The Vine: November 7, 2008
Submitted by Sarah D. Bunting on November 7, 2008 – 1:35 PM24 Comments
Hi Sars,
I read a science fiction book in my teens in the nineties, and I can’t remember the title.
It was about people genetically engineering their kids to not ever need sleep.For example, when they were babies, the parents needed round-the-clock nannies because they were dealing with a baby that never napped or slept.
Anyways, these kids grew up and finished school way early and were at the top of all their classes, and I think there was a backlash coming from the regular people because of the unfair advantage the non-sleepers had.
I can’t remember the whole story, but I remember really enjoying it, and I would like to read it again.
Does anyone recognize this book?
Desiree
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It sounds like Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress. She wrote a couple more in the Beggars series. I enjoyed those books as well.
Agreed. Nancy Kress. I likes the Beggars series to a point, and she has another series (Probability) that’s pretty decent as well.
Yes, it is Beggars in Spain. The sequels are Beggar’s Children and Beggar’s Ride.
Definitely Beggars in Spain.
Definitely the Nancy Kress Beggars in Spain – there were also several short stories that showed up in a few of the Years Best Science Fiction anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois.
It’s a series by Nancy Kress: “Beggars in Spain”, “Beggars & Choosers” and “Beggars Ride”
Definitely Beggars in Spain. Great book– the original novella won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Sadly, I didn’t like the others as much as BinS. The second book is still pretty good, but the third just veers away from the Sleepless altogether. Meh.
Sweet mother of crap, I’m glad I’ve never come across this book. I had two sleep-averse babies (hence the Mom + Zombie = Mombie) and the idea of babies who literally never sleep is just too horrific to consider.
Glad you found the title though, Desiree.
You guys are awesome. I’m heading to the library today!
@Chris – I hear you! I read “kids that don’t require sleep” and almost had a stroke. Who would want that? EVER? How would you get anything done if your kid never slept?
That said, the book sounds pretty interesting.
My first-born never slept. Well, she did sleep at night, and she did start to sleep through the night fairly young, but during the day? No sleeping. At all. Never napped. Not once. Not even kidding about this. I still relive almost daily conversations with my mother-in-law:
MIL: Did she take her nap today?
Me: No.
MIL: Dip your finger in some bourbon and let her suck your finger. She’ll nap, all right.
Me: *shudder*
How did I get anything done? I didn’t–until I remembered the Snugli that had been a baby shower gift. Baby girl still did not sleep but at least I had my hands free to fold laundry or read a book. Little one would just hang out, swadled to my chest, and stare up at me all day long. No fussing or crying, just silent, unblinking staring. I’m guessing that Kress birthed such a child and helped exorcise the horror by writing the Beggars books.
Yup, it’s Beggars in Spain. I love Nancy Kress, loved that whole series, even until the end. An Alien Light is my favorite by her though, not a series, a standalone.
The “Beggers in Spain” series got completely creepy by “Beggar’s Ride”. I haven’t been able to shake the mental image of a woman who made herself into a living Statue of Liberty.
Like everyone else says, Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress. I loved that book, and I think I read it about the same time you did. Not as fond of the others… still haven’t gotten to the third one because I didn’t make it through the second. But the first was brilliant.
As a note to the horrified mothers, though: as I remember, only the incredibly rich could afford to have the gene modification for their children to be Sleepless. They were the kind who could afford round-the-clock nannies and who wouldn’t be dealing directly with their children all day (and night).
Not ever sleeping means not dreaming, and as someone who has some very interesting and entertaining (and sometimes beautiful) dreams sometimes, that makes me very sad to imagine, actually.
As someone who has a multitude of nightmares, and never remembers the good dreams, it sounds kind of awesome to me. I can’t imagine how much that would screw up our brains, though- giving them no time for the subconsious to take over. Now I need to read the book just to see how the author handled that. Heh!
Now I want to read these books, if only to see how Kress handwaves around the toxic effects of sleep deprivation. The series kind of reminds me of another science fiction trilogy wherein most of a generation of children is modified so that they will never grow old. A similar kind of gulf opens between the immortal kids and their mortal contemporaries. (I’m thinking of the Earth Child trilogy by Sharon Webb, for those who’re interested – although it might be more YA than Kress’s books.)
@Lianne: If I remember right, the original twelve Sleepless weren’t all born to incredibly rich parents (although the *majority* were, yes); by the point they came around, designer babies were essentially the new I-Pod – so anyone who could scrape up the cash to tweak their kids’ genes in utero was doing so.
But the original twenty-one were done when the Sleepless modification was still experimental – so it was offered to anyone with the money and the willingness to subject their kid to something that might go horribly wrong. As a result, not all the parents were capable of hiring a fleet of nurses to care for the kid – so, unfortunately, only twenty of the kids grew up; the twenty-first was shaken to death by its mother, because it wouldn’t stop crying (I think it was implied that the baby in question was suffering from colic).
I don’t remember how Kress handwaved the effects of sleep deprivation, but however it worked, it also resulted in the Sleepless not aging; their bodies kept regenerating new cells for all their organs (although they still went through menopause – the effect only worked on cells that were encoded to make more of themselves; eggs aren’t encoded to do that).
Mombie, you beat me to it. That’s not a science fiction story, it’s a horror story.
Gah. Meant to change that completely from “original twelve” to “twenty-one” – according to Wikipedia, the first generation of Sleepless did only consist of 21 individuals. (Although I only *remember* there being twelve.)
Yeah, one of the side effects, and I believe it was unanticipated, was that the positive brain effects we only get in sleep occurred in the background throughout the day for the Sleepless, so they were actually happier and more well adjusted than normal people.
The whole idea of genetic modification is pretty cool, and Nancy Kress does it well, but what she does better than most science fiction writers, imo of course, is her characters. They all feel like real, complex, multi-dimensional people, and they’re really the focus of the story.
I can understand people being disappointed at where the story ends up in the rest of the trilogy. The original idea gets lost along the way, if the original idea is the idea of the Sleepless. After rereading the series several times, I really think the overall theme is what do the powerful owe to the powerless? If looked at that way, instead of losing the original theme, each book builds and expands upon it.
Ooooh! I loved this book and was excited to jump in and save the day by knowing the title, only to find, of course, that 20-odd people had beaten me to it. C’est la vie. But I’m still excited that others out there remember it.
Almost more than the Sleepless themselves, a lot of what I remember about the book (and to a lesser degree the rest of the series — I know I read them all but I don’t remember much about them beyond the first one, which I guess I must have read a couple of times) is the divide, not between the Sleepless and the sleepers but between the “genemods” and the non-genemods. There basically developed this underclass of unattractive, not especially intelligent, ordinary people who couldn’t afford genemods, and of course the people who could afford them could literally buy for their progeny smarts, beauty, height, good health, etc. It was scary, and it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched (I mean, the upper class can practically do that now, without genetic modification). I think in the books the “sleepless” genemod was outlawed fairly quickly, but the other ones weren’t.
I did think the idea that it turns out that sleeping is a caveman leftover and that getting rid of it makes you smarter and never-aging was a bit convenient, but I bought it because it was the big leap the rest of the book required, and beyond that I thought she did a pretty realistic job.
I also liked her book [i]Brainrose[/i], in which a bunch of people undergo surgery to allow them to remember their past lives.
I have only read a short story version of this in a collection of Kress’ stories called “Beaker’s Dozen.” I’m intrigued by the idea of there being more of them!