Customer Reviews

Dayworld (Dayworld Trilogy, I)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Dayworld is Earth in the future. World leaders have instituted a new way of living to solve overpopulation. The days of the week exist as alternate realities. Each day has it's own police, firemen, government officials, doctors and people. Most people share thier homes with seven other people, couples or families though never see each other. The 'stoning' device allows all this to be possible. A person or object may be placed in suspended animation for any ammount of time, then reactivated at the desired time. So, a person who lives on Monday would enter thier stoning chaimber before midnight, and then be reactivated the next Monday at midnight with no perception of the time that had passed.

However, a secret society, the 'Immers' is working against the government to allow people to live all the days, and to have freedom and democracy. They employ 'daybreakers' in thier fold who commit one of the ultimate felonies to bring messages to agents who exist in the different days. Jeff is one of these. He has divided his personality into seven distinct personalities, one for each day as a controlled skitzophrania. But, events which threaten him and his society cause his personalities to come crashing together and may threaten to destroy him and the Immers.

Overall, a good book. The charachterization was good, though not as in depth as it could have been. And, it seems from this book and others of Farmers books I've read he doesn't write strong female charachters to take stronger roles.

i read this book several months ago and it has really stuck. the concept of the book is simple enough, but the author really exploits the societal ramifications his world creates. it is difficult to locate the books in the series since most are out of print. let me know if any of the books are available.

Unfortunately, PJF's story in Dayworld can't live up to the concept of the world itself. The book is poorly paced, and while the various personae are interesting, none held my interest for even their stint as central figure.

The book tells a story about a criminal who wants only the freedom to live all the days of his life instead of being subjected to one day of the week. The only way he can do this, is to fight for it...

Here is a nice solution to the population explosion problem. In each day of the week only 1/7 of the population will live. But what heppens when someone want to live out of his day ? If U want to do a day-brake, then you need difrent identity in each day. Can anyone be 7 difrent peoples at once ?

This book is absolutely awsome. It made me enjoy every single single page I read, and I actually read it twice. Why living everybody on the same days at the same time? Here is a nice solution to the population explosion problem. In each day of the week only 1/7 of the population will live. But what heppens when someone want to live out of his day ? If U want to do a day-brake, then you need difrent identity in each day. Can anyone be 7 difrent peoples at once ? I guess so, I suggest to read this book, though.
Read it, it's fun.
Read it, it's very smart.

...He showered and put on a white sheer blouse, an orange waistband, a removable white neck-ruff, and an emerald-green kilt. When Ozma came in, he had her paint his legs yellow. His curled-toe ankle-high shoes were crimson. After they ate, he put on some lipstick and selected a wide-brimmed hat with a high conical top sporting a crimson artifical feather...

It's hard to take a book seriously when reading a paragraph like that. Since I have many other books in my library, I'm putting this one down. Maybe I'll give it a look later on but as for right now I have other books that are far more compelling and less... dumb.

Oh, and another knock on the book... he uses women's names on men and vice versa. I'm not talking about the ones we are used to in real life, I'm talking, say, Victoria for a man or Matthew for a woman. There was no real reason for this and it made the book that much more confusing. Maybe if there was some real reason or plot to that idea but there wasn't. Just made things harder to read.

I would however highly recommend the Riverworld series... the sheer concept of that one is amazing. Farmer is another one of those authors whom I find one book to be very good, and another just awful. John Wyndham was the same way for me.

Philip Jose Farmer wrote the first short story of this concept in 1972. I'm surmising that he had to shelve the concept to pursue his popular and award winning Riverworld series (which is highly recommended). After he wrapped up that series in the early 80's, he could then pursue the Dayworld series after a 13 year hiatus. However, in the science fiction world, writing about overpopulation became passe. No, it wasn't because the threat of overpopulation was over, it was because Liberals in the 70's who bitterly opposed it, discovered that non-liberals and even Republicans were also concerned about overpopulation. If that was the case then there had to be something wrong with being concerned about it. Sure enough, the doctrine is not to complain about overpopulation, not because in places like Europe the population growth is at zero or even decreasing. It's in 3rd world countries where the greatest population growth is occurring and complaining about overpopulation is considered interfering with their internal affairs. The fact that overpopulation hasn't really changed much since the 70's doesn't matter. So with Farmer writing about overpopulation in the 80's was certainly not going to claim him any recognition let alone any awards. And it's a cycle, as interest in an author's book decreases, the authors own interest decreases. That can certainly be seen in this series, as the quality plummets through the three books.

The concept is certainly interesting. Due to supposed overpopulation, the `government' puts into suspended hibernation (or `stones' as in called in the story (haha what a great 70's term man) everyone and unstones them one day out of the week. So only one-seventh of the population is active on any given day. This leads to seven different societies, each with it's own fads and fashions. Our protagonist becomes a `daybreaker' that is, he lives every day of the week. This leads him to the necessity of leading seven different lives. Why does he do so, well, this is kind of the point of the story, and is it's weakest aspect. Farmer has a great concept here, but your imagination of what this type of world is like, if you're a science fiction reader, will be more interesting than the story-line itself. This basically means that reading this book, let alone the series is unnecessary. This is no knock on Farmer, who is a great and interesting writer. However, if you loved the Riverworld series and just have to read more by Farmer, I guess this is the place. But consider only the first Dayworld novel; even a Farmer fan is going to find the other books in the series hard to digest.