- Dayworld
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Dayworld 
Author(s) Philip José Farmer Cover artist Don Ivan Punchatz Country USA Language English Series Dayworld Genre(s) Science Fiction Publisher Putnam Publishing Group Publication date 1985 Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback), Ebook (Adobe Acrobat & MS Reader) Pages 320 p. (paperback edition) ISBN 0399129677 (paperback edition) OCLC Number 11133683 Dewey Decimal 813/.54 19 LC Classification PS3556.A72 D34 1985 Followed by Dayworld Rebel, 1987 Plot summary
Dayworld is the first in the Dayworld trilogy of science fiction novels by Philip José Farmer. The story is set in a dystopian future in which an overpopulated world solves the problem by allocating people only one day per week. For the rest of the six days they are 'stoned,' a kind of suspended animation. The novels focus on a man, Jeff Caird, who is a daybreaker, someone who lives more than one day a week. He is not like most daybreakers; he belongs to a government defying group called the “Immers”. The Immers are a very large and powerful group that works to create a better government. Not all Immers are daybreakers, so to get messages and information from one day to the next, they have daybreakers, like Jeff, to work in every day. The daybreakers of the Immers assume seven different personalities and seven different jobs. They slip from culture to culture, in seven different worlds.
As Jeff goes day to day, he runs into problems while working as an Immer and as a daybreaker, and must cover his tracks, all while trying to keep up with his seven different lives, families, friends, and jobs. Eventually the stress makes Jeff unstable, and the Immers must dispose of him to keep the rest of the Immers safe. Jeff, wanting to live, tries to escape the Immers, but there are undercover Immers in every job, area, and government level. Jeff is caught and put in a sort of insane asylum, classified with “multiple personality disorder”, for the legal time before he can be considered “incurable” and killed. But Jeff has an escape plan…
Awards and recognition
Nominated for the Locus Award (1986 - Best SF Novel: 23rd).[1]
There are two sequels to this novel: Dayworld Rebel, published in 1987 and Dayworld Breakup, published in 1990.
References
- ^ "1986 Locus Awards". Locus Publications. http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Locus1986.html. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
Categories: 1985 novels | Dystopian novels | Novels by Philip José Farmer | 1980s science fiction novels | 1980s science fiction novel stubs
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