Dayworld Rebel (Dayworld Trilogy, II) [Mass Market Paperback]

Philip Jose Farmer (Author), Don Punchatz (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1988

Second book in the "Dayworld" trilogy, which also includes "Dayworld" (1985) and "Dayworld Breakup" (1990).

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The New Era, several thousand years in the future, seems a utopia. War, poverty, hunger and pollution are all obsolete. Overpopulation has been handled by dividing the population into seven groups, each fraction living one day a week while the others await in suspended animation. Farmer's Dayworld chronicled the life of a man whose unique abilities allowed him to assume a different identity for each day. As this sequel opens, he has been caught and is being questioned. Escaping from his Manhattan prison, he flees to the wilds of New Jersey, falling in with a rebel group hiding out in caves. Along with them, he journeys to Los Angeles and contacts a larger subversive organization bent on radical change. Although the image of a populace voluntarily entering temporary "coffins" is another of Farmer's striking mythic variations on civilization and its discontents, its fictional working out has the same mix of intrigue and illogic as the earlier novel.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 314 pages
• Publisher: Ace Books (January 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0441140025
• ISBN-13: 978-0441140022
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #439,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Second in Dayworld Series: 2-1/2 Stars, 314 pages, Publ 1987, May 14, 2006

By 

Antinomian (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dayworld Rebel (Dayworld Trilogy, II) (Hardcover)

Philip Jose Farmer wrote the first short story of this concept in 1972. This novel follows up on the first Dayworld novel. It is not as good. He hooks up with other daybreakers in the woods of New Jersey (somehow suburban sprawl hasn't made it to this overpopulated world, but then that's sort of the point of the plot, PLOT SPOILER AHEAD: the overpopulation is just a government hoax. The other is ANOTHER PLOT SPOILER AHEAD, is the government is holding back an elixir (actually a living entity, bacteria or something) that prolongs life by a factor of 7. So the `stoning' process is no longer needed; there's no overpopulation, and people can now live 7 times longer. It's not clear why the government is withholding this anti-aging element, but dayworld rebel's goal is to get it out to the people. If you've read this review this far, IMHO, this is just about all you need to know. To read the book, is just adding a lot of words to sift through for the same information. Unfortunately in this case, the joy is not in the ride in getting to the end of the book, or the series for that matter, but in getting to the end.

My recommendation if you've read this far, is that you now know all you need to know about Dayworld. Skip reading this novel, and if you have not already done so, progress to reading the authors Riverworld series, starting with To Your Scattered Bodies Go. It even won a Hugo award so you can't go too wrong there.

2.0 out of 5 stars Maybe for Young Adults but Disappointing for Adults, October 6, 2009

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Dayworld Rebel (Dayworld Trilogy, II) (Mass Market Paperback)

PJF is famous for his Riverworld series, and rightly so. It is one of the most original of all SciFic series and has both great detail and characterization. Keeping that in mind, this series (Dayworld) appears to be an afterthought by Farmer that he wrote as an exercise. The basis of the 'world situation' is that only one-seventh of the population is awake at anytime (each has their own 'Day') to save on resources. That makes the lifespan of the average eighty year old 570 years. But since life is so tightly controlled it doesn't matter.

There are few explanations as to how the government works and how the cities are supplied or how 'work' is determined. In other words, the society the Farmer has set-up has more holes in it than a road in Iraq. Because the background is so bare it's hard to care about the characters and their problems. Sadly, this is not an engaging series and though this is the second of the trilogy (usually the 'weak' sister) it does nothing to make you want to read the final book. Truly a waste of a great talent.

Zeb Kantrowitz

4.0 out of 5 stars Great follow-up to Dayworld, December 28, 2008

By 

Lynos - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dayworld Rebel (Dayworld Trilogy, II) (Mass Market Paperback)

Philip Jose Farmer's Dayworld Rebel takes the world created in Dayworld - A quasi-dystopia where the government forces the people to cryogenically freeze themselves for six days of the week in order to fight overpopulation and dwindling resources - and expands it.

The protagonist, called by many names in Dayworld and a few others here, is a daybreaker (meaning he doesn't "stone" himself and doesn't limit himself to living in one day). While in Dayworld we watched him work in the service of the subversive "Immers", here he is much more of a lone wolf. after being on the verge of a mental breakdown at the end of the first novel, here he escapes to the woods of New Jersey from the facility he was held in and joins a group of other colorful daybreakers.

The novel is more large in scope and byzantine than its predecessor, and it offers some very interesting ideas about interference of government in our lives and issues of privacy and identity. Also, where the first novel took place entirely in Manhattan, this one takes us to a very different Los Angeles, where most of its action takes place.

I first read Dayworld many years ago and only recently discovered that there were not one but two sequels - obviously much less popular than the original. Nevertheless, the Dayworld concept is genius and Dayworld Rebel does what a good sequel should do - expand its world and its themes and give us a similar yet different adventure. Recommended.