The Dazzle of Day » (REV)

Molly Gloss has won the Whiting Writer's Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. She has also been a PEN / Faulkner Award Finalist. Her other books include Wild Life and The Jump-Off Creek.

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.

VOYA

Imagine a time when the Earth is so polluted that entire ecosystems are placed in great wheels of space stations above the planet. And one group, Quakers, decides to slip the bonds of gravity and sail across the universe searching for another planet to begin again. They have come from all over to unite in this multigenerational voyage. Having been the most successful group at creating the orbital ecosystems, they have faith that their fragile wheel will find a new home. The book begins with the thoughts of a sixty-year-old woman the day before she is to leave the Earth and ends with the tale of a middle-aged woman in the new world. The middle section, the longest, deals with the lives of these pioneering people as they approach a new planet not knowing if this is where their journey will end. This story is like a peep show into these people's lives. There is no main character and very little action. It is philosophical science fiction, if you could truly call it science fiction at all. While it involves space travel, the changes in people and how they live and interact are the focus. Discussions and descriptions of sex are blunt and straightforward. While beautifully written, its lack of adventure and pondering tone will not draw the interest of many teens. Recommended for public libraries with large collections of science fiction, or with readers who are looking for something different. VOYA Codes: 4Q 1P S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, No YA will read unless forced to for assignments, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).