-researched data, and avoids giving easy answers.

It made me think. And feel stuff. A good thing for sure.

That being said, Sea Change is actually an amalgam of three narratives - one scientific, and two focused on the main character - Renata Black a.k.a Caroline Denton. Personal tragedy drives her current obsessions.

In 2032, she’s a driven operative of the Org, an underground group that could save the world from itself. The present timeline follows her investigation. Chapters set in her past show, beautifully and poignantly, her relationships and personal evolution. I loved this part. I found it moving and elegant.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into the present eco-thriller storyline. I found it rather boring and unevenly paced. As a result, I felt immersed and emotionally engaged in one storyline while remaining uninterested in the other one. A tricky situation and the only reason for my rating.

Kress’ writing is superb (clear, economic, precise) but there is one awkward simile I can’t get over (” jaw hard as an erection”).

Overall, I would recommend the book as it combines strong (and plausible) analysis of ecological and economic collapse with personal tragedy and genuine emotions.