Nancy Kress, one of the leading writers of science fiction today, has written a number of provocative and award-winning stories and novels. But it is with the Beggars trilogy that she has reached the pinnacle of her success. Developed out of her Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella, "Beggars in Spain," the trilogy was launched with Beggars in Spain(1993), also a Nebula nominee for best novel, and continued in Beggars and Choosers (1995). Both received widespread praise and unusual enthusiasm. Locus, for instance, referred to "the joy of reading a work of SF so intelligent, humane, involving, utterly genuine...magnificent," and went on to say, "It is Kress's brilliant achievement in Beggars and Choosers, that scientific progress and human idealism, the driving forces behind some of the best hard SF...,never leave behind the passionate muddle that is life...." Now the trilogy is completed in Beggars Ride, a compelling novel of science fiction that raises one of the most ambitious and large-scale works of the decade to the status of finished masterpiece. Kress, a writer who had been appropriately compared to H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley, deals with evolutionary forces, genetic engineering, technological progress, and social and class conflict, confronting enduring issues that face human society in this century and the next. The Sleepless and the SuperSleepless, two generations of genetically modified superhumans, are now in conflict with each other, and with the spectrum of normal humanity, whose radical division into the rich and poor has made a parody of democracy in the twenty-second century. Human civilization has been transformed. Now it may be destroyed. And if it falls, what kind of world is left, what kind of humanity? Nancy Kress has written a work of fiction that culminates and brings to new fruition the Wellsian strain of SF invented a century ago.
Nancy Kress ends her Beggars trilogy (which began with the novella later turned into a novel, Beggars in Spain) almost full circle from where it began. Against a backdrop where rich humans have themselves modified to perfection and poor, unmodified "Livers" eke out a nomadic existence, the genetically superior Sleepless have stopped distributing Change. Change is the miracle substance that prevents disease in all humans. In cutting off Change, the Sleepless have ignited a class war that will ultimately be resolved not by technology and science, but by the children of technology, who must live side-by-side despite their differences.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
it's not too nerdy, just good sci fi:
a sci fi book i borrowed from my friend. it's the last in a trilogy i did not read, but i was able to understand the jist of it. this is a future i actually could imagine, with those beautiful, drugged people being the ruling class. i found all of the characters very interesting, although the main guy was kinda dislikeable because he acted so weak half the time. very good book, you should read it.
Maybe I should have read the other two books?:
I picked up Beggar's Ride in a bookstore without noticing that it was book three of a trilogy. I'm usually a stickler for reading an author's books in the order they were written - even when they're unrelated. So, reading the third book in a trilogy without reading the first two is a stretch for me, but I did it. And, boy was I disappointed. In my experience, you don't read later books first because, in an effort to make sure the reader knows what is going on, authors tend to give away important plot... more info
Disappointing:
I loved Beggars in Spain and have read it and the sequel, Beggars and Choosers, many times. However, this novel is a bad ending to the trilogy, mainly perhaps because my favorite character, Leisha Camden, was killed off in the second novel. Most of the characters are two-dimensional and unlikable, except for Lizzy, a throwback genius Liver who is doomed to a welfare existence.
DYSTOPIA a la carte:
The Beggars Trilogy is a sordid tale depicting a drug addicted U.S. population a century into the future. The bio-engineered, genius tribe called the Sleepless decide to play god with the common man. They essentially turn man into plants. They used an injection of nanobots to grow a network embedded in man's skin- enabling him to feed from the soil as roots nourish a tree. Further, man's skin could also use photons like plants do in photosynthesis. How does that sound? The leitmotif reminds me of Eugene... more info
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