Discount Price: $6.50
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780553581300
ISBN number: 0553581309
Label: Spectra
Manufacturer: Spectra
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: October 05, 1999
Publishing house: Spectra
Release Date: October 05, 1999
Sale Popularity Level: 389945
Studio: Spectra
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In a world dedicated to pleasure, one young rebel sets out on a forbidden quest--.
Published for the very first time in a single volume, Tanith Lee's duet of novels set in a hedonistic Utopia are as riveting and revolutionary as they were when they very first appeared two decades ago.
It's a perfect existence, a world in which no pleasure is off-limits, no risk is too dangerous, and no responsibilities can cramp your style. Not if you're Jang: a caste of libertine teenagers in the city of Four BEE. But when you're expected to make trouble--when you can kill yourself on a whim and return in another body, when you're encouraged to change genders at will and experience whatever you desire--you've got no reason to rebel...until making love and raising hell, daring death and running wild just leave you cold and empty.
Ravenous for true adventures of the mind and body, desperate to find some meaning, one restless spirit finally bucks the system--and by shattering the rules, strikes at the very heart of a soulless society....
Amazon.com Review:
Tanith Lee, winner of the August Derleth Award and several World Fantasy Awards, is best known as a fantasy and horror writer, but she has written several fine SF novels, two of which, Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, form a duology now available in the single volume Biting the Sun.
The far future has brought freedom not only from material want but also from rules, responsibilities, and risk. You can change bodies and genders like clothes, make love with whomever you want, live forever, and kill yourself as often as you like. You can have everything, except a meaningful life. Then one day a restless soul discovers an act so shocking and terrifying that human society has forgotten its existence. --Cynthia Ward
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This is one of my favorite books. It is a fantastically-told tale of spiritual malaise in a hedonistic utopia.
(Warning: spoilers!)
In a idealized, futuristic world, humans live in cities under fabulous domes where robots cater to their needs. Adolescence in the domed cities typically lasts for half a century, or more, and the life of a single individual might span centuries, until the soul becomes weary of living and voluntarily requests "personality dissolution," which is not even death, but a kind of deferred reincarnation. Young people in this world are encouraged to indulge in all manner of hedonistic activities, and even suicide is mostly recreational, as new bodies are routinely custom-made for everyone. Gender can be changed on a whim, and it is not unusual for inhabitants of the cities to request bodies with wings, or fur, or bodies monstrous in appearance. In this world, senses can be distorted for pleasure, dreams can be ordered up, and work is virtually non-existent.
This book tells the story of a young girl who has every experience, and every object she could ever desire - and who is profoundly unsatisfied. She begins her quest for meaning by denying that pleasure and safety are the goals of life, moves on to breaking the taboos of her culture, and ends up leaving the magnificent life of the cities behind for good. Her life as a member of a community of exiles in the desert is harsh and terrifying at times, but it is also filled with meaning and deeper joys than the ones she knew before.
The book ends on an optimistic note, with the human spirit asserting itself against the protectionist and machine forces which seek to oppress it - by which I mean all those busybody, paternalistic robots that make up the city's "Committee." Thought-provoking, entertaining and highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
I was having the most stressful four months of my life, and every time I picked up this book, I was instantly transported to the no-responsibilities, no-danger, money-free, superficially-gorgeous, pleasure-dedicated, high-tech world I imagined could solve all my own problems, and then entertainingly placed into the mind of our nameless, i'm-not-taking-your-bull-crap, teenage protagonist, who proved to have more guts and dreams than anyone that knew her could have imagined.
For anyone who has felt trapped and restless, who has fought depression by means of the external world, and has failed endeavor after attempt, the beginning of this story will ring all too true, but through her self-discovery, you, the reader, will embark on an increasingly epic journey and find that society does not make who you are, or anyone else with true heart.
In the second half of "Biting the Sun", she showed me the beauty of OUR world, which I was not expecting. I will not dare to explain that, because that aspect more than any other in this book, I believe, is best solely left to the interpretation of the reader. ;)
If you are interested in all of this... and the human condition!... then you should give this book a go!!! This 1st person writing style is quick and easy, almost immaturely & confusingly so sometimes, but that's just another off-beat quality that makes this book so grand -- the protagonist is a teenager, and this is the future, so what the heck? It fits!
This is my very first Tanith Lee book ever. There is so much I love about this book --- the language, the pictures it makes in my head, the setting, some incredibly inspiring quotes among so much that is vague --- that I cannot imagine another of her books topping this off, but I hear that this is one of her early works, so c'mon, surprise me some more Tanith Lee!!!
Rated by buyers -
Lee really gets you into this book. Set in a time when dying holds no consequence since you can come back and design a new body and when you can design your own dreams, one young jang girl rebels. Tired of the same thing she tries at very first to move up a stage to an older person when that fails she tries at working. She tries all things from digging up artifacts in the desert to making a child and breaks the few rules that the society had set and ends up being thrown from civilization for killing another person against their will. Ready to experience new things she starts her own garden in the desert and oasis of freedom she was exiled to where she can live and be happy until others want that same freedom and the society she was desperate to escape from starts meddling its way back into her life.
Good book, had romance, adventure, fantasy, I loved it. It was long though (I read it in one sitting) so don't buy it if you'll just read a page every other day that really takes away from the story.
Rated by buyers -
I've seen most reviewers class this as SF - but I'd put it in the fantasy section. Other reviewers have given you excellent information on the content of the collection of two novels. I read Drinking Sapphire Wine very first as a teenager (my FIRST SF/Fantasy experience)and it's great as a stand alone novel. Reading Don't Bite the Sun gave me the background to understand the heroine/hero's (as you can switch body genders!) actions and why she/he chose instead of PD (where your personality is wiped and you "return" as a child to "utopia"). I identified with the main character, who's name is never mentioned in either novel, as she/he was a loner as I was and still am to most extent and saw the world in a different light than others as well as had a love for pets, archaeology and the desert. I admit to having read this book over and over and over and still enjoy it yesterday as an adult, along with the Sliver Metal Lover these are my favorite novels from Tanith Lee's great volume of work. When I was a teen I indoctrinated my friends to these novels and we used the Jang slang in our everyday language and notes. My very first copies were LOST by a friend who SAID they were stolen out of his locker - HA! I don't BELIVE it. He was either obsessed with me (which he outgrew and married a lovely lady) and wanted my property or didn't want to buy his own copies to read and read! Along with the SF of body and sex changes there is the background of human emotions, which have been squashed to only "good" emotions by hypnoschool, revealing some of the darker emotions of the characters and love which will endure the ages. Exiles from the four Bee's, the main character and her/his friends/lovers and followers and some desert animals struggle to make an existence outside the dome - which except for a little android sabotage (AGAINST their programing!), turns out to be a better life than in the cities and the main characters find true love instead of having love of the domes. Would I read this again - yes I have - over and over.
Rated by buyers -
I was surprised that no one saw the connection between the theme of this book and the theme with Dostoevsky's "The Underground Man". Whereas Dostoevsky takes the idea that man is inherently lazy, selfish, and easily bored and illustrates it in subtle ways in what was the present for him, Tanith Lee basically magnifies everything Dostoevsky has to say in a way that you can't ignore it, and puts it waaaaay into the future.
For those of you who haven't read Dostoevsky, as it isn't common with teenage sci-fi lovers, Dostoevsky was basically a conservative in the 1800s when communism was just begining in Russia. Russian communists beleived that through communism, man would live in a paradise, with all needs met, and do work for the sake of work and his love for his neighbor. Communism placed way too much trust in the goodness of human beings. Dostoevsky knew that no matter what, humans would never be content with what they had, and "The Underground Man" was a sort of warning against this idea.
Anyways, Tanith Lee understood all of this, and in her book takes us into a future where everything runs on the power of human emotion, and the need for human workers has completely vanished. Because human emotion is vital to make the city run, humans are encouraged to indulge in their every whim, to unleash all their restraints and do whatever it is they beleive will produce emotions within themselves--happiness being the preffered emotion, for when one is happy one does not question or think or ask for more. Death cannot touch the citizens. You can do anything you want without risk.
Initially, the reader may be confused, because the psychology of the citizens seem reversed. They actually enjoy in some way feeling unhappy, but soon the reader realizes why--in a world where you are pampered and all your desires met, the only way one can really feel anything is to experience a bit of dissappointment.
Anyways. It's a fabulous book, a good introduction to these deeper questions of humanity for the seeking teenager, but I think readers of all ages might enjoy it, if one can only relax themselves into the story and put their faith in the author.
Find other books like this one:
