Beggars In Spain: Sleepless 01 by Nancy Kress

From The Week of March 21, 2010

First published in 1991, this first in a trilogy from Nancy Kress, is a study in a modern odyssey which, while inventive in concept and operatic in scope, fails to find its full stride.

In the early 21st century, a wealthy magnate, obsessed by his own weakness, sets about the task of genetically engineering his unborn children with the stated goal of eliminating their need to sleep. And though his dream is realized beyond his wildest imaginings, the fateful experiment proves to have profound consequences for Earth when it is realized that the Sleepless, as the children of this experiment come to be called, are extraordinarily gifted children who, upon growing to adulthood, cease to age. The sleepless, numbering only in the thousands, begin to harness the economies of the world, out-performing regular humans to such a painful extent that, eventually, there is simply no need for most people to work anymore. The labor necessary for the functioning and advancement of society is not only lifted from the shoulders of humanity, but the Sleepless, in their superiority, essentially promise to take care of everyone else, putting their unmatched powers to the forwarding of society.

This is an intense and fascinating sociological novel which has clearly had a great deal of thought injected into its crafting. The characters are interesting, the dilemmas are ethically engaging, and the sense of tension between the sleepless and the humans keeps the reader connected to the plot. However, Ms. Kress has bitten off, here, far more than can be comfortably chewed. The novel spans about a century of human history. And though many of the characters are the same, thanks to their non-aging, too many formative events are skipped over in the interests of brevity. Clearly, Ms. Kress has written three or four distinct stories here and packaged them into one, but they fail to knit together in a satisfactory manner because some of the sections, particularly the early ones, are much stronger than the sections which come later. And so as the story moves farther away from what we know and onto highly speculative ground, it trades in its sociological potency for some pretty mundane, science-fiction tropes: the rise of the renegade faction of mutants who refuse to conform, the inflaming of anti-mutant sentiment among mainstream humanity, the formation of a renegade cult of mutants who remove themselves to orbit under the leadership of their quasi-religious and completely nutty leader... Sound familiar? What begins with both feet firmly planted in the tradition of speculative, social commentary disappointingly devolves into Star Wars. Just too jarring a transition in a single book.

The first half of Beggars in Spain is great work and I salute Ms. Kress for the thought she put into her project. But this work would have greatly benefited from being divided into three or four parts, with each part fleshed out to make a novel. This would have provided much needed continuity which was sorely lacking in this set up. (3/5 Stars)