So I was going to review another movie this week but a friend of mine suggested doing something new and different, he suggested I try reviewing something that didn’t have pictures. I gave it a momentary thought and said ‘Sure! I don’t need art to be able to read’ so he went into his bathroom and came out with Beggars in Spain. I smiled and said ‘cool’ and he said ‘good luck genius ’. Hey now, I’m no ‘pure read’ slacker! I can read with the best of them- I’ve got the William Gibson library, the Neal Stephenson criticals and ALL the Rudy Rucker’s and I know the answer to Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep? So don’t go taunting me with a Nancy Kress novel. No sir, I will read this book and lay to waste all reviewers that have come before me.
Someone really should be in charge of me and my big mouth or one day I’m going to be found dead with a very large shoe stuck in my gritted teeth.
Beggars in Spain is by Nancy Kress and I’m sorry to say I had never heard of this writer before being handed this book, so after reading this novel I went looking for a little more information about her. I won’t go into all that here but I’ll give you the link so you can see for yourself what a prolific writer this woman is. That rock I live under must be the size of a Walmart because this woman is no stranger to Hugo or Nebula awards and Beggars in Spain won both for some very good reasons.
The story was a bit slow going at first and though it’s about a group of people that have been genetically altered to need no sleep I really thought I was going to fall into a coma for the first couple of chapters. But that was because she did such an excellent job of making these genetic alterations so easy to understand that never sleeping again just seemed like a normal answer to the age old productivity problem. Except along the way those that aren’t genetically enhanced to be ‘Sleepless’ quickly realize they are the newly disadvantaged underclass and this sets up a massive power struggle that plays itself out on a quickly expanding , rapidly deteriorating horizon.
Kress covers a lot of ground in this book and explores concepts that don’t immediately come to mind with the first thought of never having to sleep again. I was so struck by the visual she created when she wrote about how the sleepless had no beds in their houses and how because their parents weren’t sleepless, they had to hire someone to stay awake with child all night. I was even more impacted by the concept when one of the main characters goes to jail – what a nightmare being a sleepless might actually be. But the upside, as she shows has great advantages to our overall world economy and development even if it is at a great cost to our humanity and civility.
Science Fiction has never been a stranger to taking current world problems throwing them in the Petri dish of disillusionment and grandiose and birthing forth a world that sometimes verges so close on our current reality that we walk away wondering if this genre is the crystal ball or the Pandora’s box of our civilization. Kress accomplishes this is so many ways that it becomes almost frightening to realize her finger just might be caressing the Crick & Watson Helix tomes.
One of the greatest aspects of this story is it has a long enough timeline to explore the concept to a plausible and workable conclusion. Sleepless don’t age at the same rate as non sleepless, so we get to be bystanders to a world that at first pushes away then begrudgingly accepts and in the end integrates with a simple shrug of the shoulder, a people and an idea that never had a clue how much history they would actually create.
As I sit here writing I realize just how important this novel really is and how much MORE important it’s going to become as we progress forward into the future of gene enhancements. One day there will come a group of people not unlike the Sleepless and if we have imbibed in the wisdom of Beggars in Spain we will have ironed out the wrinkles of our present to pave the way to a crisp bright future for those that follow behind us.
The last ten chapters of this book are the heart of it all and it needs every moment penned in those lines to drive home the humanity and the depths of egotistic desires and deeds. I was thoroughly satisfied and amazed with ending Kress put on this story. I never could have believed it would travel this particular road and end in such a warm and thoughtful place.
This is a story that really should sit on every Science Fiction reader’s shelf. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve stolen my friend’s dog eared copy and it now resides in my own bathroom. And though it doesn’t have any heavy technology or other worldly atmospherics it perfectly capable of holding its own against Rucker, Asimov & Dick and that’s saying something.
Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain first published in 1993 by Morrow/AvoNova.
http://www.sff.net/people/nankress/ Nancy Kress web site with an email link.
