The Dazzle of Day [Paperback]

Molly Gloss (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1998

A New York Times Notable Book

The Dazzle of Day is a brilliant and widely celebrated mixture of mainstream literary fiction and hard SF. Molly Gloss turns her attention to the frontiers of the future, when the people of our over-polluted planet Earth voyage out to the stars to settle new worlds, to survive unknown and unpredictable hardships, and to make new human homes. Specifically, it is a story about people who have grown up on a ship that is traveling to a new world, and about the society and culture that have evolved among them by the time they arrive at their new home planet.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Earth is ailing, and Quakers from various countries band together for a brave mission: build a self-sustaining spaceship, and travel to the stars to find another home. The Dazzle of Day chronicles the lives of people who grew up on the Dusty Miller and lived to see it reach its destination.

Spiritual, steady Kristina plays the middle note in Gloss's triadic exploration of the inner lives of women; Verano begins the journey from Earth, and Vintro's story comprises the finishing notes after the journey's end. Onboard the Dusty Miller, a depressive malaise spreads throughout the colonists, and Kristina's daughter-in-law Juko witnesses a suicide by a co-worker while mending the ship's solar sails. Other players include Juko's son Cejo, her quiet ex-husband Humberto, and her husband Bjoro, a scientist who visits the new planet's inhospitable surface and lives to bring back reports. The colonists, who've lived their entire lives on a small climate-controlled ship, must decide whether to adjust to life on the chilly planet, prepare to terraform a section on its surface, or continue on to search for a more suitable home.

Gloss's lyrical and leisurely prose describes the lives of the spacefarers: religion and politics, quarrels and friendships, love and despisal, illness and death. At times this science fiction feels homespun as the gentle but human Quakers strive for consensus in their community during a time of wrenching change.

From Library Journal

Gloss's second novel (following The Jump-Off Creek, LJ 7/89), and her first in the sf genre, explores a utopian theme. A group of Esperanto-speaking Quakers search for a new planet to colonize. Many generations and 175 years later, they arrive at their New World, a planet whose inhospitable climate causes them to debate staying in the safe cocoon of their ship. This is the story of generations intermarrying, getting along, fighting, and resolving differences in the Quaker way on a ship outfitted more like a pueblo than a tin can. These fascinating interactions in a biodome in the sky could just as well have taken place on an island. Highly recommended for sf collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st Trade Pbk. Ed edition (March 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031286437X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312864378
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #435,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

How I got started writing, etc., is a long story you can read on my website. But here are the highlights of my writing life: In 1996 I received a prestigious Whiting Writers Award--sort of a MacArthur grant in a minor key. But nobody knows what the heck it is, so how did it come to be prestigious?! Probably it's the substantial chunk of change they drop on your head without warning. ("Substantial" of course being a relative term. It's not MacArthur substantial. But we paid off our house!) The Jump-Off Creek is usually referred to as "a Pacific Northwest classic" and was winner of an Oregon Book Award and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Dazzle of Day, which is a science fiction novel, received the PEN West Fiction Prize and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fairly unusual for a science fiction novel to win a major PEN prize, but the Notable Book thing, not so much--it was Notable only within the ghetto of science fiction. Go figure. Wild Life, set in the woods and mountains of Washington State at the turn of the 20th century, won the James Tiptree Award for literary fantasy, although at the time I wrote it I didn't think I was writing anything fantastical. My newest, The Hearts of Horses, has been the most popular of any of my works. Not sure why. Is it that attention-grabbing cover? or "horses" in the title?!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, slow, hard to figure out?, March 3, 2002

By 

JeSuisse - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dazzle of Day (Hardcover)

This must be one of the more unconventional approaches to SF in general and generation ships in particular.

The story is slow-moving. We get into the heads of about five different viewpoint characters of different ages, sexes and professions, and stay with them for large parts of the book. In the end, I have a pretty good idea about life on the generation ship; how it works, how they reach decisions, what they eat, how they marry, how they date and how they simply live together. Nothing really exciting ever happens, it's a very calm, steady story.

This feels very different from most other SF I've read, where something *happens*. Here, I came away from the story with an understanding of life on the ship, but not much more. I don't know if there IS more to take from this book and I just haven't found it yet (that's what I suspect), or if that's actually what the story is about.

I liked the use of Esperanto names and phrases, it made for a nice background. The technological background seemed okay to me. It blended nicely into the general framework of the story.

Only four stars, because the ending left me musing over the story and what exactly it all meant, and I still haven't made up my mind.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thought provoking read, June 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dazzle of Day (Paperback)

It took me 3 tries over 2 years to get beyond page 50 -- but it was well worth the effort. Since I don't generally read SF, I initially had a hard time envisioning the future world that Gloss describes -- the sails, the ship, the neighborhoods, etc. Ultimately they were incidental to the plot; this is a novel about the lives of people and the decisions they make.

Some readers have written that it's a "woman's" book. I think that's entirely off base. There are some central female characters but there are central male characters as well. I thought it was fascinating to learn about the Quakers, the dilemmas they faced, their interaction, their decision making processes, etc. It was a very very interesting book and throughly engrossing.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent read . . engrossing, April 19, 2006

By 

M. Kirkland "voracious book gobbler" (western Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dazzle of Day (Paperback)

I must enter a review to address the comments of other reviewers. First, I don't believe this novel was ever intended to be "typical SF". Molly Gloss writes about deeply rooted issues having to do with relationships and people's lives. Dazzle of Day turned out to be a most entertaining story because she explores the interaction of people in the face of crisis and challenge and she set it in a world well beyond the ordinary. The setting enhanced the personalities, the challenges and the gripping details for the reader. I found her descriptions of the ship, the agriculture, the homes, the people to be fascinating. Don't read this as a SF novel. Read it as an analysis of people facing fear, conflict and uncertainty. In short, people facing life.