Text copyright 1995 by Dora Knez.
Dora is a Canadian writer and a graduate of Clarion 1995.
While it is a sequel, Choosers can be read independently of Beggars in Spain. In fact, the question that was central to the preceding novel does not occur explicitly in Choosers: what are the obligations of the wealthy toward the poor? Nevertheless, Choosers is to a great extent the description of a particular answer to this question.
Three characters tell the story of Beggars and Choosers: Diana Covington, Billy Washington, and Drew Arlen. Diana is a "donkey," genetically modified before birth to produce greater intelligence and beauty. She belongs to the new working class, the managers of the economy and of the state. Diana is moved by self-disgust to go undercover for the Genetics Standards Enforcement Agency, a kind of FBI, in order to find out what Miranda Sharifi, chief of the SuperSleepless, is up to.
Billy is a Liver (a member of the new leisure class) whose needs are provided for by the state (the donkeys) out of an economic surplus generated by the invention of a cheap energy source, Y-energy. Billy is old enough to remember the times before the present system, when the poor had to work hard for very little, yet he is slightly ambivalent about the new way of life.
Drew Arlen used to be a Liver, but is now an empathic performance artist and Miranda Sharifi's lover. He is at first co-opted into Miranda's plans, but has feelings of inadequacy in the face of Miranda's commitment to her secret project that ultimately undermine their relationship.
These three characters' stories are interwoven as the various segments of society, from the SuperSleepless to a military extremist group, maneuver to change the existing divisions of wealth and power in an economy that is already slowing down as a result of international competition in Y-energy production and industrial obsolescence at home. All three characters, as well as the bright Liver girl Lizzie, are drawn with Kress's usual subtle skill, which uses apparent contradictions to show up the deeper consistency of each character's beliefs and drives.
And yet, despite the fact that each character has moral choices to make for their own behavior, none of the three viewpoint characters are major players in this political and economic, fundamentally ideological struggle. Miranda Sharifi, the US government, and perhaps Hubble, leader of the military extremists, are the real players, the holders of power.
While we are given a certain amount of insight into the behavior of the two last, the debates and thought processes of Miranda and the other Supers are never revealed to us. This is, on the whole, a good thing: any specific description of thought processes that are substantially different from our own could not have failed to be disappointing. In fact, this bit of mystery heightens the reader's involvement in finding out the nature and the meaning of the choice that the Supers have made for humanity; in the end, the Supers' decision is completely intelligible within the novel, which is a satisfying conclusion.
Telling this big, idea-driven story from the viewpoints of those who were not the major decision-makers in it sets up a certain tension which is probably revelatory of our modern sense of powerlessness, of being caught up in events too large for individuals to control. The only individual in the novel who seems to have power is Miranda, who is, by definition, somewhat more than human, though perhaps still subject to certain human vicissitudes. The human counterpart to the power of the "super" individual, the novel implies in its conclusion, is the social contract, the rule of law that, no matter how battered, still attempts to ensure that every individual person receives his or her due. Despite its presentation of human frailty and weakness, therefore, and despite the way that one major human problem is solved for us by a not-quite-human agency, this novel expresses a sense of hope about our ability to build a good society.
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