Beggars in Spain

Preface

Beggars in Spain was first published in 1993, but its history began long before that. It began in my childhood, somewhere back in the Dark Ages of the 1950s.

Different writers write for very different reasons, including but not limited to the classic Hemingway quartet of “fame, glory, money, and the love of women” (or of whomever). Hemingway missed a few motivations, however, including “envy.” Being a person who needs a lot of sleep, I have always envied those who do not. In childhood, I missed all the best parts of sleepovers. In adolescence, I was asleep for those slumber-party phone calls to cute boys. As an adult, I could not stay up till 2:00 A.M. balancing work, toddlers, laundry, and social life. By needing so much sleep, I figure I have lived about two hours less per day than my peers, for about fifty years. That adds up to about four lost years and a lot of envy.

So I created people who never need to sleep at all. Take that, metabolism! Vicarious triumph through the power of imagination!

The first time I created the Sleepless was in a dreadful short story written in 1977. Sleeplessness was a spontaneous genetic mutation, and the characters were isolated mountaineers. The story was rejected by every editor in the business (Robert Silverberg, who changed editorial positions while I was cycling through the available markets, rejected it twice). Even I, fledgling writer with no ability to objectively evaluate my own stuff, could see that this story was not going to sell. I retired the manuscript.

Five years later I tried again. This time sleeplessness was a deliberate genetic mutation, created by a rogue mad scientist-type who eventually kills himself. Melodrama and nihilism. Again everybody rejected the story.

By 1990 I was ready to try a third time; envy was still operating strongly. But this time, my circumstances had changed. I had just become a full-time writer. My children were adolescents, and adolescent characters were much on my mind. And I was finally interested in exploring how science actually works (no more rogue mad scientists working in their basements).

The result was the novella version of Beggars in Spain, which won both the Nebula and the Hugo Awards. But I was nagged by the feeling that Leisha’s story had only begun. I wanted to explore the long-range economic effects of creating a favored class of people in a United States becoming increasingly polarized between rich and poor. I also wanted to work out my reactions to other writers’ philosophies: to Ayn Rand’s belief that no human being owes anything to any other except what is agreed to in a voluntary contract. To Ursula Le Guin’s belief, expressed in the wonderful novel The Dispossessed, that humankind could live without government if it lived without personal property. I didn’t believe Rand or Le Guin, but what did I believe? Like many greater authors, I wrote to find out.

In Beggars, sleeplessness is the result of altering a few genes in vitro. We still cannot do this reliably, but since 1990 we have moved a lot closer. Genetic engineering is becoming a reality, one that many people are not ready to acknowledge, let alone allow. But you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. We know how to manipulate the human genome and so, inevitably, we will. The two sequels to Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers and Beggars Ride, explore that issue in as much detail as I could invent. Even so, I didn’t come close to covering the excitement, the changes, the shock, and the controversy that genetic engineering will bring in the coming decades. I just wish that I could stick around for a hundred years or so to see it—and to write about it.

Another cause for envy. Some things just never change.

Nancy Kress

February 15, 2004