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Sleepless #3
Beggars Ride
In this final installment of Nancy Kress’s award-winning Beggars trilogy, it is now two hundred years in the future. Regular human beings hate and fear the Sleepless and the SuperSleepless, genetically-modified humans who are immune to disease and hunger and who do not need to sleep. When the Sleepless plot to take over the world and leave regular humans powerless, civilization and the very meaning of the word “human” hang in the balance.
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First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Nancy Kress
453 books899 followersNancy Kress is an American science fiction writer. She began writing in 1976 but has achieved her greatest notice since the publication of her Hugo and Nebula-winning 1991 novella
Beggars in Spain
which was later expanded into a novel with the same title. In addition to her novels, Kress has written numerous short stories and is a regular columnist for Writer's Digest. She is a regular at Clarion writing workshops and at The Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland. During the Winter of 2008/09, Nancy Kress is the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
July 8, 2018
Let's get this out of the way. The first 2/3rds of this book was filled to the brim with rather boring Sleeper and Sleepless politics. It lacked all the charm of the first two novels because the first two had great characters.
They're missing from this novel.
The characters we do have didn't manage to pick up and become great until after the first nuclear explosion.
Beginning and Middle in this novel was... meh. Not horrible or anything and I really DO like heavy explorations of gene-mods, social repercussions, and (theoretically) how they lead to massive political upheaval. I just didn't think it worked particularly well here. Unlike the first two Sleepless novels. The end conclusion in this one was satisfying in its way, dealing with an engineered plague that causes people to be aversive, isolationist, (and oddly compassionate), building up to another plague that's half relying on imagination, putting oneself entirely in another's shoes, and half cognitive therapy. It doesn't ignore the underlying biological issue, but it does allow for transcendental biology. You know... mind over matter -- at least when it comes to happy placebo events. :)
We are not limited to our biological destiny, no matter what the naysayers say.
Let's back up here. The whole series as a whole is NOT about that. Indeed, it's a rather awesome series about super geniuses being created out of a genetic alteration that removed the need to sleep. The children are blameless, oddly awesome, but then all the normals fear their super brilliance and work-ethic and focus, they're hounded, forced to take control, and from there take over the world with varying levels of success.
This novel is the aftermath of all that. It's goodish but sometimes meandering and often rather boring until THINGS START HAPPENING. Sigh. Well, they do, and the end is quite fun, but the rest was something of a slog. Alas. I just didn't care for what was going on until after the nuke. :)
Is this enough to save the whole novel? No. But I'm glad I got to the good stuff, for all that.
They're missing from this novel.
The characters we do have didn't manage to pick up and become great until after the first nuclear explosion.
Beginning and Middle in this novel was... meh. Not horrible or anything and I really DO like heavy explorations of gene-mods, social repercussions, and (theoretically) how they lead to massive political upheaval. I just didn't think it worked particularly well here. Unlike the first two Sleepless novels. The end conclusion in this one was satisfying in its way, dealing with an engineered plague that causes people to be aversive, isolationist, (and oddly compassionate), building up to another plague that's half relying on imagination, putting oneself entirely in another's shoes, and half cognitive therapy. It doesn't ignore the underlying biological issue, but it does allow for transcendental biology. You know... mind over matter -- at least when it comes to happy placebo events. :)
We are not limited to our biological destiny, no matter what the naysayers say.
Let's back up here. The whole series as a whole is NOT about that. Indeed, it's a rather awesome series about super geniuses being created out of a genetic alteration that removed the need to sleep. The children are blameless, oddly awesome, but then all the normals fear their super brilliance and work-ethic and focus, they're hounded, forced to take control, and from there take over the world with varying levels of success.
This novel is the aftermath of all that. It's goodish but sometimes meandering and often rather boring until THINGS START HAPPENING. Sigh. Well, they do, and the end is quite fun, but the rest was something of a slog. Alas. I just didn't care for what was going on until after the nuke. :)
Is this enough to save the whole novel? No. But I'm glad I got to the good stuff, for all that.
May 15, 2011
Uh-oh. Jennifer Sharifi is back. This can't be good for the story, and last time she was the antagonist, it wasn't good for the book either.
I'll say this about Nancy Kress: she has a way of surprising me. I did not expect her to kill off Leisha Camden so abruptly in Beggars and Choosers. The stunning events that happen in Beggars Ride, some of which are the result of Jennifer's decisions, were no less shocking. For most of the book, I kept thinking, "That didn't happen. That could not have happened. This must be some kind of trick; there will be a twist at the end, a revelation that everything is all right." But there was no twist, no trick. Kress played it straight for the entire book, delivering in this way a fitting conclusion to her genetic narrative of strife, interdependence, and family conflicts.
The Jennifer Sharifi of Beggars Ride is much different from the Jennifer of Beggars in Spain, whom I likened to a moustache-twirlng villain. Twenty-seven years in prison have mellowed Jennifer, or maybe Kress has just decided to give us a more intimate look beyond Jennifer's careful composure. Whatever the case, we actually get glimpses at Jennifer's feelings instead of just narration about how careful and calculating her mind is. We get to watch her anguish over some of the hard choices she makes, choices she feels are necessary to protect the Sleepless, even if they have a high cost for her personally. There is a vulnerability to Jennifer present that I had never seen before, and that made her so much more compelling.
Beggars Ride follows up on what has become of humanity after Miranda Sharifi and the SuperSleepless rained Change syringes down on the world at the end of Beggars and Choosers. Injection with a syringe furnishes a human body with Cell Cleaner, a nanotechnology that eliminates foreign bacteria and viruses and repairs or destroys damaged cells. It also modifies the human body to make humans able to absorb nutrients from soil or any other organic material through micro-tubules extending up between skin cells. (Kress calls this "autotrophic," but I'm not sure this is strictly correct, since as I understand it, autotrophs absorb inorganic compounds. But it's been a while since I studied chemistry.) These changes are not hereditary, and with Change syringes in scarce supply, more and more children are being born only to grow up unChanged. Various groups, from religious cults to doctors associations, regularly beam messages to the SuperSleepless retreat on the moon, pleading for more Change syringes. And, oh yes, immortality. Because if you give a mouse a cookie….
Beggars in Spain was all about the division between Sleepless and Sleepers, with the latter worried that the former would replace them as a more successful, more productive, "superior" version of humanity. So the Sleepers pushed the Sleepless away, and Beggars and Choosers looks at what has become of Sleeper society since then. Now, in Beggars Ride, Kress reveals that, far from gaining separation and independence from the Sleepless, Sleeper society is now totally dependent on them for more Change syringes. The irony that Miranda's gift to humanity did not, as she so joyously claimed at the end of Beggars and Choosers, make humanity free, is not lost on the reader, or on Miranda herself, for that matter. For all of her technological and neurological expertise, Miranda failed to account for the sociological factors that surrounded her gift of the Change syringes. The Liver/donkey dichotomy Kress depicts in Beggars and Choosers is still present in Beggars Ride, just altered. The key to understanding the present state of the society is to realize something that, while probably obvious in the previous book, was not made explicit until now: everyone has pretty much given up. No one is interested in minding the store, not the donkeys, and certainly not the Livers.
Theoretically, the Livers, who vastly outnumber the donkeys, are supposed to give votes in exchange for material goods and promised services. In return, the donkeys gain power and prestige. The Livers are raised to believe that they are privileged not to work, that education is a chore, and all they should be doing is racing scooters and having sex and complaining when the soy food dispenser breaks. The Change syringes upset this balance, but the separation between the two classes remains: donkeys exist in private, fortified enclaves in the shells of the former great cities of the United States; Livers roam across the country in "tribes," attempting to fend for themselves. And the donkeys could not care less about the Liver population any more, although the legal and electoral relationship between the two classes still remains. If the Livers have been encouraged to engage in lives of epic hedonism, then the donkey enclaves, thanks to the Change syringes, have shifted into a haughty Epicureanism. They have lost all interest in governance or leadership, and those donkeys who do run for office do so pretty much solely for the power those positions bring. Mostly, the donkeys spend their time looking for new thrills and new experiences, because the Cell Cleaner destroys mood-enhancing drugs too quickly to make them effective.
We see this happening through the eyes of Jackson Aranow, a naive donkey doctor, and his sister, Theresa. Jackson is your typical disaffected donkey; he doesn't really care about managing the business he part-owns, nor is his work as a doctor very stimulating or challenging now that Cell Cleaner takes care of almost every ailment. Yet Jackson has not quite succumbed to the nihilistic malaise slowly pervading donkey society; he merely recognizes its approach in the form of his smoking hot ex-wife, Cazie. Cazie is forceful, even domineering at times, but also a little on the crazy side; there is one memorable scene where she drags Jackson up to a party on another floor of his apartment building. At the party, everyone is lying around in the mud, feeding together (sometimes very together, if you catch my drift). And they are taking terms throwing knives at each other; protected by Y-shielding, the targets are in no real danger. The knives are laced with one of two compounds: one that induces pleasure by directly stimulating the brain, and another that induces pain. One doesn't know what one will get, and that's the thrill that Cazie and others who have been dulled by the cleanliness of Cell Cleaner seek.
Jackson flees from that kind of party, a little disgusted and even vaguely ashamed. This scene sticks in my mind because I think it is a turning point in his relationship with Lizzie, Vicki, and the Liver tribe. Cazie's behaviour makes Jackson realize that the donkey way of life is fast becoming more of a sham than any pretensions to aristocracy that the Livers previously had. He can no longer pretend to be ignorant or apathetic, because if he does, then he will soon live in a society he cannot abide. So he cautiously starts to reach out to the only thing he knows is different, the only people who look like they are willing to change—because, aside from engineering a product that can work around Cell Cleaner's effectiveness, the donkeys don't really want to change. They're happy with the status quo, and that will kill them. As Vicki observes, no one wants to take responsibility for what has happened since the Change began; everyone blames Miranda for not continuing to provide Change syringes.
So human society has entered a crisis of faith, a literal one, for some people. Miranda Sharifi took the world by storm by dropping Change syringes, and now she and the SuperSleepless have sequestered themselves again. Kress includes interludes consisting of short messages sent to the SuperSleepless colony on the moon, beseeching Miranda to send more Change syringes. But there is never an answer (for a very good reason, though I won't spoil it here), and we get the impression that, thematically, there can't be an answer. The SuperSleepless have run into the classic god paradox: if you try to do too much, you end up making people dependent on you. This is not necessarily a comment about human nature but rather a consequence of herd mentality: societies prefer the familiar and look to where they know help can be found. And when that help isn't forthcoming, then they turn to insults, wondering why the Miranda has "abandoned" them to let their children suffer.
It's this combination of social change with biological, technologically-induced causes that makes Nancy Kress' books so riveting. She takes a miraculous invention like the Cell Cleaner and then points out that, by fixing "flaws" with our current physiology, it will also deprive us of things we consider good. Kress demonstrates something about science fiction that makes it so compelling for me: every great invention, every new piece of technology, comes with benefits and drawbacks. And we, as a society, seldom understand what the drawbacks are until we have plunged headfirst into reaping the benefits (fossil fuels, anyone?). We are somewhat-clever apes, tinkering with toys that we don't really understand, and sometimes that gets us into trouble. It is a great way to create conflict for a story, exploring all the while a facet of what it means to be human.
This is where Jennifer enters the plot as a villain. So far I've focused on the passive consequences of Cell Cleaner. Jennifer intentionally sets out to pervert our idea of humanity even further, devising a means to alter permanently the paths in one's amygdala. She wants to make people afraid of anything new, reasoning that if she can accomplish this on a wide scale, she will have eliminated any unseen threats to her and the rest of the Sleepless in Sanctuary:
It's totally off-the-rails insane, of course, and other characters make the obvious connection to genocide-through-inaction. Jennifer essentially attempts to engineer stagnation into human society. But she fails, twice over. She allows her disgust for Sleepers motivated by greed to overpower her natural cautiousness. And she fails to realize that life, by definition, resists stagnation. Evolution is change.
And so we come to Theresa Aranow, my favourite character. UnChanged, Theresa's abnormal neurological development has resulted in a mental state quite similar to what Jennifer wants: afraid of the wider world, afraid of change or new experiences. Theresa spends most of her time isolated in the apartment she shares with Jackson, reading and writing about Leisha Camden and collecting quotations from the datanet. Periodically she makes these quixotic attempts to break free from this shell and make some sort of difference. She always meets failure, however, for a variety of reasons: either the experience does not live up to its promise, such as when she visits a convent only to find out they use drugs to "get closer to God"; or, an external force interrupts her, such as when she visits Richard Sharifi's compound in La Solana just as it gets nuked. Theresa is a little bit tragic but also possesses an incredible fortitude that makes her all the more endearing. She shares with Jackson a naivety, but his comes off as annoying or pretentious because it is a wilful ignorance, and casting off that ignorance is Jackson's personal growth in this book. Theresa is naive because she just lacks so much experience, but her personality grows by leaps and bounds.
Through Theresa's thoughts and actions, Kress shapes her final, somewhat optimistic message to us regarding human behaviour, genetics, and neurochemistry. One of the philosophical crucibles of posthumanism is the question of biological determinism: to what extent is our behaviour determined by our bodies, by our brain chemistry? This is central to all of the far-reaching inquiries of the posthumanists, from mind-uploading to immortality. Or, as Kress explains:
It is easy to become lost in the events of global consequence in Beggars Ride and the larger social commentary at work there. As the above passage demonstrates, however, there is a much deeper level present, one where Kress introduces us to some very intriguing questions about selfhood and behaviour. This is what science fiction does, and my only regret is that it takes until the final book of this trilogy for Kress to achieve this zenith. I didn't, and still don't, like Beggars in Spain. I was worried, in fact, that this series would turn out to be another Clockwork Earth : a very disappointing first book followed by two mediocre sequels. But I had more faith in Nancy Kress, and she did not let me down. Beggars Ride is an excellent work in its own right and a fitting culmination to a series that, while not without flaws and pitfalls, presents a thoughtful look at the social consequences of directing our evolution.
My Reviews of the Sleepless trilogy:
← Beggars and Choosers
I'll say this about Nancy Kress: she has a way of surprising me. I did not expect her to kill off Leisha Camden so abruptly in Beggars and Choosers. The stunning events that happen in Beggars Ride, some of which are the result of Jennifer's decisions, were no less shocking. For most of the book, I kept thinking, "That didn't happen. That could not have happened. This must be some kind of trick; there will be a twist at the end, a revelation that everything is all right." But there was no twist, no trick. Kress played it straight for the entire book, delivering in this way a fitting conclusion to her genetic narrative of strife, interdependence, and family conflicts.
The Jennifer Sharifi of Beggars Ride is much different from the Jennifer of Beggars in Spain, whom I likened to a moustache-twirlng villain. Twenty-seven years in prison have mellowed Jennifer, or maybe Kress has just decided to give us a more intimate look beyond Jennifer's careful composure. Whatever the case, we actually get glimpses at Jennifer's feelings instead of just narration about how careful and calculating her mind is. We get to watch her anguish over some of the hard choices she makes, choices she feels are necessary to protect the Sleepless, even if they have a high cost for her personally. There is a vulnerability to Jennifer present that I had never seen before, and that made her so much more compelling.
Beggars Ride follows up on what has become of humanity after Miranda Sharifi and the SuperSleepless rained Change syringes down on the world at the end of Beggars and Choosers. Injection with a syringe furnishes a human body with Cell Cleaner, a nanotechnology that eliminates foreign bacteria and viruses and repairs or destroys damaged cells. It also modifies the human body to make humans able to absorb nutrients from soil or any other organic material through micro-tubules extending up between skin cells. (Kress calls this "autotrophic," but I'm not sure this is strictly correct, since as I understand it, autotrophs absorb inorganic compounds. But it's been a while since I studied chemistry.) These changes are not hereditary, and with Change syringes in scarce supply, more and more children are being born only to grow up unChanged. Various groups, from religious cults to doctors associations, regularly beam messages to the SuperSleepless retreat on the moon, pleading for more Change syringes. And, oh yes, immortality. Because if you give a mouse a cookie….
Beggars in Spain was all about the division between Sleepless and Sleepers, with the latter worried that the former would replace them as a more successful, more productive, "superior" version of humanity. So the Sleepers pushed the Sleepless away, and Beggars and Choosers looks at what has become of Sleeper society since then. Now, in Beggars Ride, Kress reveals that, far from gaining separation and independence from the Sleepless, Sleeper society is now totally dependent on them for more Change syringes. The irony that Miranda's gift to humanity did not, as she so joyously claimed at the end of Beggars and Choosers, make humanity free, is not lost on the reader, or on Miranda herself, for that matter. For all of her technological and neurological expertise, Miranda failed to account for the sociological factors that surrounded her gift of the Change syringes. The Liver/donkey dichotomy Kress depicts in Beggars and Choosers is still present in Beggars Ride, just altered. The key to understanding the present state of the society is to realize something that, while probably obvious in the previous book, was not made explicit until now: everyone has pretty much given up. No one is interested in minding the store, not the donkeys, and certainly not the Livers.
Theoretically, the Livers, who vastly outnumber the donkeys, are supposed to give votes in exchange for material goods and promised services. In return, the donkeys gain power and prestige. The Livers are raised to believe that they are privileged not to work, that education is a chore, and all they should be doing is racing scooters and having sex and complaining when the soy food dispenser breaks. The Change syringes upset this balance, but the separation between the two classes remains: donkeys exist in private, fortified enclaves in the shells of the former great cities of the United States; Livers roam across the country in "tribes," attempting to fend for themselves. And the donkeys could not care less about the Liver population any more, although the legal and electoral relationship between the two classes still remains. If the Livers have been encouraged to engage in lives of epic hedonism, then the donkey enclaves, thanks to the Change syringes, have shifted into a haughty Epicureanism. They have lost all interest in governance or leadership, and those donkeys who do run for office do so pretty much solely for the power those positions bring. Mostly, the donkeys spend their time looking for new thrills and new experiences, because the Cell Cleaner destroys mood-enhancing drugs too quickly to make them effective.
We see this happening through the eyes of Jackson Aranow, a naive donkey doctor, and his sister, Theresa. Jackson is your typical disaffected donkey; he doesn't really care about managing the business he part-owns, nor is his work as a doctor very stimulating or challenging now that Cell Cleaner takes care of almost every ailment. Yet Jackson has not quite succumbed to the nihilistic malaise slowly pervading donkey society; he merely recognizes its approach in the form of his smoking hot ex-wife, Cazie. Cazie is forceful, even domineering at times, but also a little on the crazy side; there is one memorable scene where she drags Jackson up to a party on another floor of his apartment building. At the party, everyone is lying around in the mud, feeding together (sometimes very together, if you catch my drift). And they are taking terms throwing knives at each other; protected by Y-shielding, the targets are in no real danger. The knives are laced with one of two compounds: one that induces pleasure by directly stimulating the brain, and another that induces pain. One doesn't know what one will get, and that's the thrill that Cazie and others who have been dulled by the cleanliness of Cell Cleaner seek.
Jackson flees from that kind of party, a little disgusted and even vaguely ashamed. This scene sticks in my mind because I think it is a turning point in his relationship with Lizzie, Vicki, and the Liver tribe. Cazie's behaviour makes Jackson realize that the donkey way of life is fast becoming more of a sham than any pretensions to aristocracy that the Livers previously had. He can no longer pretend to be ignorant or apathetic, because if he does, then he will soon live in a society he cannot abide. So he cautiously starts to reach out to the only thing he knows is different, the only people who look like they are willing to change—because, aside from engineering a product that can work around Cell Cleaner's effectiveness, the donkeys don't really want to change. They're happy with the status quo, and that will kill them. As Vicki observes, no one wants to take responsibility for what has happened since the Change began; everyone blames Miranda for not continuing to provide Change syringes.
So human society has entered a crisis of faith, a literal one, for some people. Miranda Sharifi took the world by storm by dropping Change syringes, and now she and the SuperSleepless have sequestered themselves again. Kress includes interludes consisting of short messages sent to the SuperSleepless colony on the moon, beseeching Miranda to send more Change syringes. But there is never an answer (for a very good reason, though I won't spoil it here), and we get the impression that, thematically, there can't be an answer. The SuperSleepless have run into the classic god paradox: if you try to do too much, you end up making people dependent on you. This is not necessarily a comment about human nature but rather a consequence of herd mentality: societies prefer the familiar and look to where they know help can be found. And when that help isn't forthcoming, then they turn to insults, wondering why the Miranda has "abandoned" them to let their children suffer.
It's this combination of social change with biological, technologically-induced causes that makes Nancy Kress' books so riveting. She takes a miraculous invention like the Cell Cleaner and then points out that, by fixing "flaws" with our current physiology, it will also deprive us of things we consider good. Kress demonstrates something about science fiction that makes it so compelling for me: every great invention, every new piece of technology, comes with benefits and drawbacks. And we, as a society, seldom understand what the drawbacks are until we have plunged headfirst into reaping the benefits (fossil fuels, anyone?). We are somewhat-clever apes, tinkering with toys that we don't really understand, and sometimes that gets us into trouble. It is a great way to create conflict for a story, exploring all the while a facet of what it means to be human.
This is where Jennifer enters the plot as a villain. So far I've focused on the passive consequences of Cell Cleaner. Jennifer intentionally sets out to pervert our idea of humanity even further, devising a means to alter permanently the paths in one's amygdala. She wants to make people afraid of anything new, reasoning that if she can accomplish this on a wide scale, she will have eliminated any unseen threats to her and the rest of the Sleepless in Sanctuary:
… no one will ever be able to threaten us again, except in those ways we already understand and can counter. We will be in control, if only because there will never again be any unknown devils unleashed against us.
It's totally off-the-rails insane, of course, and other characters make the obvious connection to genocide-through-inaction. Jennifer essentially attempts to engineer stagnation into human society. But she fails, twice over. She allows her disgust for Sleepers motivated by greed to overpower her natural cautiousness. And she fails to realize that life, by definition, resists stagnation. Evolution is change.
And so we come to Theresa Aranow, my favourite character. UnChanged, Theresa's abnormal neurological development has resulted in a mental state quite similar to what Jennifer wants: afraid of the wider world, afraid of change or new experiences. Theresa spends most of her time isolated in the apartment she shares with Jackson, reading and writing about Leisha Camden and collecting quotations from the datanet. Periodically she makes these quixotic attempts to break free from this shell and make some sort of difference. She always meets failure, however, for a variety of reasons: either the experience does not live up to its promise, such as when she visits a convent only to find out they use drugs to "get closer to God"; or, an external force interrupts her, such as when she visits Richard Sharifi's compound in La Solana just as it gets nuked. Theresa is a little bit tragic but also possesses an incredible fortitude that makes her all the more endearing. She shares with Jackson a naivety, but his comes off as annoying or pretentious because it is a wilful ignorance, and casting off that ignorance is Jackson's personal growth in this book. Theresa is naive because she just lacks so much experience, but her personality grows by leaps and bounds.
Through Theresa's thoughts and actions, Kress shapes her final, somewhat optimistic message to us regarding human behaviour, genetics, and neurochemistry. One of the philosophical crucibles of posthumanism is the question of biological determinism: to what extent is our behaviour determined by our bodies, by our brain chemistry? This is central to all of the far-reaching inquiries of the posthumanists, from mind-uploading to immortality. Or, as Kress explains:
A medical solution would of course be simpler, easier, faster. Just take a neuropharm. With the right neuropharm, you could become less fearful, more fearful, more lusty, more hopeful, less angry, more lethargic … anything. But Theresa and her disciples weren't using neuropharms. So the question wasn't, as Jackson had always assumed, how neurochemically driven were humans? The question was, why were they ever driven by anything but neurochemicals? Why—and how—could men and women choose against their own fear, lust, hope, anger, inertia? Because clearly they could choose that. Theresa was doing so, right in front of his eyes. So not—isn't man just a bunch of chemicals? Rather—how could man ever be anything else?
It is easy to become lost in the events of global consequence in Beggars Ride and the larger social commentary at work there. As the above passage demonstrates, however, there is a much deeper level present, one where Kress introduces us to some very intriguing questions about selfhood and behaviour. This is what science fiction does, and my only regret is that it takes until the final book of this trilogy for Kress to achieve this zenith. I didn't, and still don't, like Beggars in Spain. I was worried, in fact, that this series would turn out to be another Clockwork Earth : a very disappointing first book followed by two mediocre sequels. But I had more faith in Nancy Kress, and she did not let me down. Beggars Ride is an excellent work in its own right and a fitting culmination to a series that, while not without flaws and pitfalls, presents a thoughtful look at the social consequences of directing our evolution.
My Reviews of the Sleepless trilogy:
← Beggars and Choosers
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 17, 2010
Third in the Beggars series: Beggars in Spain, Beggars And Choosers and Beggars Ride.
What a series! Social SF at its best!
Kress starts off with a simple premise: what if we could genetically modify our children so that they didn't need sleep? She follows all the complicated, society-changing implications from there. (Hint: there's way more than you'd think!) Honestly, after reading the Hugo-award winning novella, I didn't see how it could continue; I thought she had explored all the moral and societal issues with the Sleepless. How wrong I was! Each book has a new simple premise (or two or three) and explores the outcomes and knock-on effects from various individuals' points of view and the wider-reaching societal complications. The brilliance lies in each book presenting a different commentary on society - following a slightly different cast of characters, through new political, economical and emotional terrain.
Specifically about Beggars Ride: It was a good, satisfying conclusion to the series. Sadly, this is the weakest of the three books, but still holds up. For a book that has a couple of huge events, not much action happens. There is too much thinking and talking about stuff, and not enough doing. In most chapters we're inside a character's head, alone with their thoughts. That's just not very compelling. On the other hand, Kress explores new society-changing questions only touched on in the previous books. In addition, this book was grittier, dirtier with depressing elements and reluctant heroes. Yay for grit and dirt!
What a series! Social SF at its best!
Kress starts off with a simple premise: what if we could genetically modify our children so that they didn't need sleep? She follows all the complicated, society-changing implications from there. (Hint: there's way more than you'd think!) Honestly, after reading the Hugo-award winning novella, I didn't see how it could continue; I thought she had explored all the moral and societal issues with the Sleepless. How wrong I was! Each book has a new simple premise (or two or three) and explores the outcomes and knock-on effects from various individuals' points of view and the wider-reaching societal complications. The brilliance lies in each book presenting a different commentary on society - following a slightly different cast of characters, through new political, economical and emotional terrain.
Specifically about Beggars Ride: It was a good, satisfying conclusion to the series. Sadly, this is the weakest of the three books, but still holds up. For a book that has a couple of huge events, not much action happens. There is too much thinking and talking about stuff, and not enough doing. In most chapters we're inside a character's head, alone with their thoughts. That's just not very compelling. On the other hand, Kress explores new society-changing questions only touched on in the previous books. In addition, this book was grittier, dirtier with depressing elements and reluctant heroes. Yay for grit and dirt!
July 6, 2017
4.5 for the whole series. Not a 5 because I have some quibbles. Most of which revolved around Kress' evil characters, which are stockboard 1 dimensional - BUT her other characters are fully scoped out and are real people in our imagination.
There are many issues here at play aside from biogenesis. I mean economic, class, political, and social. Also examination of our choices. I probably continue to update as I continue to reflect on different ones.
Right now I am most thoughtful about what is it to be human. It's not merely biochemical. Or intelligence. The Most Evil One has no heart, none at all. She thinks her superior brain should lead and she's lost all feelings. Every time one crops up she shuts it down with cold control (a mantra that she repeats) because of her fears and becomes a sociopath. She has no love. Everything revolves around her insane need for control. She's a real bitch! I'd even use the C word! But ultimately she failed to move me, thus the 1-dimension.
While the POV of BIS is that of the Sleepless, I'm thrilled to report that we dive into the perspectives of the Livers and the Donkeys.
These books remind me of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood in that the what-if world presented here is a too-close-to-the-heart possible future reality. High praise indeed!
There are many issues here at play aside from biogenesis. I mean economic, class, political, and social. Also examination of our choices. I probably continue to update as I continue to reflect on different ones.
Right now I am most thoughtful about what is it to be human. It's not merely biochemical. Or intelligence. The Most Evil One has no heart, none at all. She thinks her superior brain should lead and she's lost all feelings. Every time one crops up she shuts it down with cold control (a mantra that she repeats) because of her fears and becomes a sociopath. She has no love. Everything revolves around her insane need for control. She's a real bitch! I'd even use the C word! But ultimately she failed to move me, thus the 1-dimension.
While the POV of BIS is that of the Sleepless, I'm thrilled to report that we dive into the perspectives of the Livers and the Donkeys.
These books remind me of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and Year of the Flood in that the what-if world presented here is a too-close-to-the-heart possible future reality. High praise indeed!
February 11, 2025
This concludes the Beggar series by Nancy Kress. This story, at least to me, sort of bogged down in the middle 200 pages or so but really got me going the last 100. In this complex story about a possible future there are 4 groups of humanity that interact, often badly. There's the Sleepers, who are, like us, humans that need sleep. There are the Sleepless, who have been genetically altered to exist without sleep with the added bonus of regenerating cells giving them a much longer lifespan. Sleepless are more successful, smarter, more motivated than Sleepers. Then there are the Super Sleepless. Further genetic manipulation endowed these folks with much higher intellect; although, their physical appearance is slightly altered. Ok, that's 3 groups. The 4th is a conglomerate bunch. Sleepers who do most of the work. Those who organize, who manage, who get things done - called donkeys. Then there are the Livers, those sleepless who live on the dole provided by the donkeys and some Sleepless.
We follow the lives of certain people from each of the groups through all 3 books. Like we witness today on a daily basis, humans can't seem to co-exist with others if they know those others are different. The results are dangerous and fatal.
So, these books were different but still entertaining. I think Nancy Kress left the door open to come back to these folks down the road.
We follow the lives of certain people from each of the groups through all 3 books. Like we witness today on a daily basis, humans can't seem to co-exist with others if they know those others are different. The results are dangerous and fatal.
So, these books were different but still entertaining. I think Nancy Kress left the door open to come back to these folks down the road.
May 1, 2010
I read all three books in the Beggar's series in fairly quick succession - after the second I wanted to know what happened next so I picked up the third right away. If there were a fourth I'd start reading it next! The story was very compelling, with interesting science and sociology. I felt somewhat disappointed at the end, but I think that's because I wanted to know what happens next. The epilogue certainly left it open for another book. Maybe some day Nancy Kress will write book number four..........
May 26, 2018
Kress certainly carries her theme of what the destitute can give and what they can be given throughout this trilogy. However, the theme's messaging is somewhat wonky in this third book. There's some bizarreness about beggars giving a gift by allowing others to help them, and then there's a short-lived Ayn-Randian bit about not helping beggars because it just makes them worse (but I think that last point was plot driven as opposed to an intentional message).
Unfortunately, Kress seems to have lost track of the other major element that made Beggars in Spain successful: the characters, specifically the outcast Others, which is to say the Sleepless, and their attempts to live their lives. We backed away from them quite a bit in the second book, though it was saved by the intriguing character arc surrounding Miranda and Drew. This book, they're almost entirely absent. In fact, the annoying "Waiting for Miranda-doh" that punctuates the book is one of the first signs of a major problem.
Meanwhile, Kress is focusing more than ever on a plot that honestly went in a bizarre direction in the second book. This leads her to concentrate on genetics and biology to an extent that it's frankly boring. The plot just seems to be flailing further out of control.
All of that would have resulted in a mediocre (3-star) book that was interesting mainly for its last look at Vicki and Lizzie. Unfortunately these several problems are combined with an even more serious one: mental-illness denial. Kress active presents the theory that all mentally ill people have to do to get better is to think really hard. It's like she's telling depressed people to look at cat videos and sunsets and that'll cheer them up. This is not a genetic break-through, and it's not something unique to a very special character: this is something that hundreds of people learn how to do. Not only does this fly in the face of actual science about how mental illness works, not only is this grossly disrespectful to the mentally ill, but it's also actively dangerous to people with actual mental illnesses, who Kress is undercutting with her negligent ignorance. And this is a major point, one of the climaxes of the book. I just didn't know what Kress' deal was by the end of the book, but I dearly hope she's not around anyone with mental health problems.
Oh, and there's sure something that reads like vaccine denial in this book, but like the bit of Randism, I think it could have been an ill-considered plot point as opposed to an actual political view.
When I started this reread of the Beggars trilogy I bemoaned the fact that the latter two books were no longer in print. Now, I've tossed them onto my pile to take to the used book store, and I'm pretty leery of reading anything else by Kress. Though the first book was a somewhat messy masterpiece, this one is a somewhat messy mess, with horribly ignorant politics thrown in.
Unfortunately, Kress seems to have lost track of the other major element that made Beggars in Spain successful: the characters, specifically the outcast Others, which is to say the Sleepless, and their attempts to live their lives. We backed away from them quite a bit in the second book, though it was saved by the intriguing character arc surrounding Miranda and Drew. This book, they're almost entirely absent. In fact, the annoying "Waiting for Miranda-doh" that punctuates the book is one of the first signs of a major problem.
Meanwhile, Kress is focusing more than ever on a plot that honestly went in a bizarre direction in the second book. This leads her to concentrate on genetics and biology to an extent that it's frankly boring. The plot just seems to be flailing further out of control.
All of that would have resulted in a mediocre (3-star) book that was interesting mainly for its last look at Vicki and Lizzie. Unfortunately these several problems are combined with an even more serious one: mental-illness denial. Kress active presents the theory that all mentally ill people have to do to get better is to think really hard. It's like she's telling depressed people to look at cat videos and sunsets and that'll cheer them up. This is not a genetic break-through, and it's not something unique to a very special character: this is something that hundreds of people learn how to do. Not only does this fly in the face of actual science about how mental illness works, not only is this grossly disrespectful to the mentally ill, but it's also actively dangerous to people with actual mental illnesses, who Kress is undercutting with her negligent ignorance. And this is a major point, one of the climaxes of the book. I just didn't know what Kress' deal was by the end of the book, but I dearly hope she's not around anyone with mental health problems.
Oh, and there's sure something that reads like vaccine denial in this book, but like the bit of Randism, I think it could have been an ill-considered plot point as opposed to an actual political view.
When I started this reread of the Beggars trilogy I bemoaned the fact that the latter two books were no longer in print. Now, I've tossed them onto my pile to take to the used book store, and I'm pretty leery of reading anything else by Kress. Though the first book was a somewhat messy masterpiece, this one is a somewhat messy mess, with horribly ignorant politics thrown in.
July 7, 2022
I'm sad to say that this third book in the Sleepless saga appealed to me the least. After such a strong and surprising book two, I perhaps had unrealistic expectations.
First, what I did like: I love the way this whole series handles change, and that's really made clear in this book. Kress starts with an idea - like the sleepless - and then adds to it. In Beggars and Choosers, she adds a few more elements. And then here, almost immediately after Beggars and Choosers ended, the world originally depicted in Beggars in Spain is virtually unrecognizable. Were you to read book three first you'd be non-plussed at all the craziness. But reading the series and following along all the logical steps, it makes sense. So well done on that Nancy!
I also really liked the themes. Here, the primary theme is that of individuality and freedom, suggesting that an individual CAN overcome ANY physical limitation. Now, in real life, I don't necessarily think that's true, scientifically speaking, but I think it makes for great stories.
And while I appreciate attempting to tell a story about unlikeable characters, I have to admit, Jackson and his sister Theresa were too unlikable. To the point where the book just never grabbed me. Throwing Vicky and Lizzie from Beggars and Choosers in there wasn't enough to save what felt like a novel with no main characters and no 'A' plots. Just secondary characters and sub plots.
Nancy Kress is really good when she has a good character to hold on to and weak when she doesn't. She tends to idle into 'tell mode' without that fixed perspective, and that's what happened here.
And despite the fact that there were a ton of cool ideas, and the fact that I like how the world progresses from that first domino of the sleepless falling, it kind of became a jumbled mess.
But, frankly, if you've read this far, you might as well finish the series out. I wouldn't say it's painful, by any means. Just disappointing.
2.75 stars.
First, what I did like: I love the way this whole series handles change, and that's really made clear in this book. Kress starts with an idea - like the sleepless - and then adds to it. In Beggars and Choosers, she adds a few more elements. And then here, almost immediately after Beggars and Choosers ended, the world originally depicted in Beggars in Spain is virtually unrecognizable. Were you to read book three first you'd be non-plussed at all the craziness. But reading the series and following along all the logical steps, it makes sense. So well done on that Nancy!
I also really liked the themes. Here, the primary theme is that of individuality and freedom, suggesting that an individual CAN overcome ANY physical limitation. Now, in real life, I don't necessarily think that's true, scientifically speaking, but I think it makes for great stories.
And while I appreciate attempting to tell a story about unlikeable characters, I have to admit, Jackson and his sister Theresa were too unlikable. To the point where the book just never grabbed me. Throwing Vicky and Lizzie from Beggars and Choosers in there wasn't enough to save what felt like a novel with no main characters and no 'A' plots. Just secondary characters and sub plots.
Nancy Kress is really good when she has a good character to hold on to and weak when she doesn't. She tends to idle into 'tell mode' without that fixed perspective, and that's what happened here.
And despite the fact that there were a ton of cool ideas, and the fact that I like how the world progresses from that first domino of the sleepless falling, it kind of became a jumbled mess.
But, frankly, if you've read this far, you might as well finish the series out. I wouldn't say it's painful, by any means. Just disappointing.
2.75 stars.
November 29, 2018
El universo donde transcurre esta novela y sobre todo la evolución de los seres humanos es uno de los más imaginativos que he encontrado. Una de las cosas que más me gustaba era que podías leer cada una de las novelas por separado sin que te quedará la sensación de que te faltaba leer la continuación o la anterior. Es por eso que lo que menos me ha gustado del final es la cantidad de cosas que deja abiertas y que parece que soluciona en menos de 10 páginas. la mezcla de sociedad post apocalíptica con hiper tecnología en algunos puntos me ha parecido muy interesante y sobre todo la división de clases. Es una novela que definitivamente volveré a visitar en un futuro
October 8, 2022
{2.5 rounded up} This was a very slow burn in its first half with a somewhat cumbersome characters' building. In the land of blind, the one-eyed man is king saying can be applicable here as one of the more unlikely savior is revealed. The author basically tried showing that there are not any long term easy fixes, whether you are a sleepless or even a super-sleepless. The further you go down the rabbit hole, there are some more unforeseen side-effects and unaccounted possibilities that can bite you {human-kind} in the.. I was somewhat disappointed from the ending as it was not clear cut and more solemn than I had imagined.
October 23, 2024
"I just don't know what to do with all these characters... they've barely been doing anything since the first book and I don't know what the human future is supposed to look like with all these superhumans around..."
"Just do what I do whenever someone or something is bothering me."
"?"
"NUKE EM ALL!"
"Just do what I do whenever someone or something is bothering me."
"?"
"NUKE EM ALL!"
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 30, 2019
Anche questo terzo volume della serie non è all'altezza del primo: a mio parere i temi sociologico-filosofico sono completamente persi, rimane solo l'intrigo! L'ho trovato poco credibile in vari punti, specialmente nel finale quando gli insonni si distruggono tra di loro.
February 20, 2022
Beautiful book
August 21, 2023
The best part, in my opinion, is the first third, when the author introduces the new political reality based on the events of the previous book. Alas, it doesn't progress much beyond that introduction. By the end, I was almost ready to give it 2.5 stars.
January 20, 2011
I d like nancy kress books way more if she didnt feel the need to give frankly such a central role to characters that are not only far less interesting than the other "donkeys" for example but also struggling with issues you d expect to see in a coming of age story rather than something about adults.
There s also an overreliance on "difference is good" and geniuses in her novel tend to come from statistically unlikely place( given that they re also more or less fortuously mixed into the plot). Also Kress' geniuses are
More like tv show savants, let us look at the Lizzie character: she acts and thinks like a 2 digit iq emotionally unstable teenager.. Except when she hacks into super secured computers with the equivalent of a screw driver. The two aforementioned points make Kress' "geniuses" look more like poorly designed deus ex machina devices, making it hardfor me to suspend disbelief
The Livers' speech I found to be extremely irritating. It s just redundant. Maybe if the repetition of pronouns at the end of sentences had some appreciable function.. But such an apparently useless idiomatic speech pattern seems unlikely to be found in every liver or not to just go away after a generation.
Kress also has a quite simplistic vision of the male psyche. Doctor jackson for example seem to be aroused by any female presence or the display of any flesh like some pavlovian lab rat. And her male characters are frankly lacking.
And to finish, the whole plot is based on how the supposedly superiorly intelligent Jennifer Sheriffi cannot get over herself and acts like a ridiculously single minded member of s.p.e.c.t.r.e.
Some of these recriminations are balanced by the desire of the author to display how a society without pains is lacking maturity, but i could think of less irritating ways to do it, and it doesn't explain why everybody seems afflicted with the same problem when the donkey condition is quite different from the Liver condition. The little prince is after all ignorant of the world and its people, yet likeable.
There s also an overreliance on "difference is good" and geniuses in her novel tend to come from statistically unlikely place( given that they re also more or less fortuously mixed into the plot). Also Kress' geniuses are
More like tv show savants, let us look at the Lizzie character: she acts and thinks like a 2 digit iq emotionally unstable teenager.. Except when she hacks into super secured computers with the equivalent of a screw driver. The two aforementioned points make Kress' "geniuses" look more like poorly designed deus ex machina devices, making it hardfor me to suspend disbelief
The Livers' speech I found to be extremely irritating. It s just redundant. Maybe if the repetition of pronouns at the end of sentences had some appreciable function.. But such an apparently useless idiomatic speech pattern seems unlikely to be found in every liver or not to just go away after a generation.
Kress also has a quite simplistic vision of the male psyche. Doctor jackson for example seem to be aroused by any female presence or the display of any flesh like some pavlovian lab rat. And her male characters are frankly lacking.
And to finish, the whole plot is based on how the supposedly superiorly intelligent Jennifer Sheriffi cannot get over herself and acts like a ridiculously single minded member of s.p.e.c.t.r.e.
Some of these recriminations are balanced by the desire of the author to display how a society without pains is lacking maturity, but i could think of less irritating ways to do it, and it doesn't explain why everybody seems afflicted with the same problem when the donkey condition is quite different from the Liver condition. The little prince is after all ignorant of the world and its people, yet likeable.
April 13, 2013
Most people on the planet have now been changed by a solution given out by the "Super Sleepless", the dynamics of the groups have once more changed, with the "Livers" no longer dependant on the "Donkeys". Unfortunately this has left the Livers homeless and cold, and now Lizzie's tribe is dependant on her in more ways than they could guess.
This trip into a futuristic world of genetic modifications and shifts in social structure are amazing, the imagination that has been used to make this, the third in the set of Sleepless books is awe- inspiring. It is also inspiring as we watch those that have nothing fight and try to take control of their lives, changing themselves in the process.
I listened to this as the audio book, and loved the reading, my Australian ears were happy with the accent used.
This trip into a futuristic world of genetic modifications and shifts in social structure are amazing, the imagination that has been used to make this, the third in the set of Sleepless books is awe- inspiring. It is also inspiring as we watch those that have nothing fight and try to take control of their lives, changing themselves in the process.
I listened to this as the audio book, and loved the reading, my Australian ears were happy with the accent used.
August 16, 2007
The third book in the "Beggars" trilogy. Another excellent read. Nancy Kress manages to maintain her complex society and characters, and provides some indirect social commentary on the nature of human excellence and empathy.
October 9, 2022
Per mi és un bon final de la trilogia, segueix amb idees molt interessants i que, almenys jo, he vist poc. Òbviament, té alguns detalls que no em convencen, però en conjunt queda compensat, estic molt feliç per haver llegit aquests llibres.
June 17, 2021
Bring the story almost full circle, yet to a new beginning with the possibility of a continuation of the series. Still the book lacks the excitement of the first.
May 10, 2013
Si tratta del terzo romanzo, che chiude il ciclo degli “Insonni“ iniziato con Mendicanti di Spagna in Urania 1315 e proseguito con Mendicanti e Superuomini in Urania 1341. In altre sedi avevo scritto dell’ottimo inizio del ciclo che, tutto sommato, ha mantenuto anche nei seguiti le aspettative. L’idea di base è che in seguito alle conoscenze di manipolazione genetica si riesca ad ottenere bambini migliori. Bambini che non hanno necessità di dormire, che quindi vivono 24 ore su 24, imparano 24 ore su 24 e di conseguenza sono più intelligenti degli altri, i cosidetti “Dormienti“. Questo ne fa una casta detestata, poi odiata, vista come minaccia anche perché essendo il processo di modificazione genica molto costoso, solo i ricchi potevano permetterselo per i propri figli. Figli che crescendo si sentono odiati, minacciati, a volte anche dai loro genitori o parenti stretti che non li comprendono e spesso arrivano a escluderli dalle loro vite. Un inizio che mi ha ricordato le premesse storiche dell’origine dei mutanti Marvel inventati da Stan Lee ed epigoni.
Qui inizialmente il superpotere è la maggiore intelligenza dei bambini, poi adolescenti ed adulti, già eredi di grandi fortune e spesso con buone intenzioni iniziali. Tra gli effetti collaterali, si scopre, vi è anche una longevità maggiore rispetto ai Dormienti. Un secolo di vita è normale anche senza l’aiuto della medicina e della genetica, per loro; resta un evento eccezionale per i Dormienti, sempre più poveri e dipendenti dall’avanzamento tecnologico degli Insonni. La scatola di Pandora della modificazione genetica, una volta aperta non può essere richiusa.
Gli Insonni diventano una elite che prende il comando economico degli USA e di buona parte del globo. Alcuni iniziano a credere, giustamente, che sia meglio eliminarli. Gli Insonni si creano un rifugio, prima sulla Terra, poi in orbita terrestre. Gli USA grazie alle tasse pagate dal Rifugio prosperano, e la gente perde gradualmente, grazie al benessere diffuso e non guadagnato, il senso del lavoro e dell’esistenza. Gli Insonni, poche centinaia di persone in tutto il mondo, in quanto i governi vietano in fretta quel tipo di modifiche geniche (ma ne approvano altre, di tipo estetico) nella loro enclave orbitale proseguono la sperimentazione e giungono alla creazione di una generazione, la terza, di Insonni che viene soprannominata in fretta “Superinsonni“ in quanto il loro QI è talmente alto da rappresentare un ulteriore balzo evolutivo. Questi nipoti sono di certo meno belli e aggraziati dei loro genitori e nonni, ma quello che riescono a fare è sconvolgente. Intanto tra loro comunicano più che verbalmente, grazie alla matematica. Sono quasi dei telepati, hanno un modo tutto loro di pensare che è diverso da quello degli Insonni di prima e seconda generazione, i loro nonni e genitori, almeno quanto gli Insonni hanno pensieri diversi dai Dormienti.
Quando il governo USA decide di aumentare la quota di tasse che il Rifugio dovrà pagare per sostenere la nazione, diventata una massa di Dormienti mantenuti dallo stato in quanto la necessità di lavoro è praticamente zero, vista l’automazione e l’avanzamento scientifico, scatta un tentativo di indipendenza. Il 94% di tassazione è insopportabile. I capi Insonni si preparano a scatenare un virus mortale e contagioso nelle 5 città più popolose degli USA se non otterranno l’indipendenza.
I Superinsonni, contrari a questa linea di pensiero che considerano disumana prima che criminale, tradiscono nonni e genitori e ne permettono l’arresto.
Qui termina il primo romanzo.
Nel seguito gli Insonni sono sempre isolati nel Rifugio orbitale, mentre i Super creano una nanotecnologia che permette loro di elevarsi al rango di quasi divinità, sebbene non vogliano esserlo. Mentre nonni e genitori volevano l’indipendenza ed il maggior distacco possibile dalla massa di diseredati Dormienti che oramai popola il mondo, i Super vogliono risolvere la situazione e creano il “Cambiamento“, ovvero un composto che permette alla gente che lo assume di diventare “autotrofi“ ovvero di nutrirsi, come le piante, di sole, acqua, terriccio. Inoltre ripulisce il DNA dai danni, e permette una guarigione rapida dalle ferite semplici e una immunità a praticamente qualsiasi patogeno biologico. A questo punto le caste sono diventate quattro: oltre ai Superinsonni che vogliono e credono di poter risolvere i problemi dell‘umanità ed agli Insonni che desiderano ancora la sicurezza e l’indipendenza, ci sono le due caste in cui i Dormienti si sono divisi. Ci sono i Muli ed i Vivi. I Muli sono il governo, modificati geneticamente per essere belli, intelligenti, lavoratori. Hanno e gestiscono il potere, le aziende (per lo più controllate dal Rifugio) tramite elezioni da parte di tutti i cittadini, il 90% dei quali Vivi. Questi sono la massa ignorante, diseredata, illusa ed imbecille. Sono coloro i quali si sono convinti nel tempo che il lavorare fosse cosa da inferiori, che in cambio del loro voto “i Muli, loro, ci avrebbero fatti vivere bene, a noi.“ Parlano sgrammaticato, spesso non sanno scrivere ne leggere e sono stati convinti di essere la vera elite nel giro di un paio di generazioni. L’azione dei Super ha successo, i Vivi diventano autotrofi ma non solo, le siringhe del Cambiamento vengono donate a chiunque le desideri. La società e l’economia mutano radicalmente una seconda volta nell’arco di un secolo. Però persistono problematiche di ogni tipo, lo scopo che i Super si prefiggevano è solo parzialmente raggiunto.
Nella conclusione, La Rivincita dei Mendicanti, i Super si sono ritirati ed isolati dal mondo convinti che il Cambiamento sia stato un grave errore. La regressione culturale e civile dei Vivi è totale, il potere dei Muli in buona parte controllati dal Rifugio, solo parzialmente intaccato. Le siringhe del Cambiamento non vengono più distribuite, I bambini che nascono, sia Muli sia Vivi, riprendono ad ammalarsi, a non guarire spontaneamente, a soffrire a fondo, a morire. Questo mentre le attese dei Vivi verso i Super erano di qualche altro prodotto che li portasse all’immortalità. Intanto i capi Insonni della rivolta di 30 anni prima vengono liberati, e si ritrovano con la loro ossessione: la sicurezza della loro gente e del Rifugio dalle minacce che continuano comunque ad arrivare o, in qualche modo, essi percepiscono che sia così. Contattano un genio Dormiente, ucraino, per modificare un virus che agisca sulle vie neurali prima di essere eliminato dal Cambiamento, in modo tale da provocare paura per qualsiasi novità. In pratica per ridurre l’umanità, Vivi e Muli, emotivamente in infanti che si aggrappano alle gonne delle madri per paura degli estranei. Come 30 anni prima, solo i loro nipoti Super potrebbero scoprirli e fermarli con la loro scienza superiore, quindi, scoperto il loro rifugio segreto, diverso dal rifugio ufficiale sulla Luna, li nuclearizzano. Uccidono i loro nipoti ed in qualche caso gli Insonni di seconda generazione che si unirono ai Super in quanto padri, ovvero i loro stessi figli. I Muli ed i Vivi rimasti non riescono ad arginare questa epidemia di paura delle novità che li attanaglia, ma prima che gli Insonni del Rifugio possano essere tranquilli, vengono traditi da chi ha creato il virus, che lancia un attacco nucleare contro di loro e li elimina.
Alla fine mentre l’umanità Dormiente cerca di riguadagnare la sanità, senza supertecnologia, senza Cambiamento, ricostruendo pian piano una dignità ed una società, a 7 anni dall’attacco nucleare che ha eliminato i Superinsonni un robot consegna pubblicamente un carico di spermatovoi ed ovuli fecondabili dei Super. L’umanità ha la possibilità di decidere se rivolere degli dei o meno.
Alla fine della trilogia, decisamente molto buona, mi sorgono alcune riflessioni. La prima è che questa trilogia parla principalmente di “evoluzione umana“. Sia essa “naturale“ o sia “artificiale“ segue i principi darwiniani dell’evoluzione. Una popolazione all’interno della specie sviluppa dei tratti biologici che la portano ad isolarsi ed a riprodursi endogamicamente in modo esclusivo. Compete con la popolazione madre per lo stesso habitat e le stesse risorse. Occupano, in pratica, la stessa nicchia ecologica. La teoria ci dice che la situazione è instabile e non può durare. Il romanzo, a certi tratti troppo gratuito con alcune scoperte scientifiche e tecniche, ci mostra come le due popolazioni della stessa specie, poi tre, poi quattro, si isolino fino a che eventi di qualche tipo non portino la situazione ad un collasso che può terminare in due soli modi: o le popolazioni evitano, in qualche modo, di sovrapporre le rispettive nicchie ecologiche e quindi evolvono da popolazioni diverse della stessa specie a sottospecie e specie diverse; oppure le popolazioni si estinguono lasciandone solo una o due. In questo caso la vera nicchia per cui competono è il potere e governo dell’umanità. I Muli, i Super e gli Insonni competono per il potere, ed alla fine i pochi Insonni eliminano gli ancor meno Super, mentre i Muli eliminano gli Insonni quando comprendono che i loro dei non potranno aiutarli contro quel virus che loro stessi hanno creato per mantenere sotto controllo i Vivi ma che, nelle loro intenzioni, non doveva essere usato contro di loro.
Restano i Vivi ed i Muli alla fine, i quali effettivamente occupano nicchie diverse, in parte sovrapposte in quanto il rapporto di semiparassitismo-semisimbiosi che i Vivi hanno sui Muli persiste. I Vivi e i Muli che non si accoppiano tra loro, trovandosi reciprocamente repellenti ed inferiori.
Altra riflessione è sull’uso che della tecnologia e scienza fa la Kress nella trilogia: per quanto in certi capitoli l’uso di un vocabolario tecnico sia buono, ciò che conta per lei è l’idea e chiede, al lettore, di sospendere molto l’incredulità. Non ci sono spiegazioni approfondite di come facciano a funzionare certe tecnologie, ma poiché servono all’autrice per portare la storia nella direzione che desidera, chiede di accettarle anche quando sono poco credibili perché violano alcune logiche del romanzo.
Ultima riflessione è sui personaggi: sono molti, ma non moltissimi. Sono ben gestiti fintanto che la Kress è interessata all’uso che deve farne di loro, e quando non servono più, se ne sbarazza molto in fretta, in genere per morte violenta, come accade spesso nella vita reale; e senza rimpianti da parte sua.
Qui inizialmente il superpotere è la maggiore intelligenza dei bambini, poi adolescenti ed adulti, già eredi di grandi fortune e spesso con buone intenzioni iniziali. Tra gli effetti collaterali, si scopre, vi è anche una longevità maggiore rispetto ai Dormienti. Un secolo di vita è normale anche senza l’aiuto della medicina e della genetica, per loro; resta un evento eccezionale per i Dormienti, sempre più poveri e dipendenti dall’avanzamento tecnologico degli Insonni. La scatola di Pandora della modificazione genetica, una volta aperta non può essere richiusa.
Gli Insonni diventano una elite che prende il comando economico degli USA e di buona parte del globo. Alcuni iniziano a credere, giustamente, che sia meglio eliminarli. Gli Insonni si creano un rifugio, prima sulla Terra, poi in orbita terrestre. Gli USA grazie alle tasse pagate dal Rifugio prosperano, e la gente perde gradualmente, grazie al benessere diffuso e non guadagnato, il senso del lavoro e dell’esistenza. Gli Insonni, poche centinaia di persone in tutto il mondo, in quanto i governi vietano in fretta quel tipo di modifiche geniche (ma ne approvano altre, di tipo estetico) nella loro enclave orbitale proseguono la sperimentazione e giungono alla creazione di una generazione, la terza, di Insonni che viene soprannominata in fretta “Superinsonni“ in quanto il loro QI è talmente alto da rappresentare un ulteriore balzo evolutivo. Questi nipoti sono di certo meno belli e aggraziati dei loro genitori e nonni, ma quello che riescono a fare è sconvolgente. Intanto tra loro comunicano più che verbalmente, grazie alla matematica. Sono quasi dei telepati, hanno un modo tutto loro di pensare che è diverso da quello degli Insonni di prima e seconda generazione, i loro nonni e genitori, almeno quanto gli Insonni hanno pensieri diversi dai Dormienti.
Quando il governo USA decide di aumentare la quota di tasse che il Rifugio dovrà pagare per sostenere la nazione, diventata una massa di Dormienti mantenuti dallo stato in quanto la necessità di lavoro è praticamente zero, vista l’automazione e l’avanzamento scientifico, scatta un tentativo di indipendenza. Il 94% di tassazione è insopportabile. I capi Insonni si preparano a scatenare un virus mortale e contagioso nelle 5 città più popolose degli USA se non otterranno l’indipendenza.
I Superinsonni, contrari a questa linea di pensiero che considerano disumana prima che criminale, tradiscono nonni e genitori e ne permettono l’arresto.
Qui termina il primo romanzo.
Nel seguito gli Insonni sono sempre isolati nel Rifugio orbitale, mentre i Super creano una nanotecnologia che permette loro di elevarsi al rango di quasi divinità, sebbene non vogliano esserlo. Mentre nonni e genitori volevano l’indipendenza ed il maggior distacco possibile dalla massa di diseredati Dormienti che oramai popola il mondo, i Super vogliono risolvere la situazione e creano il “Cambiamento“, ovvero un composto che permette alla gente che lo assume di diventare “autotrofi“ ovvero di nutrirsi, come le piante, di sole, acqua, terriccio. Inoltre ripulisce il DNA dai danni, e permette una guarigione rapida dalle ferite semplici e una immunità a praticamente qualsiasi patogeno biologico. A questo punto le caste sono diventate quattro: oltre ai Superinsonni che vogliono e credono di poter risolvere i problemi dell‘umanità ed agli Insonni che desiderano ancora la sicurezza e l’indipendenza, ci sono le due caste in cui i Dormienti si sono divisi. Ci sono i Muli ed i Vivi. I Muli sono il governo, modificati geneticamente per essere belli, intelligenti, lavoratori. Hanno e gestiscono il potere, le aziende (per lo più controllate dal Rifugio) tramite elezioni da parte di tutti i cittadini, il 90% dei quali Vivi. Questi sono la massa ignorante, diseredata, illusa ed imbecille. Sono coloro i quali si sono convinti nel tempo che il lavorare fosse cosa da inferiori, che in cambio del loro voto “i Muli, loro, ci avrebbero fatti vivere bene, a noi.“ Parlano sgrammaticato, spesso non sanno scrivere ne leggere e sono stati convinti di essere la vera elite nel giro di un paio di generazioni. L’azione dei Super ha successo, i Vivi diventano autotrofi ma non solo, le siringhe del Cambiamento vengono donate a chiunque le desideri. La società e l’economia mutano radicalmente una seconda volta nell’arco di un secolo. Però persistono problematiche di ogni tipo, lo scopo che i Super si prefiggevano è solo parzialmente raggiunto.
Nella conclusione, La Rivincita dei Mendicanti, i Super si sono ritirati ed isolati dal mondo convinti che il Cambiamento sia stato un grave errore. La regressione culturale e civile dei Vivi è totale, il potere dei Muli in buona parte controllati dal Rifugio, solo parzialmente intaccato. Le siringhe del Cambiamento non vengono più distribuite, I bambini che nascono, sia Muli sia Vivi, riprendono ad ammalarsi, a non guarire spontaneamente, a soffrire a fondo, a morire. Questo mentre le attese dei Vivi verso i Super erano di qualche altro prodotto che li portasse all’immortalità. Intanto i capi Insonni della rivolta di 30 anni prima vengono liberati, e si ritrovano con la loro ossessione: la sicurezza della loro gente e del Rifugio dalle minacce che continuano comunque ad arrivare o, in qualche modo, essi percepiscono che sia così. Contattano un genio Dormiente, ucraino, per modificare un virus che agisca sulle vie neurali prima di essere eliminato dal Cambiamento, in modo tale da provocare paura per qualsiasi novità. In pratica per ridurre l’umanità, Vivi e Muli, emotivamente in infanti che si aggrappano alle gonne delle madri per paura degli estranei. Come 30 anni prima, solo i loro nipoti Super potrebbero scoprirli e fermarli con la loro scienza superiore, quindi, scoperto il loro rifugio segreto, diverso dal rifugio ufficiale sulla Luna, li nuclearizzano. Uccidono i loro nipoti ed in qualche caso gli Insonni di seconda generazione che si unirono ai Super in quanto padri, ovvero i loro stessi figli. I Muli ed i Vivi rimasti non riescono ad arginare questa epidemia di paura delle novità che li attanaglia, ma prima che gli Insonni del Rifugio possano essere tranquilli, vengono traditi da chi ha creato il virus, che lancia un attacco nucleare contro di loro e li elimina.
Alla fine mentre l’umanità Dormiente cerca di riguadagnare la sanità, senza supertecnologia, senza Cambiamento, ricostruendo pian piano una dignità ed una società, a 7 anni dall’attacco nucleare che ha eliminato i Superinsonni un robot consegna pubblicamente un carico di spermatovoi ed ovuli fecondabili dei Super. L’umanità ha la possibilità di decidere se rivolere degli dei o meno.
Alla fine della trilogia, decisamente molto buona, mi sorgono alcune riflessioni. La prima è che questa trilogia parla principalmente di “evoluzione umana“. Sia essa “naturale“ o sia “artificiale“ segue i principi darwiniani dell’evoluzione. Una popolazione all’interno della specie sviluppa dei tratti biologici che la portano ad isolarsi ed a riprodursi endogamicamente in modo esclusivo. Compete con la popolazione madre per lo stesso habitat e le stesse risorse. Occupano, in pratica, la stessa nicchia ecologica. La teoria ci dice che la situazione è instabile e non può durare. Il romanzo, a certi tratti troppo gratuito con alcune scoperte scientifiche e tecniche, ci mostra come le due popolazioni della stessa specie, poi tre, poi quattro, si isolino fino a che eventi di qualche tipo non portino la situazione ad un collasso che può terminare in due soli modi: o le popolazioni evitano, in qualche modo, di sovrapporre le rispettive nicchie ecologiche e quindi evolvono da popolazioni diverse della stessa specie a sottospecie e specie diverse; oppure le popolazioni si estinguono lasciandone solo una o due. In questo caso la vera nicchia per cui competono è il potere e governo dell’umanità. I Muli, i Super e gli Insonni competono per il potere, ed alla fine i pochi Insonni eliminano gli ancor meno Super, mentre i Muli eliminano gli Insonni quando comprendono che i loro dei non potranno aiutarli contro quel virus che loro stessi hanno creato per mantenere sotto controllo i Vivi ma che, nelle loro intenzioni, non doveva essere usato contro di loro.
Restano i Vivi ed i Muli alla fine, i quali effettivamente occupano nicchie diverse, in parte sovrapposte in quanto il rapporto di semiparassitismo-semisimbiosi che i Vivi hanno sui Muli persiste. I Vivi e i Muli che non si accoppiano tra loro, trovandosi reciprocamente repellenti ed inferiori.
Altra riflessione è sull’uso che della tecnologia e scienza fa la Kress nella trilogia: per quanto in certi capitoli l’uso di un vocabolario tecnico sia buono, ciò che conta per lei è l’idea e chiede, al lettore, di sospendere molto l’incredulità. Non ci sono spiegazioni approfondite di come facciano a funzionare certe tecnologie, ma poiché servono all’autrice per portare la storia nella direzione che desidera, chiede di accettarle anche quando sono poco credibili perché violano alcune logiche del romanzo.
Ultima riflessione è sui personaggi: sono molti, ma non moltissimi. Sono ben gestiti fintanto che la Kress è interessata all’uso che deve farne di loro, e quando non servono più, se ne sbarazza molto in fretta, in genere per morte violenta, come accade spesso nella vita reale; e senza rimpianti da parte sua.
April 12, 2020
Recomiendo mucho la trilogía de Los mendigos. Es una obra fascinante, cada libro trata sobre un cambio genético que sacude por completo el tejido económico-social del mundo. Es una obra de plantear ideas, de mostrar su desarrollo y que dichas ideas permeen la mente del lector. Si te gusta la cifi humanista bien escrita, la especulación social y los personajes te dan un poco igual mientras la trama mole cantidad, esta es tu saga.
(Va a ser una reseña de la saga completa así que incluye spoilers de las tres entregas)
Centrándome más en esta tercera parte tengo que decir que me ha gustado mucho como tras el planteamiento dejado en el segundo libro de un mundo sin enfermedades y hambre es capaz de generar una sociedad en decadencia demostrando que los cambios nunca son para siempre.
Me gusta como habla del "genocidio consentido" de como dar para acomodar y luego quitar sin proponer alternativa es un crimen; me gusta como la frase «genocidio por inanición universal» casa perfectamente en la situación actual y como los países "más desarrollados" no solucionan los problemas de los menos desarrollados y expoliados por la colonización porque les sale más rentable mantener un sistema esclavista que tener humanidad.
Es un libro que también trata de las pandemias y como se desarrollan, el como se comportaría la población frente a una, si nos uniríamos o nos rechazaríamos. Habla de que los lazos humanos es lo único que nos mantiene cuando todo lo demás deja de tener sentido (el hambre y las enfermedades en este caso en particular).
Y también habla de los individuos y el colectivo, maneja una dualidad en la que nunca deja claro si cree que quien hace los cambios son personas determinadas o colectivos, de si ese cambio habría surgido más pronto que tarde por movimientos sociales o si sólo están motivados por individuos concretos que supieron estar en el lugar correcto en el momento perfecto.
Y tiene un final magnífico, es agridulce, es duro, pero sobre todo es esperanzador. La obra está cargada todo el rato de un tono de hastío, desesperación y suciedad; y pese a ello muestra que las cosas pueden cambiar, que siempre pueden ir a mejor, que lo importante no es ganar si no seguir luchando.
(Va a ser una reseña de la saga completa así que incluye spoilers de las tres entregas)
Centrándome más en esta tercera parte tengo que decir que me ha gustado mucho como tras el planteamiento dejado en el segundo libro de un mundo sin enfermedades y hambre es capaz de generar una sociedad en decadencia demostrando que los cambios nunca son para siempre.
Me gusta como habla del "genocidio consentido" de como dar para acomodar y luego quitar sin proponer alternativa es un crimen; me gusta como la frase «genocidio por inanición universal» casa perfectamente en la situación actual y como los países "más desarrollados" no solucionan los problemas de los menos desarrollados y expoliados por la colonización porque les sale más rentable mantener un sistema esclavista que tener humanidad.
Es un libro que también trata de las pandemias y como se desarrollan, el como se comportaría la población frente a una, si nos uniríamos o nos rechazaríamos. Habla de que los lazos humanos es lo único que nos mantiene cuando todo lo demás deja de tener sentido (el hambre y las enfermedades en este caso en particular).
Y también habla de los individuos y el colectivo, maneja una dualidad en la que nunca deja claro si cree que quien hace los cambios son personas determinadas o colectivos, de si ese cambio habría surgido más pronto que tarde por movimientos sociales o si sólo están motivados por individuos concretos que supieron estar en el lugar correcto en el momento perfecto.
Y tiene un final magnífico, es agridulce, es duro, pero sobre todo es esperanzador. La obra está cargada todo el rato de un tono de hastío, desesperación y suciedad; y pese a ello muestra que las cosas pueden cambiar, que siempre pueden ir a mejor, que lo importante no es ganar si no seguir luchando.
March 12, 2020
7/10 en 2007. Media de los 4 libros leídos de la autora: 7/10
Final de la trilogía de los Insomnes, lo leí inmediatamente después del segundo y me gustó un poco menos porque, a pesar de que la sociedad que plantea y la ambientación sigan siendo una gozada, da la sensación de que quiere acabar y lo hace como un poco atropellada, en un pis-pas lo liquida.
Por lo demás los personajes siguen enganchando y los dilemas sociales pues están bien. Qué consideramos humano, el poder sobre la tecnología, alteraciones genéticas, divisiones sociales por castas según humanos/posthumanos... todo eso que ya vimos en los anteriores lo liquida aquí.
Me gustaron algo más los anteriores, pero si los has leído obviamente lees este. Y no te vas a arrepentir.
Final de la trilogía de los Insomnes, lo leí inmediatamente después del segundo y me gustó un poco menos porque, a pesar de que la sociedad que plantea y la ambientación sigan siendo una gozada, da la sensación de que quiere acabar y lo hace como un poco atropellada, en un pis-pas lo liquida.
Por lo demás los personajes siguen enganchando y los dilemas sociales pues están bien. Qué consideramos humano, el poder sobre la tecnología, alteraciones genéticas, divisiones sociales por castas según humanos/posthumanos... todo eso que ya vimos en los anteriores lo liquida aquí.
Me gustaron algo más los anteriores, pero si los has leído obviamente lees este. Y no te vas a arrepentir.
June 6, 2021
This might be the worst of the three. And it still had that weird hold on me that made me read it in less than 10 days (after a month of not reading Rocannon's World).
But make no mistake, this is bad. Bad story, bad characters, bad politics, BAD MESSAGE ABOUT NEUROCHEMISTRY IN THE BRAIN.
Also, the incredible copout of the ending
But make no mistake, this is bad. Bad story, bad characters, bad politics, BAD MESSAGE ABOUT NEUROCHEMISTRY IN THE BRAIN.
Also, the incredible copout of the ending
May 10, 2024
At first, I thought this would be the weakest of the trilogy, but true to form, Ms. Kress transformed what at first appeared to be a divergent group of events and brought them together into a cohesive whole. My favorite book in the set remains the first one, Beggers in Spain, which looks at the impact on a family of having one child who is genetically engineered to be intellectually superior and the other normal. The second book and third books expand this perspective, encompassing society and the ramifications of growing resentments and divergences.
At first read on the recommendation of a friend, Nancy Kress rapidly became one of my favorite authors.
At first read on the recommendation of a friend, Nancy Kress rapidly became one of my favorite authors.
July 19, 2021
I enjoyed reading this novel and seeing the progression of the characters. However, the hero of this book was annoying to me - she was very self absorbed in her determination to feel the pain of life. Making her self revelation into the saving grace of humanity was a bit outlandish but a nice pulling together of themes by the author.
I recommend this series for its thoughtful look into the implications of gene modification without control.
I recommend this series for its thoughtful look into the implications of gene modification without control.
February 9, 2025
This is the final book in Kress’ Beggars trilogy and while it doesn’t reach the same heights of the first two books, it is a worthy addition. The story follows Lizzie and Vicki as they continue to struggle in the world of Livers. Miranda Sharifi is no longer supplying Change syringes so newborns are susceptible to disease. Lizzie decides to use her talents to initiate change that will help all Livers, but her activity alerts those who wish to control her kind.
February 2, 2024
The final instalment of the Sleepless trilogy, this is a very good continuation of the breakdown of society under an unpredictable change, and perhaps a cautionary tale about making sure you stay useful and at least partly self sufficient in the world.
Not as gripping as the first 2, but this is a very good finish to the series.
Not as gripping as the first 2, but this is a very good finish to the series.
July 25, 2017
This is a disappointing (to put it mildly) end to the trilogy. There are too many new characters, nonsensical turns for established characters, no closure for others I cared about, and ludicrous plot points to make it all work.
January 14, 2019
I think this was my favourite of the trilogy. I really liked Lizzie and Vicki in the last novel and Jackson was a great addition. And as the series went on there were fewer data drops and moral musings and more plot.
August 11, 2021
Decent ending to a triliogy. I was listening on audio, and didn't like the narrator that much... so it threw me off a bit. Story line not as good as the first or second..but concludes how you think it should.
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