Classic Sci-Fi Meetup- Beggars in Spain

For January's convocation of the Classic Sci-Fi Book Group, we discussed "Beggars in Spain", the 1993 novel by Nancy Kress (expanded from the novella of the same name).

"Beggars" takes place over about a hundred years, and follows the societal changes arising from genetic engineering of the human race. The biggest split comes to be between baseline humans and "Sleepless", the latter of whom have a complicated hack that allows them to live without ever needing to sleep. Besides the extra productivity this affords them, they have many other direct and indirect advantages over baseline humanity--most of them come from the upper class, who also paid to have their children's bodies and minds improved, and it also turns out that the Sleepless modification has unexpected side effects including lack of mental disease and extreme longevity.

While the surface tension in the book is thus of the hatred engendered by a superior minority, the deeper themes are sociopolitical, revolving around an Ayn Rand-like philosophy and a more communitarian one. An unusually good book to discuss. Spoilers below:

Chi-SF: Seveneves

For September's meeting, the Chicago Speculative Fiction Community met up to discuss Neal Stephenson's newest: his 2015 novel "Seveneves".

"Seveneves" is Stephenson's hardest and most classically science fictional story to date; the first half of the book is survival-oriented, space-tech heavy, and has a thriller-ish page-flipping quality; the last section is a far-future tale that reminded us a bit of an updated golden age SF adventure, like something by Heinlein or Anderson or the like.

General consensus was that this is a smashingly good book, easily one of the best SF novels of recent years, at least.

So this isn't a spoiler, because it happens in the first sentence: THE MOON BLOWS UP! More substantial spoilers, and a really good discussion, after the jump: