I did read Beggars and Choosers, since I figured that would be the other half of the book we were discussing :)
I didn't really enjoy it - partly because I was trying to catch up with the couple hundred years that had passed, and figuring out what had gone on.
It was much more focused on the "regular" people and their lives - I found some of the world-building to be pretty interesting. The concept that unenhanced humans were *far* too important and busy to do the "menial" work of running the cities and countries - and so they left that to the Donkeys (sterile, enhanced humans).
But in reality, the unenhanced humans were all about bread and circuses and nobody was educated or felt the need for book learning. The system, of course, was collapsing (aided by terrorism) and so a lot of the novel was about the unenhanced people wondering why their lives were getting to be so *hard*
I did kind of like the "solution" from the enhanced super-brain people at the end though (I won't say it, in case you don't want to be spoiled )
So at the end, the world is falling apart, and there isn't enough food for everyone - so the super brainiac second-generation sleepless come up with a DNA-changing virus that they put into single-dose injectors and drop all over the country, along with instructions for everyone to inject themselves.
For some reason, everyone is super desperate and trusting, so they inject themselves with this weird black gunk - and in a couple of weeks a general transmission takes over the airwaves and the woman leading the Sleepless tries to dumb down the explanation of what they've done to everyone.
Basically they've genetically modified everyone who took the injection to become solar/earth powered. They don't have to eat food any more. They still can, for pleasure, but to fuel their bodies, every week or so they'll have an urge to take off all their clothes and go lay outside on the dirt in the sunshine.
Their skin will ingest any organic material and they'll absorb the sunlight for fuel. So then we have descriptions of how everyone wears natural fiber clothing and leather shoes and how over the next few months all their clothing gets "eaten" away by their own bodies. There's some discussion that within a generation or so, nobody will bother wearing clothing at all.
Overall it was an interesting book - my major issue with it was in my mind - because I read it immediately after Beggars in Spain, thinking it was the sequel, I kept waiting for more story about the first generation of Sleepless, and how they would be treated by society. Instead, I came into a book about how society had changed 200 years later, where enhancements had been legislated so that they could *not* be passed on to your children, and the original Sleepless were off doing their own thing in the background of the story.
I did read Beggars and Choosers, since I figured that would be the other half of the book we were discussing :)
I didn't really enjoy it - partly because I was trying to catch up with the couple hundred years that had passed, and figuring out what had gone on.
It was much more focused on the "regular" people and their lives - I found some of the world-building to be pretty interesting. The concept that unenhanced humans were *far* too important and busy to do the "menial" work of running the cities and countries - and so they left that to the Donkeys (sterile, enhanced humans).
But in reality, the unenhanced humans were all about bread and circuses and nobody was educated or felt the need for book learning. The system, of course, was collapsing (aided by terrorism) and so a lot of the novel was about the unenhanced people wondering why their lives were getting to be so *hard*
I did kind of like the "solution" from the enhanced super-brain people at the end though (I won't say it, in case you don't want to be spoiled )
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So at the end, the world is falling apart, and there isn't enough food for everyone - so the super brainiac second-generation sleepless come up with a DNA-changing virus that they put into single-dose injectors and drop all over the country, along with instructions for everyone to inject themselves.
For some reason, everyone is super desperate and trusting, so they inject themselves with this weird black gunk - and in a couple of weeks a general transmission takes over the airwaves and the woman leading the Sleepless tries to dumb down the explanation of what they've done to everyone.
Basically they've genetically modified everyone who took the injection to become solar/earth powered. They don't have to eat food any more. They still can, for pleasure, but to fuel their bodies, every week or so they'll have an urge to take off all their clothes and go lay outside on the dirt in the sunshine.
Their skin will ingest any organic material and they'll absorb the sunlight for fuel. So then we have descriptions of how everyone wears natural fiber clothing and leather shoes and how over the next few months all their clothing gets "eaten" away by their own bodies. There's some discussion that within a generation or so, nobody will bother wearing clothing at all.
Overall it was an interesting book - my major issue with it was in my mind - because I read it immediately after Beggars in Spain, thinking it was the sequel, I kept waiting for more story about the first generation of Sleepless, and how they would be treated by society. Instead, I came into a book about how society had changed 200 years later, where enhancements had been legislated so that they could *not* be passed on to your children, and the original Sleepless were off doing their own thing in the background of the story.
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It's doubtful I'll ever check out the rest of the trilogy. Aside from a short story or two, Nancy Kress hasn't clicked with me fictionally.
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