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Title: Don't Bite the Sun
WonderClub
Item Number: 9781557420442
Number: 1
Product Description: Don't Bite the Sun
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9781557420442
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9781557420442
Rating: 3/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/04/42/9781557420442.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9296 total ratings) |
Audrey Bayze
reviewed Don't Bite the Sun on May 31, 2019A curious musical trend happened in the early-to-mid 1970s, primarily in England. A bevy of bands, inspired by the sexual revolution and the easing of public mores, began to stretch the boundaries of gender norms to the limit. Androgyny was the big new thing, and male rocks stars in particular took the opportunity to create stage personas that were designed to playfully shock and awe their fans and irritate the staid and conservative establishment. This musical and visual movement was to become known as “glam.†Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, Mott The Hoople, Slade, The Sweet, Marc Bolan, and Roxy Music all became stars, and changed the look and sound of rock music forever, influencing countless bands across generations.
Okay, Mike, that’s nice. But what the HELL does it have to do with a book review of an obscure pulp science-fiction title like “Don’t Bite The Sun?†Well, lemme tell ya. Here is the basic fact: Tanith Lee’s first installment in the Four-BEE duology is THE literary embodiment of glam rock. It’s like watching David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust guise, shimmering and shaking like some kind of alien being, come from above to teach us Earthers about the Cosmic Groove. It’s like seeing and hearing Roxy Music’s Brian Eno crank out the wildest synthesizer sounds ever synthesized, all the while dressed like some fallen angel, wings sprouting from his back while vocalist Bryan Ferry is swaggering and swaying and introducing us all to the New Rhythm.
First published in 1976 by DAW books, “Don’t Bite The Sun†introduces us to an unnamed, mostly female narrator who inhabits one of three huge, domed cities on a desert planet. The world itself is never named, though it could easily be a post-apocalyptic Earth set far into the future. I use the term “mostly female†because the populations of the domed cities can change sex at will, typically through suicide. Their “essences†are transferred to Limbo, where they can design a new body to inhabit until they get tired of it. Our main character spends most of the book in female guise, though she does take on a male body at one point in the story. The narrator is one of the “Jang,†the basic term used to describe the younger demographic of the cities. The expectation for the Jang is that they will act out all of their fantasies and rebellions, leading lives of sexual liberation and anarchy. Drug use is legal and encouraged, and there are no laws to speak of that can be broken. Our narrator is part of a Jang clique of friends who hang out together, having sex and popping pills and spending time in Dream Chambers which mimic immersive virtual reality video games. It’s quite the idyllic vision of teenage rebellion taken to its logical extreme, charted and approved of by the quasi-robotic overseers who seem to run the behemoth cities in conjunction with a massive artificial intelligence.
In point of fact, everything in Four-BEE is just a bit TOO idyllic for our unnamed narrator, who early on evidences a sort of tired and bored cynicism about the state of her current life. She tries various things to shake herself out of her doldrums, but nothing works. She steals a pet from outside the dome, something that resembles an orange-eyed dog with above-average intelligence. She tries to accelerate her social status to that of an “older person.†She looks for what passes for work in this strange and pampered society. She attempts to have a baby through artificial insemination. She travels to another one of the domed cities to look for a male who can provide the other half of her fertilization process for the baby. And I really don’t want to give any more away. Suffice to say this a coming of age novel in the middle of a glam rock concert, all noise and music and feathers and glitter flying about everywhere and getting into quite literally every available orifice. It would be tempting for me to say that “Don’t Bite The Sun†is a lot like reading Arthur C. Clarke’s “The City and the Stars†on acid, but that would be too easy. Lee’s domed cities owe a nod to Clarke’s visionary classic, but the similarities don’t stretch out too far.
Tanith Lee is a ridiculously talented writer. Her world-building here is first-class and exceptionally vivid. She employs a number of Jang slang terms that she helpfully defines at the start of the book, although it’s nothing as challenging as the “Droog†vocabulary that Anthony Burgess employed in “A Clockwork Orange.†I have seen a few comparisons to “A Clockwork Orange†in other reviews for this book, but to be honest there is no clear comparison between the two works. Burgess created a dystopian world full of menace and paranoia, peppered with a spot of the old ultra-violence. Lee’s vision is far more benevolent and much less oppressive, all of the drama of the plot being driven by the need of the main character to find meaning and individuality in a world where there seems to be no purpose to life other than to basically do whatever the hell you wish to do with no constraints. “Don’t Bite The Sun†is a science-fiction bildungsroman for the glam generation, full of sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll….and I like it.
There is also a clear vein of humor to be found within these pages. One can easily envision the comedic potential of the poor quasi-robotic administrator who has to continually deal with the latest schemes of our narrator as she attempts to change her fortunes and find her true self in this self-contained society where the idea of “self†has been subsumed to a communal ideal of expectations and pre-programmed “rebellion†and eventual submission to a life of bored leisure as a member of the “older class†of civilization. I found myself smiling often as I read through the novel.
I am tremendously impressed with Lee’s prescience where the science and technology of her world is concerned. The Jang recreational drug of choice is quite literally called “ecstasy,†and she foresees the immersive nature of multimedia games that can mimic self-directed dreams and experiences. It’s also quite obvious that the world outside the protective domes has experienced some sort of catastrophic climate change that has poisoned the atmosphere and left the landscape barren and inhospitable to (human?) life. Furthermore, Lee envisions a symbiosis between flesh and the artificial, her quasi-robots and even her people seeming to be some sort of a merging between the organic and the inorganic.
I am also impressed with the fact that Lee lets the reader play an active part in the world-building. She is descriptive without being overbearing about it, leaving the reader to fill in a lot of the blank spaces in the story. It is also quite ambiguous as to whether or not this story takes place on a future Earth, or if her planet and its denizens are truly alien creatures who just happen to have an anthropomorphic connection to the core psychologies that make us truly “human†in the broadest universal sense. Either way it’s clear that we are a looonnnng way from Kansas, Toto. Tanith Lee gifts us with a beautifully conceived story that rests within a crystalline shell, all shiny and fresh and brimming with new ideas even as it taps that age-old story of trying to figure out our place in the wider world. The search for that sense of place and belonging is truly one of the defining urges of the human condition, and Lee is up to the challenge here.
I’m lucky enough to have the first DAW books printing from 1976, with cover art from Michael Whelan. I’m always ready to give a shout-out to the quality and care that DAW took with its paperback offerings. This edition is 43 years old and it still looks good. I do, of course, advocate for the use of archival quality plastic bags to store your old paperbacks in, as this helps to keep oxygen and moisture off of them.
Finally, “Don’t Bite The Sun†is the first book in what was originally envisioned as a trilogy by Lee, though she quit this particular universe after only two installments. The sequel is titled “Drinking Sapphire Wine,†and I’ll review that separately when I get around to reading it. I highly recommend taking a bite out of this sun, especially if you enjoy science-fiction that’s a little bit off the beaten path. It reads as fresh and contemporary, even four decades past its original publication date. It’s even better when you set up a classic glam rock playlist to listen to in the background as you’re reading…..better yet, spin those songs on vinyl, the way they SHOULD be listened to. You’ll have time to thank me later.
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