The Dazzle of Day - Softcover

Gloss, Molly

3.58

560 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 031286437X ISBN 13: 9780312864378

Publisher: Tor Books, 1998

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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.

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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.

About the Author:

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.

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