Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

read by Cassandra Campbell

Beggars in Spain is Methuselah’s Children for the new millennium. 

If you don’t know what I mean by that, I forgive you. But also, I will have to ask you to bear with me while I try to explain myself. It’s a very specific reference, but also huge and dense with information that you kind of had to be there for (“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra,” anyone?). I’ll do my best, though. Here goes:

Methuselah’s Children is a Heinlein novel, one of his most sweeping and important. It is, of course, a massively ripping yarn. But moreover, it establishes two of the three major themes that characterize his body of work throughout his career and it sets the stage for his Future History stories. It tells us how the Howard Families got their start, and what effect that start, and the very existence of the Howards, had on the course of human history.

The short version: a wealthy man named Ira Howard has a genetic disorder that causes him to die of old age in his forties. Before he dies he decides, as his legacy, to increase human longevity. So he sets up a foundation that financially encourages folks with long-lived grandparents to have kids with each other. 

Within just a few generations, this scheme succeeds so wildly that the Howard Families, as they become known, live much longer than the folks around them. They start having to go on the lam, witness-protection-plan-style, because they don’t age like other folks and they don’t want to arouse envy or suspicion. They worry about the possibility of discrimination and even violence if ordinary people become aware of their advantages.

Eventually they do get outed, of course. And of course it turns out they were right to worry. Folks at large want to know what the “secret” to their longevity is and refuse to believe that there isn’t one, beyond good genes. The Howards race against time (and overreaching government) and manage a seat-of-their pants escape from Earth in a spaceship, and proceed to Have Adventures and Learn Lessons. 

A few years later they return to Earth—but due to Einsteinian time dilation, it’s been much longer than that back home. And the folks here, having been “cheated” of the “secret” to longevity, have had no recourse but to find it on their own—which they do, in the form of numerous therapies. 

Throw in a bunch of thinly-veiled (and sometimes buck nekkid) lectures on the benefits of eugenics and libertarianism, and you’ve got Methuselah’s Children in a nutshell.

Why is all of that so important? Well, to begin with, Heinlein wasn’t called “the dean of science fiction writers” for nothing. His writing career spanned five decades, during which he published 32 novels and 59 short stories in 16 collections (as well as numerous essays and a screenplay). His work has been adapted into numerous movies, TV series, and at least one board game, and his influence on other writers and on popular culture at large can’t be overstated. He invented the waldo, foresaw the Internet, coined the word “grok,” and gave comfort and encouragement to generations of free-love hippies and other sexual deviants.

And then there’s the Future History timeline. It’s just one of a sheaf of timelines in Heinlen’s World As Myth multiverse, but it’s the one nearly all of his early adult work is set in and, in my opinion, the vast majority of his most-important later work takes place there as well. (Sorry-not-sorry to any Heinlein scholars who disagree either about the timeline or the importance—and yes, there’s plenty of heartfelt and very vocal disagreement out there. That’s how important this guy’s work is.) 

Even outside of this timeline, Heinlein’s major themes of the excellence and longevity of humans being determined by eugenics and of the sacred importance of individual responsibility and the dignity of labor (slightly strange bedfellows when you think about it) are set up and thoroughly established here. The only major Heinleinian theme missing from this book is his rejection of contemporary sexual mores.

So then. We have a major work by a major author that lays out his major themes. How does it relate to Beggars in Spain, the book I’m actually reviewing here? Well:

Beggars begins in 2019 (which must have felt comfortably far in the future back in 1993 when it was written—or maybe 1991 or 1996, depending on how you count it) with a wealthy man strong-arming a geneticist into using a new and unproven genetic manipulation technique to give his as-yet-unconceived child the advantage of never having to sleep. He reasons that if his offspring doesn’t have to essentially waste 30% of its life being unconscious and therefore unproductive, that child will be able to accomplish 30% more than its peers. 

Why wouldn’t you buy that for your kid if you could, right? Lots of folks end up buying it for their kids. Thus begins the story of the Sleepless, a group of people who, in addition to the intended effect of never needing to sleep, also enjoy the side effects of an innately sunny disposition and—you guessed it—longevity. Plus whatever else their parents have paid to have them genetically predisposed toward, typically stuff like high intelligence and physical beauty. 

As these kids grow up, they become a group that is at once envied and reviled—discriminated against very openly, much like Jewish people in Europe in previous centuries, because they’re simultaneously seen as possessing unearned advantages and being not-quite-human. At the same time, the American economy is in a period of sunny prosperity, fueled by the invention of cold fusion technology called Y-energy by a man named Kenzo Yagai.  

Yagai is a fascinating figure, though we never spend any time with him in the book. His influence on the world isn’t limited to nearly-endless nearly-free energy and all that that implies. He’s also the founder and popularizer of a philosophy called Yagaiism, which emphasizes individual excellence and has its roots firmly in—you guessed it—libertarianism.

And so we have the two themes again, eugenics and (quasi-) libertarianism. But Kress doesn’t lecture us about them. Instead she explores them, in depth and with nuance. 

Through her characters’ eyes, we see the human effects of genetic manipulation combined with a philosophy that holds that the weak have no claim on the labor of the strong. We explore the meaning of community and the definition of humanity. We see all of this from the point of view of multiple sides and multiple generations. As a result, we ask ourselves interesting questions about them. Kress doesn’t shove the answers to these questions down our throats. But she gives us enough information to form some nuanced ideas, and start to ask questions of our own. Questions which apply to us here and now, in our current cultural, scientific, and political landscape.

Like the best literature, this is a book that can be read as lightly or deeply as you like. It can be enjoyed as an amusing walk through a plausible and interesting possible future, or an examination of what it does to a person to be “other than” or to be the one doing the “othering,” or the playing-out on a grand scale of a philosophical exercise. Whether you want to read for fun or to exercise your empathy or to sink your intellectual teeth into an intriguing idea, do read it.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

Narrated by Lloyd James

Oh boy. This was my first re-read of this book in at least a couple of decades. And—spoiler alert!—it is flawed.

I should start by saying a bit about my history with Heinlein. My first Heinlein book was Friday; I read that when I was about 15 or so, and I was instantly hooked. The plot grabbed me by the collar and roared along like a freight train, and I loved every moment of it. I also loved the self-assured competence of the plucky-yet-vulnerable protagonist, and I was super intrigued with the future and with the alternative relationship models the author presented.

So I began reading every Heinlein book I could get my hands on. When I began to have a hard time finding new ones, I re-read the old ones. (To this day, there are a handful of his “juveniles” that I’ve never gotten my mitts on.) A few—Friday, The Number of the Beast, The Door into Summer, I Will Fear No Evil, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, To Sail Beyond the Sunset—I read over and over and over again. They were deeply satisfying worlds to crawl into; they were my happy place.

Much as I loved these stories and uncritical as I was at that age, even then I knew they weren’t perfect. I got that his ideas about gun-toting and personal liberty—I didn’t know the word “libertarian” yet—worked out so well in his universe only because he was in charge of everything in it, and could conveniently ignore all the real-world reasons why we don’t actually want that kind of society. And his ideas about sex—some were great, even enlightened, but many were clearly misguided and a few were flat-out harmful if taken as advice for how to conduct one’s life.

And o lord did that man love a soap box. Politics, economics, gender roles—if he had an opinion on a subject (and o lord did he have a lot of opinions), he didn’t hesitate to climb up and hold forth, at great length. Don’t even get me started about his long lessons on engineering and ballistics.

Still. When you’re reading an otherwise excellent book, by an author for whom you have great affection, it’s easy to quickly scan through the boring or squicky bits and get back to the good stuff. And there’s so much good stuff there. The “dean of science fiction writers,” as he was often called, could write a ripping yarn like nobody else. He was spilling over with story ideas—a universe full of them—multiple universes, actually—and he knew a thing or two about how to make them compelling.

Fast forward to 2018. I was nosing through the science fiction audiobooks on Hoopla, trying to decide what to read next, when The Moon is a Harsh Mistress popped up.

This was never one of my favorites. I had found the narrator’s pseudo-Russian patois a little annoying, as well as his pretense of having no political opinions. On the other hand, the book covers an interesting period in Luna’s history (in that particular timeline). As such, it gives important background for some of my favorite plot lines in other books. (Cameo by a very young Hazel Stone, anyone?) Also, I’ve always loved his stories featuring artificial intelligences.

So I decided to go ahead and download it. I listened to the first chapter or so on my own, and found the accent of the narrator even more annoying when read out loud than when printed on the page. It wasn’t so annoying that I couldn’t fall under the spell of the story, though. The next day I had a long car ride with my 14-year-old, and I asked if they would mind if we listened. They did not mind.

Almost immediately I had to stop the story to explain stuff to my kid. First, of course, was the basic setup—where the story takes place, and at what point in its history, and who Mike was (Mycroft Holmes, the first self-aware computer and the centralized administrator of way too many civic functions). Then mention was made of the main character’s line marriage, which my kid wondered about, so I paused the story to briefly explain the various sorts of marriage described in the book.

Then came a heaping pile of condescension toward Wyoming Knott, a female character who was putatively admirable, and I had to stop again.

Women’s place in Heinlein’s Luna… ugh, what a can of worms. I think he means to be generous and respectful toward women, in his way. But...

So, basically, Luna is a penal colony (much like Australia back in the day), and the male-to-female ratio is heavily skewed in favor of males. And there are no laws, as such; only the Authority’s rules. The way this plays out is that women’s sexual agency is considered sacred, and all decisions about marriage and divorce are theirs to make. Men universally band together to defend women's right to make these decisions, though it's so ingrained in the culture that it only needs to be defended against outsiders and "new chums."

Good as far as it goes (though why they should have to be underrepresented in the population in order for this to be the case is a fair question). However, the way men show “respect” to women is to howl, snap, and wolf whistle instead of, say, shaking hands. Whether this “respect” is paid to women past a certain age, or who present as butch, or are otherwise sexually unappealing or unavailable to a given man, isn’t mentioned—but it seems clear from context that women’s status is firmly based on their sexual availability and desirability in a situation of scarcity. And it’s unambiguously clear that women who choose to sell their sexual favors are considered to have the right to do so—but are also looked down upon as flighty, at best.

Wyoming Knott—Wyoh—is presented as intelligent, a beauty, and a political leader. She is simultaneously presented as a charming little fluff-head whose misapprehensions about politics are to be gently but firmly corrected. Oh, and whenever she does anything unusually admirable, she’s praised for being almost like a man. It’s not just that she’s imperfect; it’s that her imperfections are cute little specifically-female qualities that add up to there being no need to take her seriously. (That Mannie and the Prof take her as seriously as they do is clearly meant to be taken as admirable gallantry on their part.) Women are supposedly treated extra well in Luna because they are scarce—but they are treated like a scarce commodity, not fully human.

So I told my kid, awkwardly, that Heinlein had a lot of strange ideas about women, and that he was, in lots of ways, ahead of his time, but in other ways he was very much a man of his time. And, my kid being 14 years old, I left it at that. They are, after all, able to ask their own questions if they have any. We listened. We didn't get as far as any of his numerous instances of casual racism thinly disguised as admiration, so we didn't have to have that conversation. Not that that isn't a good and important conversation to have with your kids, and not that I haven't had it before and won't have it again—but just then I wanted to hear a story, not give a series of lessons.

And it’s an engaging story. It is. It's about a lonely computer, a revolution, and an engineer pulled into it for friendship’s sake. One character, Professor Bernardo de la Paz, is clearly a stand-in for the author, and he’s a charming old coot in his way. This book is definitely worthwhile—it won a Hugo award in its day—though I probably wouldn’t recommend it as an introduction to Heinlein.

Verdict: read it, but with a very large grain of salt.