Molly Gloss

When the world is so polluted that people live in space stations above the Earth's surface, a group of people depart their home planet on a multigenerational journey to find a new home

The Dazzle of Day

Sarah Sammis

The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss is is a generation ship saga written in the style of A Canticle for Leibowitz. It has three distinct parts: planning to leave, a death en route, and life on the new planet.

Although there isn't a single character to carry the book through from start to finish, Gloss manages to still make it a very character driven book. Each section reads like a self contained novella, thematically tied together.

My favorite part was the first story. In it, an older woman is thinking about her life in the South American Quaker community that will now be leaving Earth. She tries to compare the life she knows with the sacrifices that will be expected on the ship. It's an interesting way to begin a Generation Ship story.

If you've read Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder and want to read something just as enjoyable but more literary, give The Dazzle of Day a try.

Janice Hopper

The framing story is about a sub-light speed generation ship that is finally about to arrive at its destination star. Once there, the ship's colonists have to decide what to do: stay with their aging vehicle, or take their chances on a cold and inhospitable new world.

But it's really and truly the story of the people on the ship, who've lived there for generations and built a society and an ecosystem that works for them. The society is Quaker. They spend time sitting quietly and letting answers come to them as a group.

This is no a linear tale; and though it takes place on a generation ship, the mechanics of it all are not part of the story. There's a bit at the beginning where they're doing maintenance on the sails that have brought the ship to its new "harbor," but that's about it. Honestly, thaAurorat was kind of a relief, because I'm the sort of person who always wonders about the how the plumbing works and who maintains the reactors and stuff like that. I could just let that worry go and assume it all just works. (Cf Aurora) No worries about incompatible proteins here.

The writing here is very fine and a little dense. It's quietly intelligent. The characters are complex and interesting. The story is ultimately hopeful. It takes a little work to read, but I'm glad I read it.

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).

The Dazzle of Day

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