Beggars and Choosers (1994)
By Nancy Kress
Evolution; Genetic discrimination; Genetic engineering; Legislation; Science fiction; Speciation
Beggars and Choosers, an “independent sequel” to Kress’s Beggars in Spain , traces the interlocking stories of three main characters—a Donkey, a Liver, and a Liver-Sleepless hybrid working with the SuperSleepless—in the year 2114, thirteen years after the action of the first book.
The SuperSleepless, a group of genetically modified humans with even more cognitive power than the original generation Sleepless (neither group needs sleep), have left their orbital Sanctuary to live on Huevos Verdes, an island they created off the coast of Mexico using their own advanced nanotechnology. Here, with Miranda Shirifi as their leader, the twenty-seven Supers secretly create new genetic technology to better the human race, safe from the government jurisdiction of the Genetic Standard Enforcement Agency (GSEA). But when the Supers create the Cell Cleaner, a technology that will cure all disease and injury in the human race, the United States Government rejects it. The first of the three narrators, Diana Covington, a “donkey,”—a human with genetic modifications to enhance appearance and intellect—is hired as a special agent for the GSEA and tasked with finding Miranda to bring her to justice for genetic engineering “crimes.” Her quest leads her to East Oleanta, a rural Liver community. Livers are normal humans who have not been genetically modified and who now live a work-free existence, depending on the donkeys who govern/serve them by providing food cafés, warehouses that distribute necessities once a week, and robots who act as civil and domestic servants. In East Oleanta, Diana meets Billy Washington, another narrator in the novel. Billy and his friends, Annie and her precocious, bright daughter Lizzie, are suffering because the machines that sustain them are breaking down and the elected donkey officials are slow to fix them. Diana begins to suspect that a SuperSleepless enclave called Eden, hidden in the area, is responsible for releasing duragem dissemblers, a virus engineered to destroy machines and bring the Liver race to extinction. But Billy, who has met Miranda and been shown Eden unbeknownst to Diana, does not believe the Supers have bad intentions. Meanwhile, Drew Arlen, a Liver made into a unique Liver-Sleepless hybrid by the most famous Sleepless Leisha Camden and now known as the Lucid Dreamer, is working with Huevos Verdes when he is captured by a group of rebel Livers who murder Leisha after their plane crashes. Taken to the underground camp of the Francis Marmion Freedom Fighters, Drew learns that it is this group of anti-genetic modification fighters who are releasing the duragem dissemblers which are destroying the machines, and in turn society. Drew, aware of Miranda’s plans for humanity (the two are lovers), decides to contact the GSEA instead of the Supers with his information about the Liver rebels. Back in East Oleanta, when Lizzie becomes mortally ill due to exposure to one of the rebels’ genetically modified creatures, Billy decides he has no choice but to take Lizzie, Annie, and Diana—who has been continually searching for the hidden Super outpost—to Eden in the hopes that Miranda will cure Lizzie using the Cell Cleaner. Miranda injects all four of them with a formula before she is captured by the GSEA, led by Drew. At the end of the novel, with Miranda in prison, Diana, Billy and the others realize they have been injected with something more than the Cell Cleaner, something which the Supers are covertly distributing to donkeys and Livers world-wide. The Supers have created a way to alter human DNA so that people need not rely on food but can get their nutrition from the earth and sun in a manner similar to that of plants. This causes a revolution of sorts in that the Livers no longer have to depend on the donkeys. The novel ends with humanity in the throes of this great transition into an entirely different type of species.
Like the first novel in Kress’s trilogy, Beggars and Choosers depicts a future in which the human race has split into a number of distinct sub-species. The harmonious co-existence of the SuperSleepless, Sleepless, Donkeys, and Livers in society is tenuous at best as some groups try to aid humanity while others try to destroy those not like themselves. Kress creates a hierarchy that mirrors class systems and troubles our understanding of the commonality of humankind. In this novel, the distinctions and boundaries that separate the “Beggar” Livers from the “Chooser” SuperSleepless that will determine the fate of the human race is ever in question.
Evaluation: Kress’s use of the three narrators, each of a different sub-species of the human race, allows readers to fully understand not only each group’s concerns and motivations, but also the sources of the conflict and commonality between them. The novel’s pervasive, detailed focus on genetic engineering allows Kress to represent both positive and negative repercussions for such scientific advancement. The novel is sure to be a favorite among students as well as prove a productive catalyst for a variety of discussions regarding genetics.
– Lauren Wood Hoffer