All The Tropes

Beggars in Spain: Difference between revisions

Page Discussion

Beggars in Spain (view source)

Revision as of 10:11, 8 January 2014

4 bytes added ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
(Import from TV Tropes TVT:Literature.BeggarsInSpain 2012-07-01, editor history TVTH:Literature.BeggarsInSpain, CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported license)
 
m (Mass update links)
Line 6:
A [[Cyberpunk]] novel by way of [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke]], the ''Beggars'' trilogy has a lot of technology in it, obviously; in addition to "genemods", as they're called, there's Cold Fusion, invented by a guy named Kenzo Yagai. He also invented Yagaiism, which Kress admits to having based on [[Useful Notes/Objectivism|Objectivism]]. The particular emphasis of Yagaiism is that all contact should be mutually beneficial: if you don't get anything out of helping someone, it's not just stupid but immoral to do so. Leisha, a devout Yagaiist, agrees with this idea... but isn't always able to square that away with the fact that, if she meets a [[Title Drop|beggar in Spain]], it would be just as wrong not to give him a dollar. Hmm. [[Does Not Compute]].
 
The other emphasis of the trilogy, the ''real'' emphasis, is prejudice. [[What Measure Is a Non -Human?]] Every single character in the series is asking this, and what's interesting is that every single character in the series has a different way of defining 'human.' To most people, the Sleepless—intelligent, overachieving, blessed with superb emotional stability—aren't human... especially when it's discovered that the Sleeplessness gene unlocks some sort of radical [[Healing Factor]], making the Sleepless functionally immortal. To the Sleepless, ''[[Muggles]]'' aren't human: not because they have to waste a third of their life in comatose nonproductivity, but because they prefer to [[Wangst]] and bask in the culture of entitlement rather than apply themselves. With [[Fantastic Racism]] flying in both directions, it isn't long before open hostilities and byzantine plans begin to sprout.
 
And then things go ''really'' [[Off the Rails]].
Line 20:
* [[Bio Augmentation]]: the Change syringes, full stop.
* [[Bread and Circuses]]: the entire post-Y-energy society functions this way. The Sleepless are the intellectuals, the "donkeys" are genemod [[Muggles]] and bureaucrats, and the "Livers" are the remaining 90%: the mental scrapheaps who are ''told'' they are the top of the pile because they get to live lives of "aristo leisure" with donkeys doing all the work for them.
* [[Brother -Sister Incest]]: Miri's regard for her brother Tony seems to be a bit more than familial. The exact motivations behind this are never explained, and in the end nothing actually happens between them.
* [[Control Freak]]: Roger Camden; Jennifer Sharifi
* [[Cool Old Guy]]: Billy Washington
Line 36:
* [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke]]
* [[Gone Horribly Wrong]]: the Change syringes.
* [[Good Lawyers, Good Clients]]: averted. The only client we ever see Leisha take on is a [[Spear Carrier]] for the local [[Batman Gambit]].
* [[Gundamjack]]: one of the big moves of the rebellion in the second book.
* [[Healing Factor]]
Line 50:
* [[Mama Bear]]: Jennifer Sharifi
** [[Knight Templar Parent]]
*** [[Protagonist -Centered Morality]]: a [[Deconstruction]] of the kind of person who would even ''think'' they have this.
* [[Manic Pixie Dream Girl]]: deconstructed in the person of Cazie Sanders.
* [[May -December Romance]]: amongst Sleepless, this can be common. Possibly justified by the lack of aging.
* [[Might Makes Right]]: one of the guiding principles of Sanctuary, when you get down to it. "We don't recognize that weakness has a moral claim on competency."
* [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness]]: Despite being [[Asimovs Three Kinds of Science Fiction|social sci-fi]], the first book of the series falls pretty squarely into Type 4: the feasibility of sleeplessness is the only departure from reality, though that does branch off into the functional-immortality stuff. Later books contain a soft singularity later, but it too is brought on by a spiraling cascade of consequences stemming from the sleeplessness genemod.
* [[Morally -Ambiguous Doctorate]]: not even discussed, just taken for granted. A big theme of the series is technology running away with itself, and a key measure of various characters is how willing they are to use whatever new tech has come along, regardless of whether their goals are beneficial or not.
* [[Muggle Born of Mages]]: six Sleepless marriages produce sleeping children during the 21st century, due to genetic regression to the mean. The five born on Sanctuary are [[All of the Other Reindeer|quietly done away with]].
* [[Nanomachines]]
* [[The Needs of the Many]]: Opposing this idea when they're considered the "few" is the guiding principle of Sanctuary. Of course, when they are the "many", they have no problem applying it to their own engineered offspring.
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: Drew Arlen's "The Warrior" concert, which Miri ordered him to create in order to combat societal breakdown, actually makes more people join the rebel conspiracy ''driving'' that breakdown.
* [[Older Than They Look]]: Sleepless stop aging physically in their 20s or 30s.
* [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]]: Sleepless; to a much larger extent, SuperSleepless.
Line 86:
* [[The Unfavourite]]: Alice.
* [[Uptight Loves Wild]]: Jackson Aranow and Cazie Sanders.
* [[The Virus]]: two kinds. One is for [[Kill 'Em All]] purposes, which Sanctuary uses in a ''[[Twenty Four]]''-terrorist-style plot; the other is to make everyone into a [[Hikikomori]] and is ''much'' more successful.
* [[Waif Prophet]]: Theresa
* [[Wham Line]]: "Do you know [[La Rochefoucauld (Creator)|La Rochefoucauld]] on superiority? '''Le vrai moyen d'être trompé c'est de se croire plus fin que les autres''.'" <ref>"The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others."</ref>
* [[What Happened to The Mouse?]]: a couple of prominent characters (Drew Arlen particularly, but Richard Keller as well) just disappear into the ether.
* [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters]]
 
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/480045"