Kethani [Paperback]

Eric Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 2008

It takes an alien race to show us what humanitiy truly is. This is the irony faced by a group of friends whose lives are changed forever when the mysterious alien race known as the Kethani come to Earth bearing a dubious but amazing gift: immortality. These superbly crafted episodes deal with human emotions in the face of the vast consequences of the alien arrival, and show how people across the world react to this benign invasion, how ultimately we evolve as we gain the stars.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pleasant but evasive, this episodic novel posits a future where the alien Kéthani give humanity a sort of immortality. Upon their deaths, people with Kéthani implants are resurrected on the aliens' home world with improved bodies and minds and given the choice of returning home or spreading the Kéthani gospel throughout the galaxy. As religions and governments struggle to adjust, Brown (Helix) focuses on the experiences of neighbors and friends in a small English village, keeping the vibe as low-key as their evenings in the local pub. When a member of another alien race kills one of the Kéthani, the characters begin to wonder who the antagonists are and what they're trying to do, as well as who (or what) the Kéthani themselves are and why they are aiding (or manipulating) humankind. But each section ends just when it should begin, dissolving tension and leaving these questions unanswered. The result is an unsatisfying cop-out. (May)
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About the Author

Born in West Yorkshire, England in 1960, Brown has lived in Australia, India, and Greece. He began writing when he was fifteen and sold his first short story to Interzone in 1986. His story "The Time-Lapsed Man" won the Interzone readers' roll for the most admired story of 1988. He has won the British Science Fiction Award twice for his short stories and has published over twenty books: SF novels, collections, books for teenagers and younger children, as well as radio plays, articles and reviews. His latest books include the collection Threshold Shift, the novella The Extraordinary Voyage of Jules Verne, and the children's book Crazy Love. He is married to the writer and mediaevalist Finn Sinclair, and has one daughter, Freya. He lives in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. His website can be found at: : http://ericbrownsf.port5.com/

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Solaris; First Edition. states edition (May 6, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184416473X
• ISBN-13: 978-1844164738
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,732,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying, April 28, 2009

By 

Olin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kethani (Paperback)

Interesting concept, but too much left unknown and somehow seemed to avoid the very philosophical concept, what is human, that was the center of the book. Aliens come to earth and "improve" humans, but you never meet the aliens, have no information on where they came from, what their real motivation is, and are they really friendly. An author could have started with a very different idea, how could a hostile alien race destroy human civilization without violence and with human cooperation, and written almost exactly the same book. In the end, humans ooh and ahh about how wonderful the aliens and human life now is, without actually giving any explanation. In this regard, reminds me of the Celestine Prophecy books that used a phony sense of wonder as justification. In summary, interesting, but not recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Quick Read - Hope for A Better Sequel, May 20, 2009

By 

T. McDonald "Sci Fi Fan" (Bronx, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kethani (Paperback)

This is an enjoyable read, despite it clearly being a collection of previously published short stories tied together with some additional chapters. My problem with the book is it raised more questions than it attempts to answer, and thus becomes really just an exploration of who would choose eternal life and who wouldn't. I see high hopes for a seguel that could explore key questions raised by the book but never answered. What is this alien race who provides eternal life all about? Who are their enemies who wish to stop them? Why did they choose humans to carry forth their message? What is this message? All in all, a quick, light read, but nothing that will stick with you.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Loose ends abound, July 11, 2009

By 

David Cortesi (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kethani (Paperback)

Other reviewers have mentioned the episodic nature of this book: it's a collection of stories published in small 'zines over several years, with bridging material. That's a perfectly legitimate way to reuse material. The stories cover the arrival of the alien Kethani's station and a few decades after. Each story is set in the dead of a Yorkshire winter, so people are always driving their Range Rovers over snowy downs and up icy lanes, and after a while this obviously intentional mannerism grates. Does nothing Kethani-related happen in the summer?

The characters are a believable, and mostly nice, set of modern Brits who meet at the local pub every Tuesday night, each with credible quirks, foibles, and problems. (Well, credible to an American except for one quirk: do Yorkshire folk really drink that much beer? Pints and pints and pints every night?)

The Kethani gift is a small device, implanted under one's skin, which upon your death both signals a pickup crew and emits nanites to preserve your corpse. You are transferred by near-miraculous means to the Kethani world (or is it?) where you are reconstituted in healthy form, counseled and trained (in ways that you cannot recall in any detail later), and returned to the station from which you left -- or not; you may opt to take work elsewhere in the galaxy for the Kethani.

Each of the stories revolves around a personal decisions this system implies: is it moral to cheat death in this way, or a mortal sin? Should you accept the implant or not? Should you allow a minor child to be implanted? Is the person who comes back really the same person who died and left, and will that person still love what and who he/she loved before death?

Some larger questions are mulled by the characters: are the Kethani really working in humanity's best interests? What is the gift of immortality doing to society and the race? These questions are never answered, because (apparently) Eric Brown has not done the thinking to know the answer himself. It is not (I believe) that he's reserving the full story for a sequel; I think he really doesn't know. He had just invented the sketch of a situation that lets him pose a what-if question to provoke an interesting conflict. It's like the inane conversation you can start with "which super-power would be better: flight or invisibility?" Great for talk after the n'th pint of beer, but in the end, pointless.

In the book some people actually kill themselves in order to get on to the resurrection. A question that came to me after finishing the book: why do you have to die? Why can't you just walk up to the door of the transport station and say, "I'm ready, take me." The only explanation is the inscrutable alien nature of the inscrutable aliens. In fact the answer is: without the powerful symbol of death, the stories have no emotional driver. It's the juxtaposition of the great gift (a rejuvenated, disease-free body and unspecified philosophical training) with the great price (having to die) that makes these stories work. Take away that high cost of a ticket to Kethani and there's little impact.

But that's an arbitrary gimmick. It makes no sense that a race with these powers, these gifts to bestow, would put them behind such a barrier. There are other loose ends that are obvious in hindsight, such as, why would a race with the Kethani's powers need a vast number of human recruits? And why, when they can transport people instantaneously for light-years to and from their Earth stations, do they seem to be using "starships" elsewhere? In each case, the answer seems to be, because it needs to be that way to make the story work. It is this arbitrariness that makes the book seem "hollow" or "pointless" to other reviewers.