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The Dazzle of Day
Leaving a dilapidated Earth behind, Quakers across the globe pool funds and resources as they select colonists to send to a newly discovered planet to start life anew in this “miraculous fusion of…science fiction with unsparing realism and keen psychology” (Ursula K. Le Guin). In this “carefully conceived and deeply affecting” (The New York Times) novel, award-winning author Molly Gloss turns her attention to the frontiers of the future. A group of Quakers band together to abandon the ailing Earth, and travel to a settle a whole new world. The Dazzle of Day is their story. “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).
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
70 people are currently reading
1617 people want to read
About the author
Molly Gloss
43 books176 followersMolly Gloss is a fourth-generation Oregonian who lives in Portland.
Her novel The Jump-Off Creek was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award. In 1996 Molly was a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award.
The Dazzle of Day was named a New York Times Notable Book and was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize.
Wild Life won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was chosen as the 2002 selection for "If All Seattle Read the Same Book."
Her novel The Jump-Off Creek was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for American Fiction, and a winner of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award and the Oregon Book Award. In 1996 Molly was a recipient of a Whiting Writers Award.
The Dazzle of Day was named a New York Times Notable Book and was awarded the PEN Center West Fiction Prize.
Wild Life won the James Tiptree Jr. Award and was chosen as the 2002 selection for "If All Seattle Read the Same Book."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 159 reviews
May 19, 2020
I'm swaying between 4 and 5 stars - yet since I'm nearly certain that I will come back here and round up to 5 stars in a few days I can as well give it right away.
This book is a rare one. It is SF, it deals with typical SF elements of fleeing a selfdestructed Earth, generation ships, inhabiting a new planet - but all those elements are in the background. One can't say that nothing happens in this book, cause there are a lot of events that would take front and center in a more conventional SF novel, but here those elements occur mostly offscreen. They are impetuses (my dictionary gives me this as the plural … looks horrible, but here you go) for psychological explorations of (mostly flawed) individuals and the slow, but effective working of the community of space faring quakers. I admit that I have absolutely no knowledge of quakers and I was too lazy to look up their culture, but I take it that the way everything is decided and lived in smaller workgroups and committees is typical for their social structure.
"The Dazzle of Day" is literary SF, it is about the people, it is about everyday low tech life and problems, mainly during the time when after 150 years the generation ship reaches the selected planet. Molly Gloss commands a prose that is poetical in parts, yet distanced and factual in others. A lot of going ons are written as stream of consciousness with flashbacks to unrelated episodes in the character's past. This way of very close POV may sometimes be a bit irritating, but overall it made for a very intense experience for the reader, for understanding characters and their doings which on an impartial level one never would approve of.
Through the connection Gloss created I did not feel for the characters, but I did feel with them. And on some subconscious level I longed to be part of such a community.
This was a powerful story that will stay with me, yet is definitely not for you, if you are looking for an SF Story with SF-Action or -tech happening.
This book is a rare one. It is SF, it deals with typical SF elements of fleeing a selfdestructed Earth, generation ships, inhabiting a new planet - but all those elements are in the background. One can't say that nothing happens in this book, cause there are a lot of events that would take front and center in a more conventional SF novel, but here those elements occur mostly offscreen. They are impetuses (my dictionary gives me this as the plural … looks horrible, but here you go) for psychological explorations of (mostly flawed) individuals and the slow, but effective working of the community of space faring quakers. I admit that I have absolutely no knowledge of quakers and I was too lazy to look up their culture, but I take it that the way everything is decided and lived in smaller workgroups and committees is typical for their social structure.
"The Dazzle of Day" is literary SF, it is about the people, it is about everyday low tech life and problems, mainly during the time when after 150 years the generation ship reaches the selected planet. Molly Gloss commands a prose that is poetical in parts, yet distanced and factual in others. A lot of going ons are written as stream of consciousness with flashbacks to unrelated episodes in the character's past. This way of very close POV may sometimes be a bit irritating, but overall it made for a very intense experience for the reader, for understanding characters and their doings which on an impartial level one never would approve of.
Through the connection Gloss created I did not feel for the characters, but I did feel with them. And on some subconscious level I longed to be part of such a community.
This was a powerful story that will stay with me, yet is definitely not for you, if you are looking for an SF Story with SF-Action or -tech happening.
November 9, 2008
I have a special thing for Molly Gloss. Her books "Jump Off Creek" and "Outside the Gates" were both startling finds for me in high school. She even visited my English class once - an unusual bit of luck for a girl stranded in the smallest of small-town isolations - 19 people in my class, 17 of them boys. My English teacher took her and me out to lunch and she showed Gloss some of my writing. I was mortified, but she, at the very least, pretended to be impressed, inscribed a book for me, and urged me to carry on with my writing. One of these days I'll track her down again and thank her. Even if the 16-year-old girl wasn't ready for the encouragement, the 32-year-old reminds herself of it daily.
This book is what reviewers often call "richly imagined." In a seemingly short number of pages, she unearths whole complex worlds full of introspective and believable humanity, the sort not often found in science fiction. Her meditation is less one of technology and more one of universals, of the persistence of human tendencies, human fears and loves and works, in the most unlikely of settings.
The plot is an escape from a broken world, a flight from a dying planet to a new one that spans hundreds of years and generations of humans aboard a living spaceship full of streams and fields and insects and all the necessary trappings of an agrarian existence. The most interesting aspects are that these people 1. are Quakers, and 2. speak Esperanto, an artificial language that never quite took root anywhere since its creation as a hopeful global lingua franca in the late nineteenth century.
I have little background in the beliefs and practices of the Quakers, other than a vague familiarity with their meeting styles and a consciousness of their contributions to civil rights and peace movements. I am impressed with their practice of shared silence, and the weight Gloss gives this form of consensus-shaping as a political and community model. I love that, even in fiction distant from our own contexts we still find reflection for our practices.
This is a heart-breaking book, in the way that life is heart-breaking. It is full of questions and rolling continuity rather than neat answers and ends. It is both very complete and totally open-ended, in a hopeful sort of way.
This book is what reviewers often call "richly imagined." In a seemingly short number of pages, she unearths whole complex worlds full of introspective and believable humanity, the sort not often found in science fiction. Her meditation is less one of technology and more one of universals, of the persistence of human tendencies, human fears and loves and works, in the most unlikely of settings.
The plot is an escape from a broken world, a flight from a dying planet to a new one that spans hundreds of years and generations of humans aboard a living spaceship full of streams and fields and insects and all the necessary trappings of an agrarian existence. The most interesting aspects are that these people 1. are Quakers, and 2. speak Esperanto, an artificial language that never quite took root anywhere since its creation as a hopeful global lingua franca in the late nineteenth century.
I have little background in the beliefs and practices of the Quakers, other than a vague familiarity with their meeting styles and a consciousness of their contributions to civil rights and peace movements. I am impressed with their practice of shared silence, and the weight Gloss gives this form of consensus-shaping as a political and community model. I love that, even in fiction distant from our own contexts we still find reflection for our practices.
This is a heart-breaking book, in the way that life is heart-breaking. It is full of questions and rolling continuity rather than neat answers and ends. It is both very complete and totally open-ended, in a hopeful sort of way.
March 23, 2013
A loose, slow-paced novel about a small colony of Quakers who have finally arrived at a habital planet after 175 years in transit. Slowly but surely, they reach a consensus about whether to colonize the planet or stay aboard the colony ship that is all they've known for generations.
This book really frustrated me. It was so unfocused, and although all sorts of exciting things happen (crashlanding on a planet! a desperate rescue mission! a plague!) they all happen in the peripheral vision of the characters. Even when a POV character is trying to pull someone from a surging sea, they've got page upon page of stream of consciousness about how they feel about their daughter's marriage and how they used to ski on a nearby mountain and such. The constant ruminations not only slow the book down to a snail's pace, but they feel completely unreal. I'd buy that one or two people undergo long thought processes during stressful life-or-death moments, but to have the entire book consist of characters thinking about their feelings and half-remembered memories and inconsequential opinions about people the reader doesn't know--it strains belief and a reader's ability to stay interested. The characters are, by and large, unpleasant people in a very minor, understated way. They think uncharitable thoughts about those they're surrounded by, or blame others for not mysteriously understanding things they've never mentioned...I know that some people are like that, but *all* of them? It was too much, and listening to their POVs left me in an unpleasant mood.
I did like the discussions that took place about whether or not to stay on the Dusky Miller. But that was literally the only thing I enjoyed in this entire book. And considering how fascinating the premise is, that is a damn shame.
Contains suicide, various bodily indignities due to old age and illness, rape, and the death of a child. There are numerous POV characters, all people of color, and most of them are middle aged or elderly women, which is a nice change.
This book really frustrated me. It was so unfocused, and although all sorts of exciting things happen (crashlanding on a planet! a desperate rescue mission! a plague!) they all happen in the peripheral vision of the characters. Even when a POV character is trying to pull someone from a surging sea, they've got page upon page of stream of consciousness about how they feel about their daughter's marriage and how they used to ski on a nearby mountain and such. The constant ruminations not only slow the book down to a snail's pace, but they feel completely unreal. I'd buy that one or two people undergo long thought processes during stressful life-or-death moments, but to have the entire book consist of characters thinking about their feelings and half-remembered memories and inconsequential opinions about people the reader doesn't know--it strains belief and a reader's ability to stay interested. The characters are, by and large, unpleasant people in a very minor, understated way. They think uncharitable thoughts about those they're surrounded by, or blame others for not mysteriously understanding things they've never mentioned...I know that some people are like that, but *all* of them? It was too much, and listening to their POVs left me in an unpleasant mood.
I did like the discussions that took place about whether or not to stay on the Dusky Miller. But that was literally the only thing I enjoyed in this entire book. And considering how fascinating the premise is, that is a damn shame.
Contains suicide, various bodily indignities due to old age and illness, rape, and the death of a child. There are numerous POV characters, all people of color, and most of them are middle aged or elderly women, which is a nice change.
August 25, 2023
3.0⭐
An interesting and original take on the generation ship story. It's not about the adventures along the journey or the settling of a new world but about the society created by several thousand people packed closely together for almost two centuries.
It's an insular, inbred culture where practically everyone is related to everyone else and is up in everybody's business. These people are judgmental, gossipy and prone to mockery and chastisement. I found that part to be highly belivable. It's also a society largely without violence, crime or hierarchies, where decisions are made by consensus.
Gloss has peopled her spaceship with Quakers. Amidst a destroyed and dying Earth the Society of Friends bought and equipped a space habitat ( something like an O'Neil cylinder) to be its ark. Most of the story takes place as the ship is about to reach its destination and the passengers are traumatized by the thought of leaving the only home they've ever known.
Since Gloss' starship is essentially a big family, it's not surprising the story is essentially a family drama, in space. Most of it revolves around the relationships of the main characters with each other and how everything's changing with the imminent landing. It's plodding and talky but it's saved by Gloss' fine prose and well drawn setting and characters ( who are not always likable).
So if you're expecting Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" or Delaney's "Ballad of Beta 2," you'd best seek elsewhere. The only story that approaches this in style and intent that I can think of is Ursula LeGuin's short work "Paradises Lost" ( not that comparisons are particularly useful).
But it is a very well written and thought provoking ( if slow moving) story. -30-
An interesting and original take on the generation ship story. It's not about the adventures along the journey or the settling of a new world but about the society created by several thousand people packed closely together for almost two centuries.
It's an insular, inbred culture where practically everyone is related to everyone else and is up in everybody's business. These people are judgmental, gossipy and prone to mockery and chastisement. I found that part to be highly belivable. It's also a society largely without violence, crime or hierarchies, where decisions are made by consensus.
Gloss has peopled her spaceship with Quakers. Amidst a destroyed and dying Earth the Society of Friends bought and equipped a space habitat ( something like an O'Neil cylinder) to be its ark. Most of the story takes place as the ship is about to reach its destination and the passengers are traumatized by the thought of leaving the only home they've ever known.
Since Gloss' starship is essentially a big family, it's not surprising the story is essentially a family drama, in space. Most of it revolves around the relationships of the main characters with each other and how everything's changing with the imminent landing. It's plodding and talky but it's saved by Gloss' fine prose and well drawn setting and characters ( who are not always likable).
So if you're expecting Heinlein's "Orphans of the Sky" or Delaney's "Ballad of Beta 2," you'd best seek elsewhere. The only story that approaches this in style and intent that I can think of is Ursula LeGuin's short work "Paradises Lost" ( not that comparisons are particularly useful).
But it is a very well written and thought provoking ( if slow moving) story. -30-
December 23, 2021
This was a remarkably beautiful book. The framework was SF, but the painting was of interpersonal relationships and the inner workings of the several POV characters. Especially striking was the description of one character experiencing a stroke. It was fascinating how these characters would go from happy, joyful or quietly content to experiencing conflict, sadness, frustration just like in real life. The relationships and how people interacted seemed really on pointe.
There isn’t much of a plot that can’t be related in less than 10 words, so if you are looking for an exciting, plot-driven story, this isn’t for you! The world and society Gloss has created is so rich and satisfying, though, so if that is your sort of thing and you appreciate beautiful, languorous prose and 3D characters, I can’t recommend this highly enough.
There isn’t much of a plot that can’t be related in less than 10 words, so if you are looking for an exciting, plot-driven story, this isn’t for you! The world and society Gloss has created is so rich and satisfying, though, so if that is your sort of thing and you appreciate beautiful, languorous prose and 3D characters, I can’t recommend this highly enough.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 5, 2013
In some undisclosed future year a colony of Quakers decide to abandon the ravaged, depleted Earth, outfitting an “interstellar ark” and heading out in search of a new planet to colonize. 150 years later the descendents of those emigrants have arrived at a habitable, but inhospitable, planet, and must decide whether to settle there or venture forth in their aging spaceship in hopes of greener pastures elsewhere.
This has a great setting, a great title, and it’s well written, and yet I was disappointed. I have always preferred even my science fiction stories to focus on people, rather than on technology or cool concepts... but the problem is, these people are boring and faintly unpleasant.
The author focuses on a handful of characters, and we learn about their love lives, their sex lives, their bathroom habits, and how they interact with their in-laws. We feel their grief for lost loved ones, their loneliness and uncertainty, and their annoyance with friends and family. Occasionally they think about things like What kind of plants could we grow on this new planet? But soon they’re back to marriage counseling and shelling peas and carrying soup to sick neighbors.
That kind of thing is 90% of the book. The writing is fine, and some scenes are poignant, but these characters just don’t have interesting personalities and they don’t really do much of anything. The sections I enjoyed most were the Quaker-style Meetings, where people gather in groups to spread knowledge and make decisions for the community.
I tried so hard to like this. I was hoping that an amazing ending would pull it out of the ditch, but it wraps up with another chapter of tedious rumination. Very frustrating.
This has a great setting, a great title, and it’s well written, and yet I was disappointed. I have always preferred even my science fiction stories to focus on people, rather than on technology or cool concepts... but the problem is, these people are boring and faintly unpleasant.
The author focuses on a handful of characters, and we learn about their love lives, their sex lives, their bathroom habits, and how they interact with their in-laws. We feel their grief for lost loved ones, their loneliness and uncertainty, and their annoyance with friends and family. Occasionally they think about things like What kind of plants could we grow on this new planet? But soon they’re back to marriage counseling and shelling peas and carrying soup to sick neighbors.
That kind of thing is 90% of the book. The writing is fine, and some scenes are poignant, but these characters just don’t have interesting personalities and they don’t really do much of anything. The sections I enjoyed most were the Quaker-style Meetings, where people gather in groups to spread knowledge and make decisions for the community.
I tried so hard to like this. I was hoping that an amazing ending would pull it out of the ditch, but it wraps up with another chapter of tedious rumination. Very frustrating.
November 25, 2008
First chapter knocks my socks off every time I read it. Like this group of Quakers, haven't we all wanted to push away from Earth and start again?
Interesting exploration into decision making and reliance on technology even while trying to escape a planet overrun by its effects.
An all time personal fave.
April 9, 2022
This is one of my all-time favorite reads. And unlike some reviewers, I actually have read the novel. Several times. I came to it initially skeptical. I was new to Molly Gloss and thought that I was mostly done with SF at the time it came out, but the book is a page-turner as well as a thoughtful revelation of humanity.
This is a utopian novel, in my opinion, about people trying to make a working and humane society. The characters are imperfect, sometimes old or young or frightened or cruel or generous and kind. They are all those things at once sometimes.
It is also true science fiction, but not the sort of galactic war drama that many people associate with that label. This is about the Earth gone terribly wrong and a small group of people who decide to find a way to keep our species alive.
If you are looking for battle scenes, look elsewhere. If you want romance, there is some of it here, but it's between real people and some of the romance is with life and living. If you want a simplistic tale worthy of a one-hour-movie, this is not going to do it for you.
If you want a grand adventure and an exploration of how to make a closed society work; if you want real people and real relationships; if you want to explore your own and others' ideas about community and the perfect society, warts and all, this might be the best thing you've read in a very long time.
[Half the POV characters are male. Exactly half.]
Third (fifth?) read: It had been years since I read this novel. I don't know why I let so much time pass. Mostly I remembered the gist, but I do not recall the last chapter as I found it here. For the record, I have always believed and still do that this is a utopian novel. It is "hard science fiction" in that the science is solid. I appreciate science fiction that does not include bits of fantasy, and here it is—everything that is possible but way out there. There are also two chapters of quiet thought and conversation as people negotiate and reach consensus. Land or keeping flying? Forgive or hold on to pain? The options seem simple, but the negotiation is delicate, beautiful, complex as starlight.
Dialogue is not easy to write. Dialogue between people seeking compromise is extraordinary. "Dialogue" involving many people is extraordinary. People seeking consensus is not typically American. We want our choices to be simple. We want villains and heroes. Real people are not so simple. Gloss has accomplished something here, showing how people of faith accept their duty to hear one another, to allow themselves to consider ideas that frighten them, to open themselves to possibility.
I remain in awe.
This is a utopian novel, in my opinion, about people trying to make a working and humane society. The characters are imperfect, sometimes old or young or frightened or cruel or generous and kind. They are all those things at once sometimes.
It is also true science fiction, but not the sort of galactic war drama that many people associate with that label. This is about the Earth gone terribly wrong and a small group of people who decide to find a way to keep our species alive.
If you are looking for battle scenes, look elsewhere. If you want romance, there is some of it here, but it's between real people and some of the romance is with life and living. If you want a simplistic tale worthy of a one-hour-movie, this is not going to do it for you.
If you want a grand adventure and an exploration of how to make a closed society work; if you want real people and real relationships; if you want to explore your own and others' ideas about community and the perfect society, warts and all, this might be the best thing you've read in a very long time.
[Half the POV characters are male. Exactly half.]
Third (fifth?) read: It had been years since I read this novel. I don't know why I let so much time pass. Mostly I remembered the gist, but I do not recall the last chapter as I found it here. For the record, I have always believed and still do that this is a utopian novel. It is "hard science fiction" in that the science is solid. I appreciate science fiction that does not include bits of fantasy, and here it is—everything that is possible but way out there. There are also two chapters of quiet thought and conversation as people negotiate and reach consensus. Land or keeping flying? Forgive or hold on to pain? The options seem simple, but the negotiation is delicate, beautiful, complex as starlight.
Dialogue is not easy to write. Dialogue between people seeking compromise is extraordinary. "Dialogue" involving many people is extraordinary. People seeking consensus is not typically American. We want our choices to be simple. We want villains and heroes. Real people are not so simple. Gloss has accomplished something here, showing how people of faith accept their duty to hear one another, to allow themselves to consider ideas that frighten them, to open themselves to possibility.
I remain in awe.
April 7, 2014
Basically if I start a book one day and finish it the next, it's going to get five stars from me.
Sure, this book's plot is oblique and the major conflicts are mostly domestic. Yeah, there's the looming question of whether or not the colonists will leave the generation ship and settle on their new world, but what kept me reading was whether or not Juko patches up things with her ex-husband, and the social intricacies of life aboard the ship.
Fans of Ursula K. LeGuin will enjoy.
Sure, this book's plot is oblique and the major conflicts are mostly domestic. Yeah, there's the looming question of whether or not the colonists will leave the generation ship and settle on their new world, but what kept me reading was whether or not Juko patches up things with her ex-husband, and the social intricacies of life aboard the ship.
Fans of Ursula K. LeGuin will enjoy.
November 9, 2017
A thoughtful, interesting novel. Quite slow, but I don't mean that negatively - there's a sort of dreamy pacing that goes well with the temporary nature of migration, the doomed setting of the life that's made on the ship. It's a good life too, but it can't last - though I can't help wondering how the Quaker settlers, so steeped in ecological holism, justify what must be the wholesale slaughter of the lives they've nurtured - the ecosystem aboard the Dusty Miller surely won't survive the new frigidity of life planet-side. They discuss everything else in an attempt to reach consensus, but never this. I kept waiting for it...
June 13, 2019
This is the kind of slow sci-fi that I really love to sink into. There are plagues, shuttle crashes, and colonizing a new planet but those are all background events that in some senses don't really matter. The real story is the people in the ship and their relationship to the universe and their potential new world. There's a lot about how we treat and interact with our surroundings and how they in turn affect us.
August 8, 2023
CW suicide (multiple), stroke, and rape. Also content warning for multiple POV, which, while it isn't done poorly, is not my thing.
This was a very slow-burn read (very slice of life/low-stakes SF), but was a bit (OK, a lot) horny for my tastes. I was initially going to use this for r/fantasy's book bingo but upon finishing it, I don't think it really fits any of the squares, except Litfic and possibly queernorm (and substitutions like the one a couple of years back with the setting in space).
I think the book is worth a read if you're interested in slice-of-life SF that is very introspective and doesn't pull away from heavy content, and are OK with the multi POV.
This was a very slow-burn read (very slice of life/low-stakes SF), but was a bit (OK, a lot) horny for my tastes. I was initially going to use this for r/fantasy's book bingo but upon finishing it, I don't think it really fits any of the squares, except Litfic and possibly queernorm (and substitutions like the one a couple of years back with the setting in space).
I think the book is worth a read if you're interested in slice-of-life SF that is very introspective and doesn't pull away from heavy content, and are OK with the multi POV.
March 7, 2011
Molly Gloss has written an intriguing, quiet book that speaks volumes in The Dazzle of Day. This is a very international book. Escaping from a dying Earth, Quakers from various countries (they speak Esperanto!) have found themselves a home on board the Dusty Miller, a self-sustaining but ageing spaceship. A crew has been sent out to explore a frozen planet as a possible future home. Bjoro is among the crew, and the planet isn’t something he’s prepared for:
“He had thought in the filmcards he had studied of unbounded landscapes, of storms and snows and seas, there remained no surprises. It hadn’t occurred to him, the vast depth of the third dimension. He hadn’t thought he would fear the sky.”
The funny thing about The Dazzle of Day is that nothing seems to be happening, although things are actually happening. The crew crashes on the frozen planet, someone dies when out working on the sail, all major events that are but a sideline to the relationships, to the tales of the daily lives of these Quakers, such as Bjoro’s wife Joko and son Cejo, these people who work the fields, who cook in the kitchen houses, who take part in meetings and discuss their future on this frozen planet, who look after their families and each other.
“For 175 years they had gone on talking and thinking and making ready for leaving this world. They had lived for 175 years in a kind of suspended state, a continual waiting for change, but it was a balanced and deep-grounded condition, an equilibrium. They knew their world, root and branch, knew its history and its economies. The human life of the Miller and the life of its soil and its plants and animals revolved together, in a society that was well-considered, a community that was sustaining. Some people thought they had lived for 175 years in a world that was a kind of Eden.”
But there are no answers. Or at least the book doesn’t leave us with any firm ones.
The Dazzle of Day is a book best described in opposites. There is an ending, but it is not really the end. It is a story of beginnings and endings. The words are quiet, but also full of strength and understanding.
“He had thought in the filmcards he had studied of unbounded landscapes, of storms and snows and seas, there remained no surprises. It hadn’t occurred to him, the vast depth of the third dimension. He hadn’t thought he would fear the sky.”
The funny thing about The Dazzle of Day is that nothing seems to be happening, although things are actually happening. The crew crashes on the frozen planet, someone dies when out working on the sail, all major events that are but a sideline to the relationships, to the tales of the daily lives of these Quakers, such as Bjoro’s wife Joko and son Cejo, these people who work the fields, who cook in the kitchen houses, who take part in meetings and discuss their future on this frozen planet, who look after their families and each other.
“For 175 years they had gone on talking and thinking and making ready for leaving this world. They had lived for 175 years in a kind of suspended state, a continual waiting for change, but it was a balanced and deep-grounded condition, an equilibrium. They knew their world, root and branch, knew its history and its economies. The human life of the Miller and the life of its soil and its plants and animals revolved together, in a society that was well-considered, a community that was sustaining. Some people thought they had lived for 175 years in a world that was a kind of Eden.”
But there are no answers. Or at least the book doesn’t leave us with any firm ones.
The Dazzle of Day is a book best described in opposites. There is an ending, but it is not really the end. It is a story of beginnings and endings. The words are quiet, but also full of strength and understanding.
June 29, 2008
A short novel about a future human colony living on a starship in outer space, looking for a new world to inhabit. If the sci-fi theme puts you off, think again on this one. The colony is a group of Quakers and the sense of community, human struggle, philosophical discussions and truthful relationships are what makes this book shine. Deeply insightful without stilted propoganda or unaccessible techno-talk, Ms. Gloss takes us to some of the darkest regions of the soul and gives us the courage to ask if life is still valuable enough to keep going, if community is something we short-change in this narcissistic decade of self. My only impatience was with the first and final chapters - needed bookends for the story, necessary for the whole picture but I felt the final chapter a bit of a drudge because it pulled away from the interpersonal conversations and became heavily detailed in the mechanics of the future world. Still, a book that will live with you for many years after you've read it.
April 14, 2011
There is a specific and positive tone within the language of The Dazzle of Day which gives it a different feeling than those felt towards the first set of novels. Adaptation within the community is the focus of the novel while it can be questioned that Survival of the Fittest would be a stronger argument. The Quakers escape the tragedy of the world because they are ‘worldly’ people which desire a place to expand humanity and survive. It is fitting that Quakers leave the earth and understand the time in which to do so; the history of Quaker societies prove the ability to survive within their means while keeping a positive and watchful eye on the future. It is important to cite that the novel focuses on a specific type of survivor, one that has never followed a conventional life, this gives Molly Gloss an interesting tool to use when classifying main characters—that is if there are any.
April 13, 2011
An infuriating piece of science fiction, this novel while well written, is odd and at times hard to read. I enjoyed the way that the chapters were set up, with beginning and ending chapters that present the past and the future, and a storyline that follows specific characters, in a very specific order. But I generally disliked the lack of detail that is absent, in regards to the ships and the other common science fiction elements. While I can see why Gloss did this, changing the focus to the characters and their struggle and increasing the focus on these elements, it just annoys me that so little time is spent on the setting. Also, I found that the various Esperanto words that are intermingled into the narration detract from the story, making the novel a little harder to read and understand, unless constant translation is carried out.
September 20, 2011
This is a fantastic book. It's about a group of Esperanto-speaking Quakers (yes, I know, but listen) who board a generation starship (yes, I know, but bear with me) and set off for a possible earthlike planet. The bulk of the story takes place when they're nearly at their destination, and it's a fascinating exploration of what the journey has done to them, with the ingredients from when they left Earth (their ancestors were a mixed group of Quakers from all over the planet, including Japan, Scandinavia, Central America, and others, and their culture is a mixture of all of these). Not a story with a major struggle, protagonist versus antagonist and all that, but a story of people doing what's left to them to do. Highly recommended.
Read
May 24, 2020
September 18, 2024
More of a 2.5 star book, but I'm rounding up because I did like the first half. This is a very melancholy and slow story, mostly taking place on a generation ship with a Quaker community. The points of view change each chapter until about the half way point when you double up and revisit each of the characters from the center part. I did not enjoy these revisit chapters and was also unhappy to find The beginning is well done, and even though it moves slowly, I enjoyed meeting the characters and learning about their ship and where they were going. I wish that had been maintained, but I found myself skimming the last third just wanting to be done.
January 5, 2017
About: A new generation of pioneers seeks sanctuary from our dying earth in a mission to a new planet. Only the patient, whole-minded Quakers have worked out the challenges to turn these theoretical missions into a reality. This literary hard sci-fi follows the takeoff, the problems encountered during the mission and the effects of those challenges on the very human community that rises to meet them. Published 1998, Adult Sci-fi.
The Short of It: This book will appeal to a certain kind of reader, certainly, because of its carefully crafted tech details, people and atmosphere. I care about two of the three (people and atmosphere), so I liked it. The complaint I hear most often (and agree with) is that the plot moves very slowly.
What I Loved: (1) The setting and descriptions worked with other elements to create pitch-perfect tone in this novel of “the new frontier.” It's beautiful and bleak, a real gem. (2) Molly Gloss slows down each moment so you can understand the psychology of each moment, sensation and act of humanity—grief, adultery, lust, fear, etc.—and you grow to care for these flawed people because you see yourself in them. (3) I also loved the cultural vision and authentic feeling of the Quaker meetings, both the personal and collective experiences of them. They feel very genuine, neither sentimental nor unfeeling. Having attended small religious meetings all my life, I was tickled to recognize the characters in the Quaker meetings: the elder, the blah-blah-er, the gossip, the elderly, etc.
What I Didn’t Love: (1) A few things didn’t ring quite true—such as when a God-fearing person refers to humans as animals. Maybe futuristic Quakers will accept a completely naturalistic explanation of life, in which humans are considered animals; but I doubt that this will ever be a majority opinion among spiritual communities (although I have very little familiarity with Quaker theology). I think the reverence for our humanity, the thing that separates us from animals, is too great for that sort of casual comment. It sounds like agnosticism trying to mask itself as theology.
But those moments are comparatively rare. Gloss got the important thing right, namely that for all the truthful, searing human folly present in every character, there is also a certain peace about the community that rings just as true.
(2) The plot is a bit of a snore, although the tension in the writing still kept me reading. The structure and purpose of the book were better formed than they are in your typical character or plot driven novels. This novel was more “idea-driven,” or, as Orson Scott Card might have put it in his Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, “milieu-driven.” The wandering plot feels designed to mirror the wandering quality of a Quaker’s movements in the spiritual realm—waiting for the spirit to speak through them to the community at large. Waiting. Listening. Then, perhaps, speaking.
Other Comments: There is some very technical jargon about the ship and the theories of survival. I don’t really understand or care about those, but I thought I’d mention them in case they matter to someone else.
Recommendation: For adults who love thoughtful, literary sci-fi and for readers wanting an intro to hard-sci-fi (because the book is rather short).
3 stars for characters, atmosphere and cohesive vision.
Favorite Quote: “When people are feeling the weight of their own lives, they want to see the life other animals are given, and there is something mysterious and revealing about the discarded machinery of birds’ lives. In abandoned flakes of eggshell, emptied seed cases, the hollow stems of cottongrass, in the delicate attenuated backbones of fish and the teeth of desiccated crustaceans, you can sometimes glimpse the bare and intricate structures of God” (239).
You can follow my speculative fiction reviews and videos on my blog, Christy Luis Reviews: Speculative Fiction.
The Short of It: This book will appeal to a certain kind of reader, certainly, because of its carefully crafted tech details, people and atmosphere. I care about two of the three (people and atmosphere), so I liked it. The complaint I hear most often (and agree with) is that the plot moves very slowly.
What I Loved: (1) The setting and descriptions worked with other elements to create pitch-perfect tone in this novel of “the new frontier.” It's beautiful and bleak, a real gem. (2) Molly Gloss slows down each moment so you can understand the psychology of each moment, sensation and act of humanity—grief, adultery, lust, fear, etc.—and you grow to care for these flawed people because you see yourself in them. (3) I also loved the cultural vision and authentic feeling of the Quaker meetings, both the personal and collective experiences of them. They feel very genuine, neither sentimental nor unfeeling. Having attended small religious meetings all my life, I was tickled to recognize the characters in the Quaker meetings: the elder, the blah-blah-er, the gossip, the elderly, etc.
What I Didn’t Love: (1) A few things didn’t ring quite true—such as when a God-fearing person refers to humans as animals. Maybe futuristic Quakers will accept a completely naturalistic explanation of life, in which humans are considered animals; but I doubt that this will ever be a majority opinion among spiritual communities (although I have very little familiarity with Quaker theology). I think the reverence for our humanity, the thing that separates us from animals, is too great for that sort of casual comment. It sounds like agnosticism trying to mask itself as theology.
But those moments are comparatively rare. Gloss got the important thing right, namely that for all the truthful, searing human folly present in every character, there is also a certain peace about the community that rings just as true.
(2) The plot is a bit of a snore, although the tension in the writing still kept me reading. The structure and purpose of the book were better formed than they are in your typical character or plot driven novels. This novel was more “idea-driven,” or, as Orson Scott Card might have put it in his Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy, “milieu-driven.” The wandering plot feels designed to mirror the wandering quality of a Quaker’s movements in the spiritual realm—waiting for the spirit to speak through them to the community at large. Waiting. Listening. Then, perhaps, speaking.
Other Comments: There is some very technical jargon about the ship and the theories of survival. I don’t really understand or care about those, but I thought I’d mention them in case they matter to someone else.
Recommendation: For adults who love thoughtful, literary sci-fi and for readers wanting an intro to hard-sci-fi (because the book is rather short).
3 stars for characters, atmosphere and cohesive vision.
Favorite Quote: “When people are feeling the weight of their own lives, they want to see the life other animals are given, and there is something mysterious and revealing about the discarded machinery of birds’ lives. In abandoned flakes of eggshell, emptied seed cases, the hollow stems of cottongrass, in the delicate attenuated backbones of fish and the teeth of desiccated crustaceans, you can sometimes glimpse the bare and intricate structures of God” (239).
You can follow my speculative fiction reviews and videos on my blog, Christy Luis Reviews: Speculative Fiction.
December 22, 2011
So while I'm glad to have read this book, I can't say I'd recommend it to too many people. If you like literary SF, character-focused (but not character-driven), and richly described novels, you may find this to your liking. But this isn't something to be read by people expecting a fast-paced adventure with lots of shiny technology. Nor do I find this book to be a worthy successor to LeGuin. Certainly, there are LeGuin-esque moments here, but even LeGuin has more focused and stronger plotted novels than this, which has a distinct lack of cause-and-effect. Which isn't a bad thing, per se, but it's something to be aware of before settling down with this book.[return][return]For a full review, which may or may not include spoilers, please click here: http://calico-reaction.livejournal.co...
October 31, 2017
I really wanted to like this book more. A generational colony ship? Esperanto-speaking space-Quakers? Written by an Oregonian? Sounds like a much needed win.
Unfortunately, this book can't quite decide whether it wants to be an sci-fi adventure/western colonization story or a utopian character study and so it ends up doing neither really well. It's pretty slow. There are a lot of meandering and somewhat tedious trips down Memory Lane during what seem like they should be intense/crucial moments. Oh, and there's an unnecessary rape scene.
On the plus side, the society and the ship are both very cool, and Gloss is obviously a very talented writer. Scenes from the book have definitely stuck with me, and I feel like the will be stuck with me for some time.
Unfortunately, this book can't quite decide whether it wants to be an sci-fi adventure/western colonization story or a utopian character study and so it ends up doing neither really well. It's pretty slow. There are a lot of meandering and somewhat tedious trips down Memory Lane during what seem like they should be intense/crucial moments. Oh, and there's an unnecessary rape scene.
On the plus side, the society and the ship are both very cool, and Gloss is obviously a very talented writer. Scenes from the book have definitely stuck with me, and I feel like the will be stuck with me for some time.
October 22, 2009
The idea of this book is that a spacecraft full of Esperanto-speaking Quakers has made a two-century interstellar voyage to escape ecological catastrophe on Earth. The planet they arrive at is barely habitable, and they face the hard decision of how, or whether, to settle there. This could make an interesting story, but instead the book focuses on how all the characters go through various kinds of grief, resulting in a gloomy but uneventful plot that didn't interest me much. Still, the writing is often beautiful and I get a kick out of interplanetary exploration being on the agenda of Meetings for Business. And the prologue is set in the future of what's clearly a fictionalized Monteverde!
December 31, 2014
A really different take on a generation ship, and a very human story. The writing style is lyrical and the ideas are fresh, but this book isn't for everyone. People with more standard genre expectations might easily be disappointed. These are Esperanto-speaking Quakers in space. The story lives in the head space of several characters. It's about their daily lives, loves, memories, and the choices they must make. There is almost zero dialogue, so the book presents a dense block of text to navigate, which I did find fatiguing. Yet, it held my interest all the way through. The last chapter is especially rewarding.
May 25, 2015
Certainly one of the best if not the best generation ship book I have read. The story is told through individual experiences and reactions from before the ship leaves, while the ship is travelling, and after land fall is made. The characters, their interactions and the background implications of their environment are very well realised without an overload of minutiae. In addition, the exploration of various concerns and implications of both generation ships and choosing whether to settle on the initial destination planet is both realistic and revealing.
October 21, 2015
I thought this was brilliant speculative fiction. The writing is beautiful, the notion of this flawed Eden-like star ship with its intentional community of Quakers weighing the spiritual values of their journey was full of surprises and insights. Walt Whitman's voice runs throughout! No easy answers, no obvious heroes or villains, but a profound sense of the journey of the soul is played out in unexpected ways.
November 2, 2020
I love this book.
I've loved it since the first time I read it, about 20 years ago, when it leapt off a library shelf into my hands. (I remember looking at the plain, elegant cover, and the beautiful, enigmatic title, and thinking, I'm going to like this ...) I have loved buying random copies, and presenting it to friends and students, over the years; I have loved rereading it for the first time in a while.
Why do I love it? Well, it's beautifully written, of course. But, let's be honest, beautiful writing is ten a penny: it's what you do with it. How the beautiful words, in a pleasing order, hang meat upon the narrative bones. For me, it's the way that this novel makes me feel thoroughly engaged with the lives of its characters, and builds up to a picture of what it means to be the "world entire," and at the same time a small cog in something much bigger than yourself.
For me, Gloss' narrative choices are ... well, dazzling. I love the framing device, of chapters set 175 years before and approximately 100 years after the main events and the main characters of the story, chapters which elegantly solve the narrative problems of putting the main story in a kind of context-- What's happening here? How did we get where we are? and What happened next?
The Prologue allows Gloss to do the heavy lifting of exposition without clumsy infodumps (or, perhaps I should say, without making the infodumps feel clumsy ...) It's the 1st person narrative of Dolores Negrete, a 60+ year old woman with no immediate family, who is struggling with her decision to join a group of Quaker emigres who are fleeing the environmental and political chaos of Earth on the generation starship Dusty Miller. With no family to pressure her either way, Dolores is an individual who is perfectly poised between clinging to the devil you know, and taking a leap of faith that will inevitably involve discomfort and danger, just at a time in her life when she'd be forgiven for wanting comfort, if not safety. Dolores' ruminations, as she takes one last (perhaps) walk around the village in Costa Rica she has called home, tell us all we need to know about the mess that the Earth is in, the basics of the Dusty Miller project, and about Dolores as a person who must live (and die) with her decision.
The main events of the novel take place about 175 years later, and follow the dramatic and mundane events of the descendants of some of Dolores' friends and neighbours, as the Dusty Miller tentatively approaches the first habitable planet they have encountered in their long, multi-generation voyage. Like Dolores, 175 years before, the question is, do we stay or do we go? -- the planet they are approaching is habitable, just, but hardly an Eden. The Dusty Miller provides them all with a marvel of sustainable living, but it's old, and the infrastructure is beginning to show its cracks. Whatever they decide -- to cut bait and stay, or to limp on for four or five generations to the next star with a "Goldilocks planet," in the hope that it offers something better -- they all know that they (and their children, and grandchildren) will have to live (and die) with their decision. And against this background, our characters go through the relatively ordinary dramas of life, small, large and massively life-altering. There are suicides, and family breakdowns, anger and rape, as everyone suffers a kind of depressive madness -- the simanas -- as the residents of the Dusty Miller struggle mindfully with the pressure of the decision before them.
And then, in the final chapter,
I also loved the worldbuilding. Gloss develops a society based on Quaker principles that is quite amazing. (In future, I want all committees that I belong to to have a Mindful Silence before the business of the Meeting begins, to allow the Sense of the Meeting to emerge ... Fat chance ... ) I love the model of sustainability that the Dusty Miller offers -- use everything, waste nothing, figure out clever workarounds, respect your environment. Not surprising that recently Kim Stanley Robinson offered this novel as his only fiction suggestion among his list of "the best books to help us navigate the next 50 years," as an example of a novel that "can also help us imagine a better future."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I don't mind saying that I glowed with very unQuakerlike pride when I realized that Stan and I are of a like mind on this one.
I love this book.
I've loved it since the first time I read it, about 20 years ago, when it leapt off a library shelf into my hands. (I remember looking at the plain, elegant cover, and the beautiful, enigmatic title, and thinking, I'm going to like this ...) I have loved buying random copies, and presenting it to friends and students, over the years; I have loved rereading it for the first time in a while.
Why do I love it? Well, it's beautifully written, of course. But, let's be honest, beautiful writing is ten a penny: it's what you do with it. How the beautiful words, in a pleasing order, hang meat upon the narrative bones. For me, it's the way that this novel makes me feel thoroughly engaged with the lives of its characters, and builds up to a picture of what it means to be the "world entire," and at the same time a small cog in something much bigger than yourself.
For me, Gloss' narrative choices are ... well, dazzling. I love the framing device, of chapters set 175 years before and approximately 100 years after the main events and the main characters of the story, chapters which elegantly solve the narrative problems of putting the main story in a kind of context-- What's happening here? How did we get where we are? and What happened next?
The Prologue allows Gloss to do the heavy lifting of exposition without clumsy infodumps (or, perhaps I should say, without making the infodumps feel clumsy ...) It's the 1st person narrative of Dolores Negrete, a 60+ year old woman with no immediate family, who is struggling with her decision to join a group of Quaker emigres who are fleeing the environmental and political chaos of Earth on the generation starship Dusty Miller. With no family to pressure her either way, Dolores is an individual who is perfectly poised between clinging to the devil you know, and taking a leap of faith that will inevitably involve discomfort and danger, just at a time in her life when she'd be forgiven for wanting comfort, if not safety. Dolores' ruminations, as she takes one last (perhaps) walk around the village in Costa Rica she has called home, tell us all we need to know about the mess that the Earth is in, the basics of the Dusty Miller project, and about Dolores as a person who must live (and die) with her decision.
The main events of the novel take place about 175 years later, and follow the dramatic and mundane events of the descendants of some of Dolores' friends and neighbours, as the Dusty Miller tentatively approaches the first habitable planet they have encountered in their long, multi-generation voyage. Like Dolores, 175 years before, the question is, do we stay or do we go? -- the planet they are approaching is habitable, just, but hardly an Eden. The Dusty Miller provides them all with a marvel of sustainable living, but it's old, and the infrastructure is beginning to show its cracks. Whatever they decide -- to cut bait and stay, or to limp on for four or five generations to the next star with a "Goldilocks planet," in the hope that it offers something better -- they all know that they (and their children, and grandchildren) will have to live (and die) with their decision. And against this background, our characters go through the relatively ordinary dramas of life, small, large and massively life-altering. There are suicides, and family breakdowns, anger and rape, as everyone suffers a kind of depressive madness -- the simanas -- as the residents of the Dusty Miller struggle mindfully with the pressure of the decision before them.
And then, in the final chapter,
I also loved the worldbuilding. Gloss develops a society based on Quaker principles that is quite amazing. (In future, I want all committees that I belong to to have a Mindful Silence before the business of the Meeting begins, to allow the Sense of the Meeting to emerge ... Fat chance ... ) I love the model of sustainability that the Dusty Miller offers -- use everything, waste nothing, figure out clever workarounds, respect your environment. Not surprising that recently Kim Stanley Robinson offered this novel as his only fiction suggestion among his list of "the best books to help us navigate the next 50 years," as an example of a novel that "can also help us imagine a better future."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I don't mind saying that I glowed with very unQuakerlike pride when I realized that Stan and I are of a like mind on this one.
I love this book.
December 1, 2010
Science fictions and westerns have a lot in common. Gloss is comfortable writing about the frontier!
January 10, 2016
Not a review, just a statement of impact....this book is WOW. Loved it and the things it made me contemplate. WOW!!!
September 12, 2016
Quakers in SPACE!
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