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Molly Gloss

The Dazzle of Day Paperback – March 15, 1998

by Molly Gloss (Author)

4.1 60 ratings

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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.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

March 15, 1998
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.59 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

031286437X
ISBN-13

978-0312864378
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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.

Review

“Carefully conceived and deeply affecting.” ―The New York Times

“The Dazzle of Day is a heartbreakingly good book...a rare dream of a book, passionate and lyric. The Dazzle of Day allows us to see our own world, our own present, more profoundly.” ―San Jose Mercury News

“This miraculous fusion of meticulous 'hard' science fiction with unsparing realism and keen psychology created a vast, bleak, beautiful vision of the human figure--a triumph of the imagination.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books; 1st Trade Pbk. Ed edition (March 15, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 031286437X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312864378
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.59 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,331,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,782 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #105,718 in American Literature (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 60 ratings

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Molly Gloss

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The highlights of my writing life: In 1996 I received a Whiting Writers Award, which is sort of a MacArthur grant in a minor key. People told me the Whiting was a prestigious award but hardly anyone knows what the heck it is, so I wonder how it came to be prestigious?! Probably from 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, about a woman homesteading in the Blue Mountains of Oregon in 1895, 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, my only 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. Wild Life, set in the woods and mountains of Washington State at the turn of the 20th century, won the James Tiptree Jr. Award for literary fantasy, although at the time I wrote it I didn't think I was writing anything fantastical. The Hearts of Horses, about a young woman breaking horses for some farmers and ranchers in Eastern Oregon in 1917, has (so far!) been the most popular of any of my works. Is it that attention-grabbing cover? or "horses" in the title?! Guess we'll test the second theory, as I've decided to call the new novel (launching Oct. 28, 2014) Falling From Horses. Set in 1938, it's the story of a young man working as a stunt rider in Hollywood, making cowboy movies. And if you've already read The Hearts of Horses you will know the significance of this factoid: He's Henry and Martha's son.

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4.1 out of 5

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Kindle Customer

A Dazzling Book

Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2015

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As soon as I finished reading this book, I wrote the author a fan letter. That has happened only once before in my long years as a reader, when I had read Mary Doria Russell's "Sparrow." I would not have known about "The Dazzle of Day" had it not been for a passing reference to it by Ursula K. LeGuin in an introduction to one of her novellas. I discovered that the book is out of print, which amazed and saddened me. It needs to be rediscovered and reprinted and to have the widest possible readership. The quality of the writing beggars description. There is not one false note. Each word is precisely the right word, each sentence is perfectly constructed, each character--and there are many--is presented in all of his or complexity and with profound sympathy, and the story takes the form it must and begins and ends as it must. The book evokes deep feeling without the least tinge of sentimentality. It is a story with hard edges, a sweet story about community, about faith, hope, and love. Oh, yes: It is a chronicle of "generational" space travel. It made me fall in love with Earth all over again and it stirred up my long-lived dream of the stars.

10 people found this helpful

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Freeman Ng

dazzling

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2014

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Science fiction fans might find this book hard going at first because it spends so much time on the daily lives of the Quaker farmers aboard a multigenerational colony ship. For long stretches, it doesn't feel like a sci-fi novel at all, but when the sci-fi elements appear, they are well worth the extensive groundwork. There is a trek across a harsh planetary landscape, for example, that makes other sci-fi descriptions of harsh environments seem either pedestrian or cartoonish by comparison. (Not because it's harsher than any of these other terrains, but because the writing is so much more realistic and vivid.) And the final scene, a snapshot of the future society these colonists eventually found, is a sight that every inhabit of this weary world should see. It will do your spirit good, even if it's only glimpsed in fiction.

Read my full length review at http://www.freemanng.net/blog/2014/11/30/review-the-dazzle-of-day

3 people found this helpful

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Maureen F. McHugh

Subtle and lyrical

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2000

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_The Dazzle of Days_ is an sf book full of extraordinary happenings--it's starts with a suicide out on a solar sail and has shipwreck and life altering decisions in it--but it's not an adventure story. The people in it--Utopian Quakers, felt right to me since they are the kind of idealist who mirror the Puritans in New England and the Quakers who settled Pennsylvania, and so many other groups who decided to settle a new land--and the Mennonites today who are settling in South America or the Japanese in Brazil. There's no leader in this story, no bright shining person or anti-hero. This is more like my life. More the way that things seem to actually get done in my experience. But full of delightful touches, of wild birds and ants and complicated marriages.
I wouldn't have liked this book when I was twenty-five, and it's charms are not perhaps for every one. But this was, for me, one of the finest books published in the last couple of years.

5 people found this helpful

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Aster Brun

My favorite novel

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2019

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Fabulous book--my favorite (and I read a lot of sf. I used to teach a course on the history of utopias, which ended with this book, one of the very few, in fact maybe the only, successful modern utopian novels I know. Obviously, utopia has come a long way since Sir Thomas More. Twentieth- and early twentieth-century fiction specialized in dystopias--plenty of brilliant examples of those--but produced no great utopias, in my opinion, with the exception of this one.

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David J. Haberman

Excellent quality paperback.

Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2022

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Item arrived ahead of time and of a quality higher than listed. Very pleased.

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Samantha D. Waltz

Best Author I've Read

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2020

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As a writer, I stand in wonder every time I read something by Molly Gloss. I read this book years ago and had to get it again. It has stayed with me as the best science fiction I've ever come across. She creates an entire world with imaginative and lyrical prose. The Dazzle of Day is a must-read.

2 people found this helpful

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Book Nut

Fantastic Read

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2010

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Gloss has brought unexpected depth to the science fiction/futuristic field. This is not your typical external plot driven story. Her characters and the issues they struggle with are complex and I found the glimpses of their lives quite captivating. In the end, this book becomes more an examination of the spiritual journey of humans who step out into the universe, rather than the physical act of travel. I would recommend this book to anyone who has never liked Sci Fiction before and to those who are looking for a change from the typical Sci Fi novel. A fabulous read.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

could have been good

Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2019

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Sci-fi and space adventure is secondary to the excruciating level of navel gazing delivered by this novel. Too bad as the scene could have been set for some off-world fun and adventure but emo concerns ruined to day for me. I was going for adventure and I got emo. Oh well on to other things as I try to un-fuzz my head.

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Waldo

"Science Fiction" like no other

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2020

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A beautifully written book--serene yet exciting--about a future when mankind has left the Earth to search for
somewhere else to live. The twist is that the "pioneers" are Quakers--a group known for valuing simplicity and silence. After generations of travel in their space ship- a beautifully integrated "planet" where nothing is wasted and everything is valued-- the travellers, who never knew the Earth in its last days of decline, have to decide whether or not to start a new life on a seemingly inimical planet. Wonderful!

Stephen Cox

A very disconcerting book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 11, 2018

Verified Purchase

A generation ship travels between earth and the stars. The crew are Quakers, they deal with various issues and come to land on a new world. It's a strange book - hailed as literary in that it concentrates on the relationships, but the different POVs and century plus make it hard to bond with any character. There's action, deaths and sexual assaults, and technical detail where I didn't want it, and not enough description where I did. It is nice to have a generation ship story where humanity doesn't slide into barbarism or tyranny. But it's just an odd book to categorise. As a Quaker, though not from this particular branch, the Quaker bit might just baffle you. Somewhere between four and two stars

2 people found this helpful

Judith Kearney

Une excellente lecture qui se projette dans le futur

Reviewed in France on August 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

Bien que The Dazzle of Day ait été écrit en 1996, il est encore plus pertinent dans le monde d'aujourd'hui. La langue est tres précis et élegant, et les personnages s'animent à travers les détails de l'auteure. J'aime beaucoup cet livre!

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Ransen Owen

Missing pages, from 21 to 57

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2020

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The book is not complete. There are missing pages. It jumps from page 21 to 57. What am I supposed to do with this?

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