Beggars in Spain by
Nancy Kress
Published: Morrow AvoNova, 1993
Series: Book 1 of The
Sleepless
Awards Nominated:
Hugo, Nebula, John W. Campbell, Locus SF (The novella version won the Hugo and Nebula awards.)
The Book:
“Wouldn’t it be a
great if human beings didn’t have to spend a third of their life asleep? That’s exactly the advantage the
“Sleepless” have, along with a number of others, such as eternal youth, perfect
health, genius-level intelligence and, in some cases, wealth and beauty. The Sleepless began as an experiment,
and they have become an incredibly powerful minority within mere decades.
However, as the
Sleepless develop a collective social and intellectual identity, the tensions
between them and ordinary ‘Sleepers’ continue to rise. Sleepers fear and envy the
wealth, success, and general physical and intellectual superiority of the
Sleepless, and this envy occasionally bubbles over into sheer hatred. For their part, the Sleepless are
supremely confident that their lives have more inherent worth than those of
Sleepers. Rather than dealing with
the Sleepers, whom they refer to as “Beggars”, many of them want to secede from
the world altogether. “ ~Allie
Beggars in Spain
is the September selection for the Calico Reaction Blog’s Alphabet Soup
Challenge. I’d never read any
novels by Nancy Kress before, but I have vague memories of enjoying some of her
short fiction.
My Thoughts:
To my mind, Beggars in
Spain felt very much like two books joined together. The first part of the novel featured
the creation of the Sleepless, how their existence altered society, and the
clashes between Sleepless and Sleeper humans. The second part of the novel was,
in some ways, an iteration of the plot of the first half of the book, with
different initial conditions.
Despite the feeling of déjà vu, I actually enjoyed the second half of
the novel a little more than the first.
The novel covers quite a lot of time—several generations of
Sleepers—and has a correspondingly large number of characters. Unfortunately, few of them are ever
really developed past a single defining characteristic. The characterizations of antagonists
were especially flat and exaggerated.
Antagonists were typically portrayed as representatives of a specific
philosophy, and they followed their chosen tenets to the letter, regardless of
logic, rationality, morality, or even their own goals and motivations. Of all
of the characters, I was most interested in two that were introduced in the
second part of the book, Miri and Drew.
I felt that those two characters had the most depth of character. They
were capable of some change and growth, and their flaws and disadvantages
significantly impacted their lives. Their existence is a major part of why I
enjoyed the second half of the book more than the first.
In contrast, the main character, Leisha Camden, felt like
too much of a Mary Sue character to me. Leisha was a Sleepless baby who was born
into a fabulously wealthy family, and who was genetically gifted with exquisite
beauty and world-class intelligence.
As a side effect of her Sleeplessness, she has perfect health and will
never physically age past the appearance of roughly thirty years. Her parents doted on her, making sure
she grew up believing that she was more important than other people. She went to Harvard and then moved into
a highly successful career. However,
she spends most of the book whining about how all the jealous people are
oppressing her. In general, Leisha is pretty representative of the Sleepless,
though they do not all initially come from such great wealth. Her major difference from most of the
other Sleepless is her opposition to the idea of creating an isolated Sleepless
community, and her desire to improve relations with Sleepers.
In general, I was never really able to buy the idea that the
Sleepless were being oppressed. The readers are told over and over that the
Sleepless are being persecuted, though few details of any persecution are
shown. In contrast, we are also
repeatedly shown that the Sleepless are the privileged class. The Sleepless may not hold political
power, but they have a vast economic and technological edge on the rest of
civilization. Crimes are committed against both Sleepers
and Sleepless, but only the Sleepless have the power and resources to protect
their own. In the latter half of the book, a new persecuted subgroup, the
“Supers” are created. Their plight
seemed much more believable to me, due in part to the obvious vulnerability of
their group. I also found myself
more sympathetic to their situation, possibly as a result of their general lack
of the extreme level of arrogance that characterized the Sleepless.
On a related note, I found the contrast drawn between
Sleepless and Sleepers to be incredibly unrealistic. Naturally, Sleepless would be more productive, as they have
more time to work. Since they also
seem to come with intelligence enhancements, it makes sense that they would be
more successful as well. However, it seemed like the mere
existence of the Sleepless caused all Sleepers to instantly regress to a
culture of non-productivity and entitlement. Despite the fact that non-modified humans built the world
the Sleepless were born into, they are suddenly almost entirely incapable of
contributing anything of worth to that same world. For this reason, most of the Sleepless take to referring to
non-modified humans as ‘Beggars’, and Leisha and her entourage refer to them as
‘Livers’ (since all they do is live).
I think it would have felt a lot more realistic if the novel had stuck
to addressing the problems arising from the differing levels of natural
aptitude, rather than causing non-modified humanity to suddenly become Eloi.
Lastly, I was a little bothered by the intense focus on the
U.S., at the exclusion of all else.
The creation of the Sleepless, and the existence of genetically modified
humans in general, would have caused dramatic changes in societies all around
the world. However, the rest of
the world barely gets a nod at any point in the novel. The characters focus very heavily on
quotes and ideas from American history, to the point of constantly quoting
Abraham Lincoln and men from the American Revolution. There’s a lot of talk about the American mindset that did
not seem particularly accurate to me.
Granted, I was nine in 1993 and I haven’t lived in the U.S. for a few
years, so my opinion on ‘the American mindset’ might not be entirely accurate. I suppose I was a little disappointed
that a novel titled Beggars in Spain,
did not, in fact, involve Spain at all.
My Rating: 2/5
Beggars in Spain
brings up a lot of interesting questions about what effects designer
super-babies would have on society. The plot stretches over a large amount of
time, so there are many characters introduced. Unfortunately, the characters seemed mostly flat and
unconvincing, and the antagonists were particularly over the top. The properties of the Sleepless made
them seem like an exercise in wish fulfillment (they have immortality, eternal
youth, beauty, intelligence, money, health…), and the main character, Leisha
Camden, felt especially like a Mary Sue.
Given their extreme level of privilege, it was very hard to credit the
Sleepless claims of being terribly oppressed. While I felt that the second half of the story was an
improvement over the first, my ultimate impression of the novel was one of
disappointment.
