Four-BEE

Series · 3 books · 1976-1977

By Tanith Lee

Books in series

Don't Bite the Sun

1976

It's jang to be wild and sexy and reckless. It's jang to change your body, or your gender. It's jang to do daredevil tricks, and even get killed a few times..you can always come alive again. And it's jang to try to sabotage your robot-run world. But when the madcap chase for pleasure begins to drag and you start looking for a real life to live, you find the robots have left you nothing worthwhile to do. Searching for a way out of this pointless existence you make a lot of painful and stupid mistakes. But you fight your way free and start a new life - in exile. ..and you find you have to cope with sightseers and hangers-on, all uninvited and now exiled with you - and finally come face to face with the greatest and most deadly threat of all.

Drinking Sapphire Wine

1977

Four-BEE was an utopian city. If you didn't mind being taken care of all your long long life, having a wild time as a "jang" teen-ager, able to do anything you wanted from killing yourself innumerable times, changing bodies, changing sex, and raising perpetual hell, it could be heaven. But for one inhabitant there was always something askew. He/she had tried everything and yet the taste always soured. And then he/she succeeded in committing the one illegal act—and was thrown out of heaven forever. But forever is not a term any native of that robotic utopia understood. And so he/she challenged the rules, declared independence, and set out to prove that a human was still smarter than the cleverest and most protective robot.

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Biting the Sun

1977

In a world dedicated to pleasure, one young rebel sets out on a forbidden quest—. Published for the 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 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....

Author

Tanith Lee

Author · 131 books

Tanith Lee was a British writer of science fiction, horror, and fantasy. She was the author of 77 novels, 14 collections, and almost 300 short stories. She also wrote four radio plays broadcast by the BBC and two scripts for the UK, science fiction, cult television series "Blake's 7." Before becoming a full time writer, Lee worked as a file clerk, an assistant librarian, a shop assistant, and a waitress. Her first short story, "Eustace," was published in 1968, and her first novel (for children) The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971. Her career took off in 1975 with the acceptance by Daw Books USA of her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave for publication as a mass-market paperback, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing. Lee twice won the World Fantasy Award: once in 1983 for best short fiction for “The Gorgon” and again in 1984 for best short fiction for “Elle Est Trois (La Mort).” She has been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the Boskone XVIII in Boston, USA in 1981, the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada, and Orbital 2008 the British National Science Fiction convention (Eastercon) held in London, England in March 2008. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror. Lee was the daughter of two ballroom dancers, Bernard and Hylda Lee. Despite a persistent rumour, she was not the daughter of the actor Bernard Lee who played "M" in the James Bond series of films of the 1960s. Tanith Lee married author and artist John Kaiine in 1992.