In college, there were times when it felt like I didn't sleep. One semester, I averaged between 3 and 4 1/2 hours of sleep each weeknight. Between a more-than-full load of classes and a bunch of extra-curriculars, that's pretty much what I needed to do, and I functioned all right. Quite well, in fact. 
 But what if I hadn't needed to sleep at all? Such is the starting point for Nancy Kress's 1994 novel Beggars in Spain. In the near future, experiments in genetic engineering lead to a modification that allows human beings to be born who do not sleep. The so-called Sleepless not only don't need sleep and don't get tired, an additional side effect of the genetic engineering turns out to be that they don't get sick or age normally. 
 All of which makes them vastly superior to all the rest of us and, as a consequence, feared and hated. Beggars in Spain is a sprawling novel, spanning about 100 years, and in it Kress explores a number of themes. In the first place, she develops a number of interesting, varied, realistic characters, and explores a world of human feeling through their interactions. Naturally, too, genetic engineering is a theme of the novel, though not one that's explored all that deeply. Kress is more interested in the sociology and politics of difference, the ways that people treat other people based on differences. The novel asks why excellence should be so feared and hated in a society where the average standard of living is so high. It also examines the ways and the whys of discrimination and its varied psychological effects on both parties. 
 More, Kress is interested in economic relations. The main character, Leisha Camden, is raised as a disciple of the fictional businessman/inventor/philosopher Kenzo Yagai, which is essentially that each individual should strive for excellence and trade that excellence for its fair-market value. Kress based this position on the views of Ayn Rand, but although this is the starting-point for her characters, ultimately the position is developed throughout the work into something rather different. The title of the novel comes from a metaphor that one of the characters, Tony, who's later killed by "Sleepers" introduces in a conversation with Leisha: 
 "You walk down a street in a poor country like Spain and you see a beggar. Do you give him a dollar?" 
 "Probably." 
 "Why? He's trading you nothing. He has nothing to trade." 
 "I know. Out of kindness. Compassion." 
 "You see six beggars. Do you give them all a dollar?" 
 "Probably," said Leisha. 
 "You would. You see a hundred beggars and you haven't got Leisha Camden's money. Do you give them each a dollar?" 
 "No." 
 "Why not?" 
 Leisha reached for patience. Few people could make her want to cut off a comlink; Tony was one of them. "Too draining on my own resources. My life has first claim on the resources I earn." 
 ... 
 "What if you walk down a street in Spain and a hundred beggars each want a dollar and you say no and they have nothing to trade you but they're so rotten with anger about what you have that they knock you down and grab it and then beat you out of sheer envy and despair?" 
 Leisha didn't answer. 
 "Are you going to say that's not a human scenario, Leisha? That it never happens?" 
 "It happens," Leisha said evenly. "But not all that often." 
 "Bullshit. Read more history. Read more newspapers. But the point is: what do you owe the beggars then? What does a good Yagaiist who believes in mutually beneficial contracts do with people who have nothing to trade and can only take?" 
 "You're not--" 
 "What, Leisha? In the most objective terms you can manage, what do we owe the grasping and nonproductive needy?" 
 "What I said originally. Kindness. Compassion." 
 "Even if they don't trade it back? Why?" 
 "Because..." She stopped. 
 "Why? Why do law-abiding and productive human beings owe anything to those who neither produce very much nor abide by just laws? What philosophical or economic or spiritual justification is there for owing them anything? Be as honest as I know you are." 
 Leisha put her head between her knees. The question gaped beneath her, but she didn't try to evade it. "I don't know. I just know we do." 
 Ultimately, this is the issue that has to be resolved: a system based on individual excellence that still has a justification for compassion and kindness. Ultimately, Leisha finds that for herself, but I'd hate to give it away in case you want to read it for yourself. And there's more to it than that, too: we get some murder mystery and courtroom drama, we get some puzzles to solve and some world to be saved. 
 Really, it's a book worth reading. The only reason I couldn't give it five stars was that it seemed to bog down for a bit as the action slowed up. I understand why: Kress had characters and relationships that she had to develop in order for the whole plot to come together in the end. She did what she had to do, but it slowed us down just a bit too much. 
 Still, a very compelling novel of ideas and characters, an epic story well-told. This is the first of her work that I've read and I can't help but think that it shouldn't be the last.