Beggars Ride

by Nancy Kress

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812544749
• ISBN13: 9780812544749
• Release Date: December 1997
• Publisher: Tor Books
• Length: 406 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

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 O'Neill's LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. If in a century nanotechnology engulfs genetic engineering it appears the result shown in this book will be artificial life, not enriched life. Genius in this tale snuffs out both hope and free will. The Super sleepless had as much fear of innovation as the retarded sleepers. As both sides fought to retain the old and curtail the new, we are led to a total impasse. A snake swallowing its own tail. This series is quite an undertaking. The craft of writing is mastered, the suspense sustained to the end, and lots of learning was dispensed on how the brain parts work. The question that must have kept cropping up with Ms. Kress was, "What do I do for an encore?" This confrontation with biogenetic engineering took the reader as deeply into dystopia as is inhumanly possible. Some of the characters actually evolved right out of the human race to become the Sleepless Masters who fortunately, it turned out, had an Achilles heel. The Sleepless saw themselves as gods to the unevolved human. When their plan went up in smoke not a tear was shed by the reader. Why not? Because here was a story of sex without joy, intelligence like dead AI, and spirituality without god. The trilogy spanned over a hundred years but where were the holidays, where was Easter and Christmas? It was bleak, bleaker and bleakest.

Best of the Beggars series

I don't know what my fellow reviewers are smoking --this is definitely the best of the Beggars trilogy. Not that you can really read it apart from the rest of them; you really need all three to see how far Kress got with developing the Beggar-world, which started (in Beggars In Spain) like all good science fiction does, with a simple question: What if people didn't need to sleep anymore? And went on from there, sort of answering that question directly in BIS and more dealing with the ramifications of it in Beggars and Choosers and becoming more of an attempt to tap into the quasi-mystic Answering Big Questions vein of science fiction in Beggar's Ride. Her solution as I understand it is basically sort of a tempered enthusiasm for modern science: look outward, but don't forget to look inward as well. That's the best I can describe it without giving too much away. And I love the way how from book to book Kress has no problem moving on to new characters. The scientific denouement is at the end of BR is not the wow-shocker that concluded BIS and B & C, but I only enjoyed BR more for it, and for Kress's guts in not feeling like she had to blow up the Death Star to get her point across (though that happens too). Within the trilogy we go from a world from where some people can't sleep to one where everyone has to look within themselves for answers, and it's just amazing how we went from good honest hard SF to wonderful philosophical SF within these three books. The changes, and the way things changed, are amazing. Good good stuff.

Exciting, multi-faceted, Science fiction!

Wow! Kress is one helluva writer. The best sci-fi I have read in years. Complex, driven and unlike anything I have ever read before. She kept me guessing and that is extremely difficult to do. Bravo Ms. Kress!

A very good book with excellent characters.

Although the Beggars Trilogy has gone slightly downhill from the original Beggars in Spain, it has maintained far better than most multiple-book serials. Tremendous change, growth, and evolution as well as unexpected events, both positive and negative have been the trademarks of this series. Although this book isn't quite as exciting as its predecessors, it is unique and the best of the bunch when it comes to many of its characters. It is rare that I find a book that can paint characters nearly as well as this one.

A very insightfull, intriguing book

A very good book which shows an amazing insight into the human pysch. Overall, a very good read with a surprizing end