Biting the Sun
 The Eden imagery is your guess as much as mine. | |
| Written by: | Tanith Lee |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Science fiction |
| First published: | 1976 |
In The Seventies, Tanith Lee wrote two short novels entitled Don't Bite The Sun and its Sequel Drinking Sapphire Wine. These novels were later collected into a single volume as Biting the Sun.
The dome cities of Four BEE, Four BAA and Four BOO exist on a planet that is mostly desert. Within the cities, men and women can live forever in near-total hedonism, in the midst of luxurious surroundings with lots of bizarre, beautiful amusements. "Jang", the younger immortals, are expected to be wild, crazy, impulsive teenager/college student types, eventually graduating to become "Older People". Every morning sparkles with radiant sunshine and ends with a gorgeous sunset. Bodies are amazingly glamorous or cutely outre. Robots and androids do all the work.
The protagonist is bored senseless.
The story follows her (sometimes him) as she tries to find something to give her life a bit more meaning. Eventually, of course, this gets her on the wrong side of the city's android authorities...
- Babies Ever After
- Body Backup Drive: Everyone in the cities is promptly picked up and has their "life-spark" transferred into a new body of their choosing upon death. Some characters actually take advantage of this to get around the normal time limit for body changes.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Lots and lots and lots of crystal spires. Togas are never explicitly mentioned, but in this society anything is possible.
- Death Is Cheap: Due to the "life-spark" being rescued and placed in a new body upon death, death is never permanent. Even when someone decides they're done with life for real, their personality is simply wiped and placed in a new body.
- Desperately Looking for a Purpose In Life
- Designer Babies
- Driven to Suicide: Danor, though see above.
- Everyone Is Bi and/or No Bisexuals: All the relationships we see until the end of part 2 are opposite-sex, but not necessarily opposite-gender (e.g. the protagonist and Danor.) The one same-sex couple we do see is implied to be more of an If It's You It's Okay situation (one of the participants is male-identifying but stuck in a female body.) Basically, all the sex changes make it a little complicated.
- Free-Love Future: And how!
- ...although it is considered highly scandalous for Jang to have sex out of marriage; a typical chat-up line is 'Do you want to get married for a couple of hours?'.
- Future Slang: A scattering of words, mainly swears.
- Immortality: Type IV, see Suicide Is Painless below.
- No Name Given: The protagonist.
- Suicide Is Painless: "Suiciding" is commonplace among Jang who want a new body outside of the usual time limit between changes. It's not exactly painless so much as consequence-less -- the protagonist shares a fatal plane crash with a friend, and later grumbles "Why do you have to do it that way -- it hurts". The friend replies "Pain is a reality."
- Sufficiently Advanced Technology
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Danor, at least when he/she tries to play along with the social norms.
- Title Drop
- Uterine Replicator: Attempting to have a kid with yourself this way is not recommended.
- Winged Humanoid: One of many options for the bodies people design themselves, appearing a couple times.