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Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award–winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award–winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.
The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.
Contents
Introduction by Michael Swanwick
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)
The Screwfly Solution (1977)
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)
The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)
The Man Who Walked Home (1972)
And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)
The Women Men Don’t See (1973)
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)
With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)
We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)
On the Last Afternoon (1972)
She Waits for All Men Born (1976)
Slow Music (1980)
And So On, and So On (1971)
The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.
Contents
Introduction by Michael Swanwick
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)
The Screwfly Solution (1977)
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)
The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)
The Man Who Walked Home (1972)
And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)
The Women Men Don’t See (1973)
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)
With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)
We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)
On the Last Afternoon (1972)
She Waits for All Men Born (1976)
Slow Music (1980)
And So On, and So On (1971)
508 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1990
About the author
James Tiptree Jr.
236 books547 followers"James Tiptree Jr." was born Alice Bradley in Chicago in 1915. Her mother was the writer Mary Hastings Bradley; her father, Herbert, was a lawyer and explorer. Throughout her childhood she traveled with her parents, mostly to Africa, but also to India and Southeast Asia. Her early work was as an artist and art critic. During World War II she enlisted in the Army and became the first American female photointelligence officer. In Germany after the war, she met and married her commanding officer, Huntington D. Sheldon. In the early 1950s, both Sheldons joined the then-new CIA; he made it his career, but she resigned in 1955, went back to college, and earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology.
At about this same time, Alli Sheldon started writing science fiction. She wrote four stories and sent them off to four different science fiction magazines. She did not want to publish under her real name, because of her CIA and academic ties, and she intended to use a new pseudonym for each group of stories until some sold. They started selling immediately, and only the first pseudonym—"Tiptree" from a jar of jelly, "James" because she felt editors would be more receptive to a male writer, and "Jr." for fun—was needed. (A second pseudonym, "Raccoona Sheldon," came along later, so she could have a female persona.)
Tiptree quickly became one of the most respected writers in the field, winning the Hugo Award for The Girl Who was Plugged In and Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, and the Nebula Award for "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" and Houston, Houston. Raccoona won the Nebula for "The Screwfly Solution," and Tiptree won the World Fantasy Award for the collection Tales from the Quintana Roo.
The Tiptree fiction reflects Alli Sheldon's interests and concerns throughout her life: the alien among us (a role she portrayed in her childhood travels), the health of the planet, the quality of perception, the role of women, love, death, and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe. The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) has celebrated science fiction that "expands and explores gender roles" since 1991.
Alice Sheldon died in 1987 by her own hand. Writing in her first book about the suicide of Hart Crane, she said succinctly: "Poets extrapolate."
Julie Phillips wrote her biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
At about this same time, Alli Sheldon started writing science fiction. She wrote four stories and sent them off to four different science fiction magazines. She did not want to publish under her real name, because of her CIA and academic ties, and she intended to use a new pseudonym for each group of stories until some sold. They started selling immediately, and only the first pseudonym—"Tiptree" from a jar of jelly, "James" because she felt editors would be more receptive to a male writer, and "Jr." for fun—was needed. (A second pseudonym, "Raccoona Sheldon," came along later, so she could have a female persona.)
Tiptree quickly became one of the most respected writers in the field, winning the Hugo Award for The Girl Who was Plugged In and Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, and the Nebula Award for "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" and Houston, Houston. Raccoona won the Nebula for "The Screwfly Solution," and Tiptree won the World Fantasy Award for the collection Tales from the Quintana Roo.
The Tiptree fiction reflects Alli Sheldon's interests and concerns throughout her life: the alien among us (a role she portrayed in her childhood travels), the health of the planet, the quality of perception, the role of women, love, death, and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe. The Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award) has celebrated science fiction that "expands and explores gender roles" since 1991.
Alice Sheldon died in 1987 by her own hand. Writing in her first book about the suicide of Hart Crane, she said succinctly: "Poets extrapolate."
Julie Phillips wrote her biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
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October 12, 2023
"Ahead lies only the irreversible long decline. For the first time we know there is nothing beyond ourselves."
when do you know that the book you've just read is one of your favorite books? that an author you've been reading is one of your favorite authors? probably a variety of factors come into play. for me, the love affair often begins when i realize that the author or book has a few specific attributes: genuine compassion and empathy for human beings combined with a dark and despairing view of the human condition itself; an imagination so fertile and original that it verges on nuts. James Tiptree Jr. and the stories contained in this collection have such traits. it's a beautiful thing when that kind of connection between reader and story happens. and when, on top of that, the author's personal story is both fascinating and moving... LOVE. if you know nothing about the author, look her up under her pen name or her real name, Alice Sheldon. a truly fascinating and complex individual.
Tiptree has been pegged as a feminist author, from the good ole days of the 70s, and is sometimes described as a so-called Angry Feminist. well, the shoe sorta fits: she is definitely angry! her stories about gender imbalance are filled with brutal men, disempowered women, and a barely simmering undercurrent of rage at the injustice of it all. i have absolutely no problem with this and i don't think being considered a "feminist" is remotely insulting. however, the idea that Tiptree writes primarily about the issues of women is not just limiting (similar to likewise limiting descriptions of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood)... it is incorrect. Tiptree writes about gender, about change, about society, about life, about death - the whole kit & kaboodle. she is not a single-issue writer and her stories are overflowing with marvelous idea after marvelous idea - of which the relationship between the genders is just one of many concerns. she writes with passion, fierce conviction, and is possessed of a remarkable generosity of spirit towards her doomed characters and despairing situations. "despair"... that should probably be addressed. the stories in this collection are bleak and deeply tragic. don't look for happy endings when reading Tiptree! one of the more positive endings has its effervescent narrator joyfully accepting his slow death and consumption by his beloved life-partner; another has a pair of characters excitedly exit the dull, restrictive confines of earth, forever.
all of the stories contained within this collection are gems. some are beautifully polished and glitter with their brilliance. others are more rough-hewn, less pretty to the eye - but valuable nonetheless. each one is deeply intelligent; each one is a distillation and expansion of a particular thesis or set of ideas; each story is overflowing with wit, smarts, sadness, and life; each story stands completely on its own. here are some of my favorites:
(special thanks to BunWat for helping my wee little brain fully understand the ramifications of several of these stories.)
The Screwfly Solution: something insidious is turning men against women... Tiptree takes her basic idea and spins it in directions that are full of tension and slowly ratcheting unease... the mid-stream change in narrators is an ingenious decision.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In: a sad pop culture addict becomes a glorious celebrity & beautiful face of sinister corporate interests... a buzzing, dizzying use of slangy language and a dense narrative full of extreme emotional highs and lows.
The Women Men Don't See: are women a separate species? apparently only time and opportunity will tell... perhaps Tiptree's most famous tale, this story about the secret nature of women is warm, wise, deviously sardonic, and has one of the most nihilistically hopeful endings i've ever read.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: three astronauts are flung far into the future, to discover that the world has changed, possibly for the better - but for them, definitely for the worse... i loved the depiction of this futuristic society, in many ways a personal dream come true (minus, ahem, a few key aspects)... i smiled and laughed so much while reading this one. oh, the tragic fate of assholes!
With Delicate Mad Hands: a physically unattractive woman takes control of a ship to search for destiny and fulfill her most secret dreams... it should be mentioned that the highly sympathetic woman in question is a murderous psychopath... this novella is equal parts nuts 'n bolts thriller, xenographic study of a bizarre planet full of unusual (and unusually loveable) alien species, and psychological portrait of a disturbed and downtrodden woman... a rapturously annhilating mystery in space.
A Momentary Taste of Being: a suspenseful, well-detailed and richly characterized novella about a scout ship's search for a colony site for an overpopulated earth... featuring disturbing mind control, creepy incestuous undertones, a hyper-sexualized alien 'invasion', a terrifying transcendence... my favorite story in the collection.
We Who Stole the Dream: tonight the aliens revolt! against disgusting, oppressive humans, of course. HUMANS OUT OF THE GALAXY NOW!
Love Is the Plan the Plan is Death: a hopeful tale of a charmingly high-spirited, forward-thinking young lad learning about life, death, and love... slowly coming to understand that the increasing length of the cold seasons equals increasing danger... fighting against tradition and culture to protect his and his loved ones' future... it should also be noted that the endearing hero in question is a gigantic, savagely violent alien-spider-monster.
Slow Music: two of the final inhabitants of earth struggle to decide if they want to stay themselves and continue the human race, or transcend into the great beyond... a great twist ending... a mournful saga in miniature.
"A Mournful Saga in Miniature"... that phrase could also be used to describe each and every one of these glorious stories. i was enchanted by the despairing, empathetic tragedy and lightly percolating wit of the visions contained within this book. in many ways i am reminded of an equally dark and wonderful classic scifi writer - the ineffable Cordwainer Smith. two beautiful writers and two amazing human beings.
i love you, Alice Sheldon! and your stories, so full of dark yet wistful tragedy.
"The lutroid's nictitating membranes filmed his eyes. After a moment he said formally, 'You carry despair as your gift'."
when do you know that the book you've just read is one of your favorite books? that an author you've been reading is one of your favorite authors? probably a variety of factors come into play. for me, the love affair often begins when i realize that the author or book has a few specific attributes: genuine compassion and empathy for human beings combined with a dark and despairing view of the human condition itself; an imagination so fertile and original that it verges on nuts. James Tiptree Jr. and the stories contained in this collection have such traits. it's a beautiful thing when that kind of connection between reader and story happens. and when, on top of that, the author's personal story is both fascinating and moving... LOVE. if you know nothing about the author, look her up under her pen name or her real name, Alice Sheldon. a truly fascinating and complex individual.
Tiptree has been pegged as a feminist author, from the good ole days of the 70s, and is sometimes described as a so-called Angry Feminist. well, the shoe sorta fits: she is definitely angry! her stories about gender imbalance are filled with brutal men, disempowered women, and a barely simmering undercurrent of rage at the injustice of it all. i have absolutely no problem with this and i don't think being considered a "feminist" is remotely insulting. however, the idea that Tiptree writes primarily about the issues of women is not just limiting (similar to likewise limiting descriptions of Angela Carter or Margaret Atwood)... it is incorrect. Tiptree writes about gender, about change, about society, about life, about death - the whole kit & kaboodle. she is not a single-issue writer and her stories are overflowing with marvelous idea after marvelous idea - of which the relationship between the genders is just one of many concerns. she writes with passion, fierce conviction, and is possessed of a remarkable generosity of spirit towards her doomed characters and despairing situations. "despair"... that should probably be addressed. the stories in this collection are bleak and deeply tragic. don't look for happy endings when reading Tiptree! one of the more positive endings has its effervescent narrator joyfully accepting his slow death and consumption by his beloved life-partner; another has a pair of characters excitedly exit the dull, restrictive confines of earth, forever.
all of the stories contained within this collection are gems. some are beautifully polished and glitter with their brilliance. others are more rough-hewn, less pretty to the eye - but valuable nonetheless. each one is deeply intelligent; each one is a distillation and expansion of a particular thesis or set of ideas; each story is overflowing with wit, smarts, sadness, and life; each story stands completely on its own. here are some of my favorites:
(special thanks to BunWat for helping my wee little brain fully understand the ramifications of several of these stories.)
The Screwfly Solution: something insidious is turning men against women... Tiptree takes her basic idea and spins it in directions that are full of tension and slowly ratcheting unease... the mid-stream change in narrators is an ingenious decision.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In: a sad pop culture addict becomes a glorious celebrity & beautiful face of sinister corporate interests... a buzzing, dizzying use of slangy language and a dense narrative full of extreme emotional highs and lows.
The Women Men Don't See: are women a separate species? apparently only time and opportunity will tell... perhaps Tiptree's most famous tale, this story about the secret nature of women is warm, wise, deviously sardonic, and has one of the most nihilistically hopeful endings i've ever read.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: three astronauts are flung far into the future, to discover that the world has changed, possibly for the better - but for them, definitely for the worse... i loved the depiction of this futuristic society, in many ways a personal dream come true (minus, ahem, a few key aspects)... i smiled and laughed so much while reading this one. oh, the tragic fate of assholes!
With Delicate Mad Hands: a physically unattractive woman takes control of a ship to search for destiny and fulfill her most secret dreams... it should be mentioned that the highly sympathetic woman in question is a murderous psychopath... this novella is equal parts nuts 'n bolts thriller, xenographic study of a bizarre planet full of unusual (and unusually loveable) alien species, and psychological portrait of a disturbed and downtrodden woman... a rapturously annhilating mystery in space.
A Momentary Taste of Being: a suspenseful, well-detailed and richly characterized novella about a scout ship's search for a colony site for an overpopulated earth... featuring disturbing mind control, creepy incestuous undertones, a hyper-sexualized alien 'invasion', a terrifying transcendence... my favorite story in the collection.
We Who Stole the Dream: tonight the aliens revolt! against disgusting, oppressive humans, of course. HUMANS OUT OF THE GALAXY NOW!
Love Is the Plan the Plan is Death: a hopeful tale of a charmingly high-spirited, forward-thinking young lad learning about life, death, and love... slowly coming to understand that the increasing length of the cold seasons equals increasing danger... fighting against tradition and culture to protect his and his loved ones' future... it should also be noted that the endearing hero in question is a gigantic, savagely violent alien-spider-monster.
Slow Music: two of the final inhabitants of earth struggle to decide if they want to stay themselves and continue the human race, or transcend into the great beyond... a great twist ending... a mournful saga in miniature.
"A Mournful Saga in Miniature"... that phrase could also be used to describe each and every one of these glorious stories. i was enchanted by the despairing, empathetic tragedy and lightly percolating wit of the visions contained within this book. in many ways i am reminded of an equally dark and wonderful classic scifi writer - the ineffable Cordwainer Smith. two beautiful writers and two amazing human beings.
i love you, Alice Sheldon! and your stories, so full of dark yet wistful tragedy.
"The lutroid's nictitating membranes filmed his eyes. After a moment he said formally, 'You carry despair as your gift'."
November 26, 2019
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the start of this review: James Tiptree Jr. is the pen name of Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon. Yep. A woman!
And, sadly, there was good reason why she published under a man's name as can be seen from the fact that even hardcore fans walked away and suddenly scoffed at originally hailed and beloved work once they found out the author was female.
Alice Sheldon was born on August 24, 1915. James Tiptree Jr. was one of two pen names she used, the other being Raccoona Sheldon (at least one of the stories in here was published under that name, actually).
Alice's father was Herbert Bradley, a lawyer and naturalist, and her mother was Mary Hastings Bradley, a prolific writer of fiction and travel books. Alice lived in Chicago with her parents but went on many trips with them from an early age on (to Africa and other places around the world).
When she was fourteen, she was sent to finishing school in Lausanne in Switzerland, before returning to the US to attend a boarding school in New York.
Later on, she became a graphic artist, a painter, and (under the name Alice Bradley Davey) an art critic for the Chicago Sun between 1941 and 1942.
In 1934 she eloped and married William (Bill) Davey. However, he was a heavy drinker and domestic life didn't suit Alice. So they got divorced and she joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1942 where she worked in the Army Air Forces photo-intelligence group. She later was promoted to major, a high rank for women at the time.
It was there that she met and fell in love with Huntington D. Sheldon. They got married at the close of the war on her assignment in Paris in 1945.
She was discharged from the military in 1946, at which time she set up a small business in partnership with her husband. It might be worth mentioning that her husband was somewhat of a conservative but that he obviously had no problem with being married (and not caging) such a strong-willed women as Alice, a self-confessed feminist.
In 1952 she and her husband were invited to join the CIA, which she accepted. At the CIA, she worked as a spy, but didn't enjoy the work. Therefore, she resigned her position in 1955 and returned to college where she studied for her bachelor of arts degree at the American University (1957–1959), going on to achieve a doctorate at the George Washington University in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the responses of animals to novel stimuli in differing environments.
Also worth noting is her complex sexual orientation. She described her sexuality in different terms over many years. At one point she even said: "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up."
Her death is also intriguing: she had been suffering from depression over the years so people have contributed it to that, but especially considering her military background and strong-willed character, I have a different view. Her husband had become ill and frail, becoming almost entirely blind to name but one of his health problems. Alice expressed my own view (that apparently many especially in the military and police force share) that she wanted to end her own life while she was still able-bodied and active and that she didn't want to live without the love of her life. Her husband agreed and they formed a suicide pact. She took a shotgun and killed first her husband and then herself on May 19, 1987. They were found dead, hand in hand, in their Virginia home.
What a person! And yes, I think it's important to note these things as we read certain people's works. Especially since such circumstances most often mirror in the work itself (and explain some things).
In this short story collection, we get diseases, aliens doing to us what we did to certain other species on Earth, futures controlled by corporate interests, love led down the wrong path, time travel, reversal of science and technology, survival, post-apocalyptic wastelands, mental health problems, women begging to be "abducted" by aliens, spaceships, alien planets, sole survivors, spider-like creatures. Men and aliens and monsters of many kinds.
Sometimes the characters (both male and female, primary and secondary) are downright rotten. Yes, even the protagonists, the victims or heroes of a story. I actually thought that worked very well as a counter-balance, because there's only a narrow line between calling men out on their bullshit towards women and talking/acting like a manhater. Let's not forget, and this was my criticism of one story published under Alice's other pen name, that not all women are automatically peaceful and faultless. So there actually was a sort of equilibrium in the stories collected here (judged from a modern perspective).
However, some stories were a bit too much - too much darkness, too much rape and murder, not enough nuance (). But that didn't happen too often and had apparently been done deliberately, the author creating overdrawn cautionary tales to steer against a tendency she saw in society and wanted to counteract.
All the stories in this collection had wonderful and rich worldbuilding, no matter if the reader was transported to far-away planets, spaceships or somewhere here on Earth - and regardless of when the story took place. The writing style itself was also very engaging, making every story thrilling and foreboding and exciting, sometimes giving the reader a thing or two to puzzle over and figure out.
A wonderful collection of an obviously very intelligent and gifted writer!
And, sadly, there was good reason why she published under a man's name as can be seen from the fact that even hardcore fans walked away and suddenly scoffed at originally hailed and beloved work once they found out the author was female.
Alice Sheldon was born on August 24, 1915. James Tiptree Jr. was one of two pen names she used, the other being Raccoona Sheldon (at least one of the stories in here was published under that name, actually).
Alice's father was Herbert Bradley, a lawyer and naturalist, and her mother was Mary Hastings Bradley, a prolific writer of fiction and travel books. Alice lived in Chicago with her parents but went on many trips with them from an early age on (to Africa and other places around the world).
When she was fourteen, she was sent to finishing school in Lausanne in Switzerland, before returning to the US to attend a boarding school in New York.
Later on, she became a graphic artist, a painter, and (under the name Alice Bradley Davey) an art critic for the Chicago Sun between 1941 and 1942.
In 1934 she eloped and married William (Bill) Davey. However, he was a heavy drinker and domestic life didn't suit Alice. So they got divorced and she joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1942 where she worked in the Army Air Forces photo-intelligence group. She later was promoted to major, a high rank for women at the time.
It was there that she met and fell in love with Huntington D. Sheldon. They got married at the close of the war on her assignment in Paris in 1945.
She was discharged from the military in 1946, at which time she set up a small business in partnership with her husband. It might be worth mentioning that her husband was somewhat of a conservative but that he obviously had no problem with being married (and not caging) such a strong-willed women as Alice, a self-confessed feminist.
In 1952 she and her husband were invited to join the CIA, which she accepted. At the CIA, she worked as a spy, but didn't enjoy the work. Therefore, she resigned her position in 1955 and returned to college where she studied for her bachelor of arts degree at the American University (1957–1959), going on to achieve a doctorate at the George Washington University in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the responses of animals to novel stimuli in differing environments.
Also worth noting is her complex sexual orientation. She described her sexuality in different terms over many years. At one point she even said: "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up."
Her death is also intriguing: she had been suffering from depression over the years so people have contributed it to that, but especially considering her military background and strong-willed character, I have a different view. Her husband had become ill and frail, becoming almost entirely blind to name but one of his health problems. Alice expressed my own view (that apparently many especially in the military and police force share) that she wanted to end her own life while she was still able-bodied and active and that she didn't want to live without the love of her life. Her husband agreed and they formed a suicide pact. She took a shotgun and killed first her husband and then herself on May 19, 1987. They were found dead, hand in hand, in their Virginia home.
What a person! And yes, I think it's important to note these things as we read certain people's works. Especially since such circumstances most often mirror in the work itself (and explain some things).
In this short story collection, we get diseases, aliens doing to us what we did to certain other species on Earth, futures controlled by corporate interests, love led down the wrong path, time travel, reversal of science and technology, survival, post-apocalyptic wastelands, mental health problems, women begging to be "abducted" by aliens, spaceships, alien planets, sole survivors, spider-like creatures. Men and aliens and monsters of many kinds.
Sometimes the characters (both male and female, primary and secondary) are downright rotten. Yes, even the protagonists, the victims or heroes of a story. I actually thought that worked very well as a counter-balance, because there's only a narrow line between calling men out on their bullshit towards women and talking/acting like a manhater. Let's not forget, and this was my criticism of one story published under Alice's other pen name, that not all women are automatically peaceful and faultless. So there actually was a sort of equilibrium in the stories collected here (judged from a modern perspective).
However, some stories were a bit too much - too much darkness, too much rape and murder, not enough nuance (). But that didn't happen too often and had apparently been done deliberately, the author creating overdrawn cautionary tales to steer against a tendency she saw in society and wanted to counteract.
All the stories in this collection had wonderful and rich worldbuilding, no matter if the reader was transported to far-away planets, spaceships or somewhere here on Earth - and regardless of when the story took place. The writing style itself was also very engaging, making every story thrilling and foreboding and exciting, sometimes giving the reader a thing or two to puzzle over and figure out.
A wonderful collection of an obviously very intelligent and gifted writer!
April 1, 2022
This is going to be a long review because this book took me two months to finish! I had this anthology for several years before I cracked it. My podcast co-host mentioned one story from it and I decided to thumb through it too, and I was hooked. These stories command attention in a way hardly anything I read does. I had to read several of them multiple times. I couldn't skim. I had to ask questions and think about them, and several are still swirling in my head. I had to take breaks in between to think and reflect, and I couldn't read more than one at a time. These are the best kinds of stories, and I have a lot to say! I'll just go ahead and put it all behind a spoiler cut.
But first, a line from the last page of the last story, not a spoiler:
"You carry despair as your gift."
I don't even know what to say about some of the stories that end so perfectly or magically or sorrowfully that to describe them at all would ruin the experience. These should be savored and read and then re-read. Highly, highly recommended.
This book was also discussed on the Reading Envy Podcast Episode 02.
ETA from second read in 2015: Read these all again to discuss them with Luke on the SFBRP podcast! As great as ever.
But first, a line from the last page of the last story, not a spoiler:
"You carry despair as your gift."
I don't even know what to say about some of the stories that end so perfectly or magically or sorrowfully that to describe them at all would ruin the experience. These should be savored and read and then re-read. Highly, highly recommended.
This book was also discussed on the Reading Envy Podcast Episode 02.
ETA from second read in 2015: Read these all again to discuss them with Luke on the SFBRP podcast! As great as ever.
July 18, 2023
Wow, this was just an amazing discovery for me. Already the life story of Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree is mind-blowing, but her fiction? Holy fucking shit. She was an absolutely fabulous writer and so underrated. Her world-building is among the best ever in short sci-fi and her worldview is perhaps the most pessimistic of any sci-fi writer I have ever encountered. Each of the stories is unforgettable and just so well-written.
Some of my favorites here were the surprising "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" (an anti-masker++), "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (convincing cyberpunk sci-fi decades before Neuromancer), "The Women Men Don't See" (just, wow!), "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (terrifying and sooooo well-written!), "A Momentary Taste of Being" (how does she do it, again amazing), "We Who Stole the Dream" (awesome prefiguration of loads of sci-fi to come such as Downbelow Station), and "Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death" and "The Last Afternoon" (no one does depressing, wtf does life really mean as good as Tiptree/Sheldon).
It is so heartbreaking that she thought she had to hide her sex out of fear of outright rejection despite the extreme quality of her writing and that, in fact, she was absolutely right. When the press learned that Tiptree was indeed Sheldon, she was unable to get things published and just vanished from public sight, literally disappearing even from her family. A tragic destiny for one of the truly visionary sci-fi writing gods.
This article is highly recommended: https://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/193476...
There is also a biography of Sheldon that I'd love to read: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
Some of my favorites here were the surprising "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" (an anti-masker++), "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (convincing cyberpunk sci-fi decades before Neuromancer), "The Women Men Don't See" (just, wow!), "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (terrifying and sooooo well-written!), "A Momentary Taste of Being" (how does she do it, again amazing), "We Who Stole the Dream" (awesome prefiguration of loads of sci-fi to come such as Downbelow Station), and "Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death" and "The Last Afternoon" (no one does depressing, wtf does life really mean as good as Tiptree/Sheldon).
It is so heartbreaking that she thought she had to hide her sex out of fear of outright rejection despite the extreme quality of her writing and that, in fact, she was absolutely right. When the press learned that Tiptree was indeed Sheldon, she was unable to get things published and just vanished from public sight, literally disappearing even from her family. A tragic destiny for one of the truly visionary sci-fi writing gods.
This article is highly recommended: https://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/193476...
There is also a biography of Sheldon that I'd love to read: James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
October 9, 2008
James Tiptree Jr. wrote short stories like a goddamned ninja. Each of these well-selected pieces feel perfectly machined, a clockwork of unknowable complexity and beauty. There is humor, sadness, and stunning beauty here, as well as moments of utter darkness, Tipree has stared into the void, and it permeates her worldview and her voice.
November 27, 2019
I would like to say that each one of these stories by James Tiptree Jr., or rather, Alice Sheldon, are gender dystopian SF shorts that sharply highlight the darkness, doing it in miniature... but I would be wrong. Nothing she wrote is miniature.
In fact, all her stories are huge, not in length, but definitely in imagination, scope, and their inherent darkness. Even the ones that seem rather delightfully hopeful usually come from mate-eating gigantic alien spiders or from psychopathic and heavily abused tech who goes on a murder spree before she becomes one of the most positive people to enjoy a first-contact scenario.
Wow, right?
Most of these stories came out of the seventies and the focus on gender inequality, systematic institutional abuse, and the entitlement of jerks is all pretty front and center. The fact that Alice kept a tight lid on the fact that she was a woman writing as a man should tell you a lot. I personally think she did the whole shock-value, overboard characterizations of these abusive men as a way to normalize them in the literature. She made them heavier and darker than usual in order to underscore just how crazy it is.
The things we take for granted are NOT normal. Not back then and not now. But this is also rather the point. The shock value is in the psychology of it. We should be outraged, look at our own world, and see just how f***ing close we are to Sheldon's standard.
Scary. And others obviously agree. There are a lot of modern works that come very close to Sheldon's standard. Either they're paying homage or they believe the technique is worth revisiting.
But let me let you in on a little secret:
Alice Sheldon's writing is brilliant. Imaginative, scary, brutal, and definitely worth revisiting NOW.
This is some REAL dystopian literature. Psychological, societal, physical, and even existential. If you're scared of some nihilism, prepare yourself before picking up this book. :)
In fact, all her stories are huge, not in length, but definitely in imagination, scope, and their inherent darkness. Even the ones that seem rather delightfully hopeful usually come from mate-eating gigantic alien spiders or from psychopathic and heavily abused tech who goes on a murder spree before she becomes one of the most positive people to enjoy a first-contact scenario.
Wow, right?
Most of these stories came out of the seventies and the focus on gender inequality, systematic institutional abuse, and the entitlement of jerks is all pretty front and center. The fact that Alice kept a tight lid on the fact that she was a woman writing as a man should tell you a lot. I personally think she did the whole shock-value, overboard characterizations of these abusive men as a way to normalize them in the literature. She made them heavier and darker than usual in order to underscore just how crazy it is.
The things we take for granted are NOT normal. Not back then and not now. But this is also rather the point. The shock value is in the psychology of it. We should be outraged, look at our own world, and see just how f***ing close we are to Sheldon's standard.
Scary. And others obviously agree. There are a lot of modern works that come very close to Sheldon's standard. Either they're paying homage or they believe the technique is worth revisiting.
But let me let you in on a little secret:
Alice Sheldon's writing is brilliant. Imaginative, scary, brutal, and definitely worth revisiting NOW.
This is some REAL dystopian literature. Psychological, societal, physical, and even existential. If you're scared of some nihilism, prepare yourself before picking up this book. :)
June 9, 2011
John Clute said, “I felt that simply to read a Tiptree story was to yank it, bleeding, from its dark home.”
Tiptree herself said one of her pieces was “screaming from the heart.”
I had these two sentences up on the screen all day, and I finally realized I wasn’t reviewing because I was hoping they would give me perspective, a master key to this book so I could talk about it as a whole. Respond to the chorus these stories are. But I can’t yet. So the disconnected things I do have:
Thematically, you could pick a Tiptree story out of a lineup in about three sentences. It’ll be the one about biological drives winning out over fragile psychology. It’ll be the one delivered in a calm, reporting style while something screams underneath until its voice breaks. It’ll be the one about how sex and death are two sides of the same coin. It’ll probably be the one where most of the human race bites it.
It’ll be about men and women. It’s bizarre to say of a science fiction collection, but my immediate association is Virginia Woolf. Tiptree and Woolf had the same preoccupation with thinking about the sexes as . . . distorting gravitational pulls on each other (mostly men on women, obviously). The sort of gender essentialist thinking that is obsessed with counterfactuals – what if all men died out this way? Or that? And all the time they’re talking about “women,” you’re just like, “oh, sweetie. It’s okay. We know you’re talking about how you hurt.”
Anyway. This book blew my mind. Not every story – not even most of them. But the ones that did . . . I came to myself last Saturday, standing out at our elevator bank with an armful of recycling and my pulse going at 150, with no memory of how I’d gotten there. All I remembered was the last ten minutes of “The Screwfly Solution” playing in my ear, and I couldn’t breathe.
Right. Some actual stories.
“The Screwfly Solution” – The one that really socked me. This is classic Tiptree with all the letters and reports layered between the reader and the screaming, bloody thing that’s happening. It is I think the story that gets most keenly, most viscerally at those things I was talking about up there – sex and death, biological imperatives, dying and dying and dying. And a way of talking about gendered violence that Tiptree picked up, looking around her 1970’s world and reading her 1970’s newspapers, and mimicked down the years to me, where it sounds . . . well. It’s dead accurate, okay? Read it here.
“A Momentary Taste of being” – A long space opera colony ship thing. I spent the first 80% thinking it was nice, but wondering what the hell all these cogs and gears were doing, because I couldn’t see the structure. And the structure put itself together as fast as a Marine assembling his rifle, and then it did other things. And I said “oh,” very meekly, and went away. Nihilist was invented for this story.
“The Girl Who Was Plugged In” – a story that would have been a sentimental offensive mess from someone else. But Tiptree hit the style, the telling so right. This is about a depressed (and possibly disabled) girl in an underground bunker, living the dream life through a corporate designed body. Of course she falls in love. Of course. As the narrator says, “you really can skip this part.” But the narrator lies.
“And I have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways” – Ick. A total didactic flop, all frustrated academic rage and bureaucratic restraints on research.
“Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” – I have very mixed feelings about this one. Utterly absorbing to read, but one central premise – that a women’s only society would be different in those particular ways – struck me as nonsense. But there is something here that is psychologically true and screwed up, and the execution is, of course, flawless.
I’ll stop now.
Except no, wait, have one more. The Women Men Don’t See.
Tiptree herself said one of her pieces was “screaming from the heart.”
I had these two sentences up on the screen all day, and I finally realized I wasn’t reviewing because I was hoping they would give me perspective, a master key to this book so I could talk about it as a whole. Respond to the chorus these stories are. But I can’t yet. So the disconnected things I do have:
Thematically, you could pick a Tiptree story out of a lineup in about three sentences. It’ll be the one about biological drives winning out over fragile psychology. It’ll be the one delivered in a calm, reporting style while something screams underneath until its voice breaks. It’ll be the one about how sex and death are two sides of the same coin. It’ll probably be the one where most of the human race bites it.
It’ll be about men and women. It’s bizarre to say of a science fiction collection, but my immediate association is Virginia Woolf. Tiptree and Woolf had the same preoccupation with thinking about the sexes as . . . distorting gravitational pulls on each other (mostly men on women, obviously). The sort of gender essentialist thinking that is obsessed with counterfactuals – what if all men died out this way? Or that? And all the time they’re talking about “women,” you’re just like, “oh, sweetie. It’s okay. We know you’re talking about how you hurt.”
Anyway. This book blew my mind. Not every story – not even most of them. But the ones that did . . . I came to myself last Saturday, standing out at our elevator bank with an armful of recycling and my pulse going at 150, with no memory of how I’d gotten there. All I remembered was the last ten minutes of “The Screwfly Solution” playing in my ear, and I couldn’t breathe.
Right. Some actual stories.
“The Screwfly Solution” – The one that really socked me. This is classic Tiptree with all the letters and reports layered between the reader and the screaming, bloody thing that’s happening. It is I think the story that gets most keenly, most viscerally at those things I was talking about up there – sex and death, biological imperatives, dying and dying and dying. And a way of talking about gendered violence that Tiptree picked up, looking around her 1970’s world and reading her 1970’s newspapers, and mimicked down the years to me, where it sounds . . . well. It’s dead accurate, okay? Read it here.
“A Momentary Taste of being” – A long space opera colony ship thing. I spent the first 80% thinking it was nice, but wondering what the hell all these cogs and gears were doing, because I couldn’t see the structure. And the structure put itself together as fast as a Marine assembling his rifle, and then it did other things. And I said “oh,” very meekly, and went away. Nihilist was invented for this story.
“The Girl Who Was Plugged In” – a story that would have been a sentimental offensive mess from someone else. But Tiptree hit the style, the telling so right. This is about a depressed (and possibly disabled) girl in an underground bunker, living the dream life through a corporate designed body. Of course she falls in love. Of course. As the narrator says, “you really can skip this part.” But the narrator lies.
“And I have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways” – Ick. A total didactic flop, all frustrated academic rage and bureaucratic restraints on research.
“Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” – I have very mixed feelings about this one. Utterly absorbing to read, but one central premise – that a women’s only society would be different in those particular ways – struck me as nonsense. But there is something here that is psychologically true and screwed up, and the execution is, of course, flawless.
I’ll stop now.
Except no, wait, have one more. The Women Men Don’t See.
October 14, 2020
2020 PopSuagr Reading Challenge
An anthology
10/14/20 I reread 13/18 stories this time around. I really enjoyed literally ever story but one (the title story). I just don't fucking get it. Anyway my absolute faves in this collection are:
With Delicate Mad Hands
Screwfly Solution
And I Awoke And Found Me Here On This Cold
Hill's Side
The Last Flight Of Doctor Ain
Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death
She Waits For All Men Born
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
The first time around With Delicate Mad Hands was my favorite, but this this time it goes to Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death. It is just so cleverly written.
I am going to eventually write a full review for this.
______________________
I think about the stories in this collection so often 🥰. (Besides Jemisin) I don't think I have found stories that have affected me so deeply and that I think about so often. Will probably reread soon!
Side note: I have some notes on this so eventually I write a full review.
____________________
So good! RTC
An anthology
10/14/20 I reread 13/18 stories this time around. I really enjoyed literally ever story but one (the title story). I just don't fucking get it. Anyway my absolute faves in this collection are:
With Delicate Mad Hands
Screwfly Solution
And I Awoke And Found Me Here On This Cold
Hill's Side
The Last Flight Of Doctor Ain
Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death
She Waits For All Men Born
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
The first time around With Delicate Mad Hands was my favorite, but this this time it goes to Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death. It is just so cleverly written.
I am going to eventually write a full review for this.
______________________
I think about the stories in this collection so often 🥰. (Besides Jemisin) I don't think I have found stories that have affected me so deeply and that I think about so often. Will probably reread soon!
Side note: I have some notes on this so eventually I write a full review.
____________________
So good! RTC
August 24, 2019
James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym for Alice B. Sheldon, a brilliantly evocative, fiercely intelligent, and thoroughly inventive writer who kept her true identity secret for much of her career. The incredibly diverse stories in this collection are fueled by many bracingly cathartic and moving energies: a vital and vibrant rage at the disastrously unjust treatment of women throughout human history; an unceasingly curious obsession with the effects of animalistic, predetermined urges on both human beings and other sentient creatures; and an almost desperate hunger to discover what is left behind us when we are gone. The writing itself is explosively poetic and propulsive, alternately mournful and darkly funny, and unforgettable.
January 15, 2020
I have been meaning to get to this book for years, partly out of curiosity about a well-spoken-of author's work that I haven't had a lot of exposure of, and partly to illustrate the author's legacy in terms of the now-renamed Tiptree Award. Prior to reading this I would say I've read far more of the books and stories that received the James Tiptree Jr Award than I have of her actual work.
I would describe most of the stories in here as powerful and ground-breaking in their time. It's clear that the author's life experience as a woman working in male dominated fields and the depression that was eventually responsible for her death flow through into her work. Tiptree's perspective here is a dark one, one that expresses conviction that there's something deeply broken about gender and more specifically, masculinity.
In the brilliant "The Women Men Don't See" the protagonist is talking to Ruth about the women's lib movement which she asserts is doomed:
In the Hugo Award winning novella "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" a trio of male astronauts are catapulted into a future where society is made up of only women. Even on the short trip back to Earth with a group of female astronauts one of the men explodes into sexualized violence and all three end up being euthanized as too dangerous to keep around.
Throughout the book sexual desire and expression is equated with violence, even in the haunting "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" which deals with horrific-sounding spider-like aliens and a horrible biological imperative, without a human male in sight.
Social experimentation and commentary of the SF dominate, but there's some top-notch scientific thinking and prediction here as well, best illustrated in "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" which could have been written about Instagram influencers today.
Overall I found it a fascinating read with a repugnant world-view that I would love to reject, but am well aware that it matches the lived experience of many people. And I'm almost certainly demonstrating clear white-male privilege by even saying that.
I would describe most of the stories in here as powerful and ground-breaking in their time. It's clear that the author's life experience as a woman working in male dominated fields and the depression that was eventually responsible for her death flow through into her work. Tiptree's perspective here is a dark one, one that expresses conviction that there's something deeply broken about gender and more specifically, masculinity.
In the brilliant "The Women Men Don't See" the protagonist is talking to Ruth about the women's lib movement which she asserts is doomed:
“Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You’ll see.”Eventually Ruth and her daughter leave Earth with aliens, partly as an act of exploration, but with overtones of "anything is better than this".
In the Hugo Award winning novella "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" a trio of male astronauts are catapulted into a future where society is made up of only women. Even on the short trip back to Earth with a group of female astronauts one of the men explodes into sexualized violence and all three end up being euthanized as too dangerous to keep around.
Throughout the book sexual desire and expression is equated with violence, even in the haunting "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" which deals with horrific-sounding spider-like aliens and a horrible biological imperative, without a human male in sight.
Social experimentation and commentary of the SF dominate, but there's some top-notch scientific thinking and prediction here as well, best illustrated in "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" which could have been written about Instagram influencers today.
Overall I found it a fascinating read with a repugnant world-view that I would love to reject, but am well aware that it matches the lived experience of many people. And I'm almost certainly demonstrating clear white-male privilege by even saying that.
October 14, 2023
James Tiptree Jr. is actually Alice Bradley Shelton, and you may have already known that. For years, Tiptree dazzled the New Wave-Era (1960s-1970s) Science Fiction genre with smart, literate short stories that were wildly imaginative yet also served - as most of the best Science Fiction does - as social commentary. Tiptree's stories were unique in that much of her material focused on what could be called "women's issues" although maybe a better way to say it would be "women's uncertain place in a male-dominated society." Science Fiction authors and readers, who trumpeted Tiptree as a shining example of a male genre writer who was able to progressively write about women, probably felt betrayed when the truth was ultimately revealed. In fact, many of Tiptree's stories take on a different flavor when you read them with the perspective that they were written by a woman posing as a man; there is an undercurrent of scolding to the the Boys' Club for missing the opportunity to be more progressive about genre issues when Science Fiction was so progressive in many other areas.
Tiptree may be most remembered now by many as the namesake of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is presented annually to works that expand or explore the understanding of genre. But her writing deserves to be remembered as well, and that's where this excellent collection comes in. Tiptree's brightest and best short stories (she was most successful in the short story format) are contained in this 500+ page collection, which has very few "duds." All killer, no filler, as they say. I made some notes by each story below along with a rating to help me remember what each story was about and how much I enjoyed it overall, but your favorites may vary. Some of the stories exist for free online, if you want a taste of Tiptree's work. Expect a grim outlook and a dearth of happy endings; Tiptree suffered from depression and eventually committed suicide, but this does not subtract one iota from how emotionally impactful and thought-provoking her stories are. They deserve to be remembered and celebrated as some of the most notable works in the history of Science Fiction.
The stories:
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - 4/5 - took me a while to figure out who the woman was
The Screwfly Solution - 5/5 - a forerunner to The Handmaid’s Tale which also evokes the classic Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - 3/5 - the consequences of alien sex
The Girl Who Was Plugged In - 5/5 - second life as a product placement avatar
The Man Who Walked Home - 3/5 - time travel accident
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways - 2/5 - when a computer can't replace the human mind in science
The Women Men Don't See - 4/5 - two men and two women survive a small plane crash in the Mexican coastal jungle
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! - 4/5 - a female courier in a post-apocalyptic setting isn't what she first appears to be
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - 4/5 - subversion of the time warp trope - this time men return from space exploration 300 years into the future into a female-dominated society
With Delicate Mad Hands - 3/5 - a female astronaut escapes into deep-space to find her destiny
A Momentary Taste of Being - 3/5 - the struggle of a long-distance space exploration vessel to determine if a planet is suitable for colonization
We Who Stole The Dream - 4/5 - aliens steal a spaceship to escape human oppressors
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - 2/5 - memories from a man's life are what remains
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - 4/5 - told from the point of view of a spider-like alien creature
On the Last Afternoon - 4/5 - an offworld colony is threatened - can an alien life form save them?
She Waits for All Men Born - 3/5 - death is the catalyst for human evolution
Slow Music - 4/5 - the last humans on Earth
And So On, and So On - 3/5 - the future of humanity in space
Tiptree may be most remembered now by many as the namesake of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, which is presented annually to works that expand or explore the understanding of genre. But her writing deserves to be remembered as well, and that's where this excellent collection comes in. Tiptree's brightest and best short stories (she was most successful in the short story format) are contained in this 500+ page collection, which has very few "duds." All killer, no filler, as they say. I made some notes by each story below along with a rating to help me remember what each story was about and how much I enjoyed it overall, but your favorites may vary. Some of the stories exist for free online, if you want a taste of Tiptree's work. Expect a grim outlook and a dearth of happy endings; Tiptree suffered from depression and eventually committed suicide, but this does not subtract one iota from how emotionally impactful and thought-provoking her stories are. They deserve to be remembered and celebrated as some of the most notable works in the history of Science Fiction.
The stories:
The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - 4/5 - took me a while to figure out who the woman was
The Screwfly Solution - 5/5 - a forerunner to The Handmaid’s Tale which also evokes the classic Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - 3/5 - the consequences of alien sex
The Girl Who Was Plugged In - 5/5 - second life as a product placement avatar
The Man Who Walked Home - 3/5 - time travel accident
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways - 2/5 - when a computer can't replace the human mind in science
The Women Men Don't See - 4/5 - two men and two women survive a small plane crash in the Mexican coastal jungle
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! - 4/5 - a female courier in a post-apocalyptic setting isn't what she first appears to be
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - 4/5 - subversion of the time warp trope - this time men return from space exploration 300 years into the future into a female-dominated society
With Delicate Mad Hands - 3/5 - a female astronaut escapes into deep-space to find her destiny
A Momentary Taste of Being - 3/5 - the struggle of a long-distance space exploration vessel to determine if a planet is suitable for colonization
We Who Stole The Dream - 4/5 - aliens steal a spaceship to escape human oppressors
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - 2/5 - memories from a man's life are what remains
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - 4/5 - told from the point of view of a spider-like alien creature
On the Last Afternoon - 4/5 - an offworld colony is threatened - can an alien life form save them?
She Waits for All Men Born - 3/5 - death is the catalyst for human evolution
Slow Music - 4/5 - the last humans on Earth
And So On, and So On - 3/5 - the future of humanity in space
April 18, 2020
What a strange, unnerving and beautiful collection of stories this book is! I had heard so much about Alice Sheldon, a.k.a. James Tiptree Jr., but had never gotten around to reading her work, and I have to admit that part of me wondered if all the buzz around her writing was more around her own highly colorful life and the way she kept her identity secret for so long. But I was wrong: while everything about his woman sound fascinating, the words she put on the page don't need any help leaving a strong and lasting impression.
One thing that I noted as I read "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" was that none of those short stories or novellas ever actually went where I expected. I was constantly surprised as I flipped the page, because a story I thought would be about revenge turned out to be about longing and connection, one that felt as if it would explore survival was really about grief... I just always ended up so far from where I thought I would be that I actually found reading this book kind of exhausting - in a good way!
The many worlds created by Tiptree are often familiar, but they can also be unsettlingly alien, and there is usually a current of violence underneath the surface, that her characters may or may not embrace, but can never really ignore. The themes of death and sex are also a constant, but she played with those themes very skillfully, and it's never schlocky.
The prose is erudite, sometimes almost dreamy and consistently very good and immersive. While I docked one star due to a couple of weaker stories in this collection, this is a must-read for sci-fi fans: those stories are very ahead of their time for writing published in the 70s, and they are beautiful reflections of human nature, gender, our duty to humanity, our relationship with reality and with our future.
One thing that I noted as I read "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" was that none of those short stories or novellas ever actually went where I expected. I was constantly surprised as I flipped the page, because a story I thought would be about revenge turned out to be about longing and connection, one that felt as if it would explore survival was really about grief... I just always ended up so far from where I thought I would be that I actually found reading this book kind of exhausting - in a good way!
The many worlds created by Tiptree are often familiar, but they can also be unsettlingly alien, and there is usually a current of violence underneath the surface, that her characters may or may not embrace, but can never really ignore. The themes of death and sex are also a constant, but she played with those themes very skillfully, and it's never schlocky.
The prose is erudite, sometimes almost dreamy and consistently very good and immersive. While I docked one star due to a couple of weaker stories in this collection, this is a must-read for sci-fi fans: those stories are very ahead of their time for writing published in the 70s, and they are beautiful reflections of human nature, gender, our duty to humanity, our relationship with reality and with our future.
November 24, 2016
I begin my review quoting from the short stories in 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' written by psychologist Alice Sheldon, aka science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. To me, Sheldon has an enormous talent of astonishingly vivid writing and muscular symbolism, each story full of vibrating 3-D emotional strings, and poetic and powerful language.
"A great pearl-colored blush spread upward before him, developed bands of lavender and rays of coral-gold fire melting to green iridescence overhead. The boat was now gliding on a ribbon of fiery light between black-silhouetted banks. Jakko looked back and saw dazzling cloud-cities heaped behind him in the West. The vast imminence of sunrise." from 'Slow Music'.
"But Delphi just sees rainbows, when she gets through the degaussing ports and the field relay and takes her first look at the insides of those shells. The next thing she sees is a team of shapers and technicians descending on her, and millisecond timers everywhere. The tropical leisure is finished. She's in gigabuck mainstream now, at the funnel maw of the unceasing hose that's pumping sight and sound and flesh and blood and sobs and laughs and dreams of reality into the world's happy head. Little Delphi is going plonk into a zillion homes in prime time and nothing is left to chance." from 'The Girl Who was Plugged In'.
"...First the conventional greeting, he thought; the news, the unspoken, savored, mounting excitement behind their eyes; the light touches; then the seeking of their own room, the falling clothes, the caresses, gentle at first--the flesh, the nakedness--the delicate teasing, the grasp, the first thrust--
A terrible alarm bell went off in his head. Exploded from his dream, he stared around, then finally down at his hands. What was he doing with his open clasp knife in his fist?" from 'The Screwfly Solution'.
"He yanks the sodden boots back on and crashes out into the ice, whacking with the ax-handle, butting whole sheets aside. He's making it! Ten more feet, twenty! He rams with the boat, bangs it up and down like a sledgehammer. Another yard! Another! His teeth are clattering, his shins are bleeding, and it's cutting his thighs now but he feels nothing, only joy, joy!--until suddenly he is slewing full-length under water with the incredible cold going up his ass and into his armpits like skewers and ice cutting his nose." from 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever'.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever includes the following award-winning and nominated short stories:
"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" 1969
"The Screwfly Solution" 1977, received the Nebula Award for best novelette
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" 1972
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" 1973
"The Man Who Walked Home" 1972
"And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" 1972
"The Women Men Don't See" 1973
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" 1976
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" 1976
"With Delicate Mad Hands" 1981
"A Momentary Taste of Being" 1975
"We Who Stole the Dream" 1978
"Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" 1974
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" 1973, received the Nebula Award for best short story
"On the Last Afternoon" 1972
"She Waits for All Men Born" 1976
"Slow Music" 1980
"And So On, and So On" 1971
It is difficult to choose a favorite. It is easier to choose the one that did not appeal to me so much, or to make a top ten list of the stories I loved. Many of these stories are probably shocking to some men and women, but nonetheless absolutely reflect a clear-sighted extrapolation of gender viewpoints and dysfunctions. I adore this collection, but I am an old married lady who lived during the 1970's feminist revolution and the foot-binding times of the 1960's.
Tiptree/Sheldon speaks to my experience of the fundamentals of the male-female divide (which totally exists in basic brain function, imho - as well as the socially-imposed gender differences like pink/blue silliness).
While I think the science fiction plot in some of the stories was sometimes merely the platform to highlight the cruelty of sexist males towards women, and as I enjoyed the lovely violent defensive backlash of the women in a few of the stories, to me so refreshing, being the vicariously vengeful harpy that I am, the others are wonderfully written horrific and beautiful pure science fiction tales. All of the curses and wonders of being human are represented in either fantastic and imaginative originality or in slight twists which tilt the usual expectations of most readers.
Some of my impressions without spoiling:
The first story, 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain' is meh to me, but probably this is because it is a plot I have read done by a number of writers.
'With Delicate Mad Hands' had me in tears. Will women ever be truly judged by their earned merit or inherit worth, and not continue to endure censure or discrimination because of their physical appearance or feminine characteristics? But that is not all behind this moving story of an unexpected first contact.
'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?' had me pumping my fist in the air (sorry, but in my defense, well, I have been married 40 years). This is a terrifically funny yet completely 'true' tale of fiction, a story of male hubris.
'Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!' struck me as SO awfully horrifically common to humanity and awfully sad. Various city people have an unforgiving and harsh lack of sympathy for someone obviously helpless, living in a world of sweet delusions.
'The Women Men Don't See' had me doing my cynical snorting laugh at how clearly it was about the blindness of some men to how some women might not be enchanted by masculine and/or human society and how people might feel it is worth it to take a chance on alien society over earth's. Given the title, I suspect it really was mostly about men who don't see how some women resent male 'guidance'.
'The Man Who Walked Home' struck me as the bittersweet intersection of science and ignorance.
With the one story exception I mentioned above, I loved reading every story. I recommend this collection to everyone who enjoys reading literary science fiction. Misogynists might squirm a lot. Good.
"A great pearl-colored blush spread upward before him, developed bands of lavender and rays of coral-gold fire melting to green iridescence overhead. The boat was now gliding on a ribbon of fiery light between black-silhouetted banks. Jakko looked back and saw dazzling cloud-cities heaped behind him in the West. The vast imminence of sunrise." from 'Slow Music'.
"But Delphi just sees rainbows, when she gets through the degaussing ports and the field relay and takes her first look at the insides of those shells. The next thing she sees is a team of shapers and technicians descending on her, and millisecond timers everywhere. The tropical leisure is finished. She's in gigabuck mainstream now, at the funnel maw of the unceasing hose that's pumping sight and sound and flesh and blood and sobs and laughs and dreams of reality into the world's happy head. Little Delphi is going plonk into a zillion homes in prime time and nothing is left to chance." from 'The Girl Who was Plugged In'.
"...First the conventional greeting, he thought; the news, the unspoken, savored, mounting excitement behind their eyes; the light touches; then the seeking of their own room, the falling clothes, the caresses, gentle at first--the flesh, the nakedness--the delicate teasing, the grasp, the first thrust--
A terrible alarm bell went off in his head. Exploded from his dream, he stared around, then finally down at his hands. What was he doing with his open clasp knife in his fist?" from 'The Screwfly Solution'.
"He yanks the sodden boots back on and crashes out into the ice, whacking with the ax-handle, butting whole sheets aside. He's making it! Ten more feet, twenty! He rams with the boat, bangs it up and down like a sledgehammer. Another yard! Another! His teeth are clattering, his shins are bleeding, and it's cutting his thighs now but he feels nothing, only joy, joy!--until suddenly he is slewing full-length under water with the incredible cold going up his ass and into his armpits like skewers and ice cutting his nose." from 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever'.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever includes the following award-winning and nominated short stories:
"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" 1969
"The Screwfly Solution" 1977, received the Nebula Award for best novelette
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" 1972
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" 1973
"The Man Who Walked Home" 1972
"And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" 1972
"The Women Men Don't See" 1973
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" 1976
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" 1976
"With Delicate Mad Hands" 1981
"A Momentary Taste of Being" 1975
"We Who Stole the Dream" 1978
"Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" 1974
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" 1973, received the Nebula Award for best short story
"On the Last Afternoon" 1972
"She Waits for All Men Born" 1976
"Slow Music" 1980
"And So On, and So On" 1971
It is difficult to choose a favorite. It is easier to choose the one that did not appeal to me so much, or to make a top ten list of the stories I loved. Many of these stories are probably shocking to some men and women, but nonetheless absolutely reflect a clear-sighted extrapolation of gender viewpoints and dysfunctions. I adore this collection, but I am an old married lady who lived during the 1970's feminist revolution and the foot-binding times of the 1960's.
Tiptree/Sheldon speaks to my experience of the fundamentals of the male-female divide (which totally exists in basic brain function, imho - as well as the socially-imposed gender differences like pink/blue silliness).
While I think the science fiction plot in some of the stories was sometimes merely the platform to highlight the cruelty of sexist males towards women, and as I enjoyed the lovely violent defensive backlash of the women in a few of the stories, to me so refreshing, being the vicariously vengeful harpy that I am, the others are wonderfully written horrific and beautiful pure science fiction tales. All of the curses and wonders of being human are represented in either fantastic and imaginative originality or in slight twists which tilt the usual expectations of most readers.
Some of my impressions without spoiling:
The first story, 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain' is meh to me, but probably this is because it is a plot I have read done by a number of writers.
'With Delicate Mad Hands' had me in tears. Will women ever be truly judged by their earned merit or inherit worth, and not continue to endure censure or discrimination because of their physical appearance or feminine characteristics? But that is not all behind this moving story of an unexpected first contact.
'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?' had me pumping my fist in the air (sorry, but in my defense, well, I have been married 40 years). This is a terrifically funny yet completely 'true' tale of fiction, a story of male hubris.
'Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!' struck me as SO awfully horrifically common to humanity and awfully sad. Various city people have an unforgiving and harsh lack of sympathy for someone obviously helpless, living in a world of sweet delusions.
'The Women Men Don't See' had me doing my cynical snorting laugh at how clearly it was about the blindness of some men to how some women might not be enchanted by masculine and/or human society and how people might feel it is worth it to take a chance on alien society over earth's. Given the title, I suspect it really was mostly about men who don't see how some women resent male 'guidance'.
'The Man Who Walked Home' struck me as the bittersweet intersection of science and ignorance.
With the one story exception I mentioned above, I loved reading every story. I recommend this collection to everyone who enjoys reading literary science fiction. Misogynists might squirm a lot. Good.
October 26, 2022
*I'm reading the stories in this anthology in a (mostly) random order, and I'm updating this review every time I read a new one. Since I haven't read the whole collection yet, and since I'm in no hurry to necessarily complete it soon, the rating is provisional. Below are my thoughts on the stories that I've read so far.*
"The Screwfly Solution" (1977): A blow to the heart--and to the mind. I suppose the plot itself wouldn't strike as particularly impressive, but Tiptree delivers it in a dry, biting style that nevertheless doesn't stifle the sense of tragedy lurking behind the tale. "I think I saw a real estate agent": absolutely splendid.
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (1972): Sardonically fatalistic, and more than a bit masochistic. Loved this one as well. Tiptree can pack an astonishing number of ideas in no more than a handful of pages with incredible neatness and precision and I. am. in. love.
"The Women Men Don't See" (1973): a fantastic and profound exercise in manipulation of narrative perspective.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (1973): a foundational text of feminist cyberpunk, written with a uniqueness of style that just screams Tiptree.
"The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" (1969): a miracle of understatement. Just a little over 6 pages long, and it's able to make the entire world spring up at you from the page. "That was all."
"The Screwfly Solution" (1977): A blow to the heart--and to the mind. I suppose the plot itself wouldn't strike as particularly impressive, but Tiptree delivers it in a dry, biting style that nevertheless doesn't stifle the sense of tragedy lurking behind the tale. "I think I saw a real estate agent": absolutely splendid.
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (1972): Sardonically fatalistic, and more than a bit masochistic. Loved this one as well. Tiptree can pack an astonishing number of ideas in no more than a handful of pages with incredible neatness and precision and I. am. in. love.
"The Women Men Don't See" (1973): a fantastic and profound exercise in manipulation of narrative perspective.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (1973): a foundational text of feminist cyberpunk, written with a uniqueness of style that just screams Tiptree.
"The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" (1969): a miracle of understatement. Just a little over 6 pages long, and it's able to make the entire world spring up at you from the page. "That was all."
March 13, 2018
[4.5 stars]
James Tiptree jr. was a respected science fiction writer and notably reclusive, who turned out to be a woman, Alice Sheldon. And somehow in the years I read alot of sf slipped entirely under my radar until awhile back I found mark monday's review of this book, and decided I had to read it. Thanks mark! It was great diving into sf again, and I now have many more in the genre mentally lined up to read or reread. These stories collectively knocked me out. The imagination at work, the inventiveness of structure and storytelling, are stunning. And an upfront feminism in many of the stories, well...I think about when they were written, mostly the 1970s, but the ideas and commentary on the world are bracing now, almost nothing seems dated. Tiptree/Sheldon also likes to start stories midstride, as though the reader is joining something well underway and it's up to you to catch up and figure out any jargon, place names, technology, as though she doesn't have the patience to slow it down and explain it to you. Sink or swim. One slight weakness, the only reason this just misses five stars, is occasionally leaning too hard on existential ideas at the expense of narrative. But that's just my personal taste. Even the comparatively lesser stories have moments or ideas or sheer inventiveness that amazes. She is particularly adept at cutting observation in a minor key, lines that are tossed out almost as asides. In my favorite of these stories, The Women Men Don't See, the character Ruth's retort to another character, "I'm used to it" might read as a throwaway but in context what she is saying is devastating. Anyway, some brief remarks on the stories:
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain
**** Very subtle, so much so I had to reread some of it to pick up on the clues. Reminiscent of the French sci-fi short La Jetee, with a potent stinger of an ending (not the last to be found here).
The Screwfly Solution
***** A stone classic. Epistolary story of what can only be described as a misogyny virus that leads to mass murder of females. Bleak yet matter-of-fact in the telling, which only makes it more unsettling. And a pitiless final line.
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
*** Cautionary tale in the form of a bitter monologue. Interstellar trade imbalance and sex with aliens. Man's insatiable nature as the path to his undoing. Tiptree, cold as ice.
The Girl Who was Plugged In
** Something about advertising and avatars and exploitation of those at the bottom. Overlong, didn't quite cohere for me.
The Man Who Walked Home
*** You don't want to be the Chuck Yeager or John Glenn of time travel. Let them work out the kinks first. John Delgano was a pioneer, and it went rather badly.
And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways
*** Another bleak tale of a scientist who bucks convention and whose instincts are true, but this is Tiptree. You think he's rewarded? Ha ha ha ha ha.
The Women Men Don't See
***** My favorite story in this collection, an anguished and defiant cry against the patriarchy. Begins as an adventure tale about a small plane crash and goes to places you can't imagine. Breathtaking in its vision and inventiveness.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
**** Starts out jaunty and filled with wonder, but the darkness slowly creeps in, and it becomes profoundly sad. Yet the spirit of the protagonist somehow keeps the telling from complete bleakness.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
***** A space opera that goes along as they often do, but with something just out of reach, something off that you can't quite grasp. And then the story arrives at an impasse--how else to put it?--between the male and the female, and something has to give. Brilliantly told and merciless at the end.
With Delicate Mad Hands
**** Another space adventure, gripping in the telling, that becomes the strangest of love stories. A lovely thing of wild imagination.
A Momentary Taste of Being
** The longest piece in the book, a novella really at 86 pages, and for me among the weakest. Reminds me in a way of the deeply flawed movie Event Horizon, an arresting concept that eventually collapses into incoherence.
We Who Stole the Dream
*** Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. About a successful slave revolt (Terrans, that is, us, as the masters and a diminutive alien race as the slaves) and its aftermath. Exciting and deftly written, though you will guess where it's headed.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
*** The best of the very existential pieces. Scenes from a life, not much of a narrative per se, but a succession of striking images, and a certain emotional pull nonetheless.
Love is the Plan the Plan is Death
* Um…..no. I truly have no idea what the hell this was. As a reader, sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.
On the Last Afternoon
** A human colony on an alien world, a threat from giant anthropoid creatures, a possibly sentient and telepathic plant. Sounds great, but the narrative is frustratingly kept at a distance, and the point of it all remains opaque.
She Waits for All Men Born
**** A child who is Death. Whoa. Fatalistic only begins to describe this. If you remember the mid-‘60s series The Outer Limits, this would have made a stellar episode of that.
Slow Music
** A naïve man meets a naïve woman at what might be the end of Earth history, there is a River from the stars that beckons, possibly offering an interdimensional immortality (I think). This has a lovely poignant ending but is too meandering getting to that point.
And So On, and So On
** A four-page vignette about the ennui of reaching the limits of our galaxy.
James Tiptree jr. was a respected science fiction writer and notably reclusive, who turned out to be a woman, Alice Sheldon. And somehow in the years I read alot of sf slipped entirely under my radar until awhile back I found mark monday's review of this book, and decided I had to read it. Thanks mark! It was great diving into sf again, and I now have many more in the genre mentally lined up to read or reread. These stories collectively knocked me out. The imagination at work, the inventiveness of structure and storytelling, are stunning. And an upfront feminism in many of the stories, well...I think about when they were written, mostly the 1970s, but the ideas and commentary on the world are bracing now, almost nothing seems dated. Tiptree/Sheldon also likes to start stories midstride, as though the reader is joining something well underway and it's up to you to catch up and figure out any jargon, place names, technology, as though she doesn't have the patience to slow it down and explain it to you. Sink or swim. One slight weakness, the only reason this just misses five stars, is occasionally leaning too hard on existential ideas at the expense of narrative. But that's just my personal taste. Even the comparatively lesser stories have moments or ideas or sheer inventiveness that amazes. She is particularly adept at cutting observation in a minor key, lines that are tossed out almost as asides. In my favorite of these stories, The Women Men Don't See, the character Ruth's retort to another character, "I'm used to it" might read as a throwaway but in context what she is saying is devastating. Anyway, some brief remarks on the stories:
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain
**** Very subtle, so much so I had to reread some of it to pick up on the clues. Reminiscent of the French sci-fi short La Jetee, with a potent stinger of an ending (not the last to be found here).
The Screwfly Solution
***** A stone classic. Epistolary story of what can only be described as a misogyny virus that leads to mass murder of females. Bleak yet matter-of-fact in the telling, which only makes it more unsettling. And a pitiless final line.
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side
*** Cautionary tale in the form of a bitter monologue. Interstellar trade imbalance and sex with aliens. Man's insatiable nature as the path to his undoing. Tiptree, cold as ice.
The Girl Who was Plugged In
** Something about advertising and avatars and exploitation of those at the bottom. Overlong, didn't quite cohere for me.
The Man Who Walked Home
*** You don't want to be the Chuck Yeager or John Glenn of time travel. Let them work out the kinks first. John Delgano was a pioneer, and it went rather badly.
And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways
*** Another bleak tale of a scientist who bucks convention and whose instincts are true, but this is Tiptree. You think he's rewarded? Ha ha ha ha ha.
The Women Men Don't See
***** My favorite story in this collection, an anguished and defiant cry against the patriarchy. Begins as an adventure tale about a small plane crash and goes to places you can't imagine. Breathtaking in its vision and inventiveness.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
**** Starts out jaunty and filled with wonder, but the darkness slowly creeps in, and it becomes profoundly sad. Yet the spirit of the protagonist somehow keeps the telling from complete bleakness.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
***** A space opera that goes along as they often do, but with something just out of reach, something off that you can't quite grasp. And then the story arrives at an impasse--how else to put it?--between the male and the female, and something has to give. Brilliantly told and merciless at the end.
With Delicate Mad Hands
**** Another space adventure, gripping in the telling, that becomes the strangest of love stories. A lovely thing of wild imagination.
A Momentary Taste of Being
** The longest piece in the book, a novella really at 86 pages, and for me among the weakest. Reminds me in a way of the deeply flawed movie Event Horizon, an arresting concept that eventually collapses into incoherence.
We Who Stole the Dream
*** Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. About a successful slave revolt (Terrans, that is, us, as the masters and a diminutive alien race as the slaves) and its aftermath. Exciting and deftly written, though you will guess where it's headed.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
*** The best of the very existential pieces. Scenes from a life, not much of a narrative per se, but a succession of striking images, and a certain emotional pull nonetheless.
Love is the Plan the Plan is Death
* Um…..no. I truly have no idea what the hell this was. As a reader, sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.
On the Last Afternoon
** A human colony on an alien world, a threat from giant anthropoid creatures, a possibly sentient and telepathic plant. Sounds great, but the narrative is frustratingly kept at a distance, and the point of it all remains opaque.
She Waits for All Men Born
**** A child who is Death. Whoa. Fatalistic only begins to describe this. If you remember the mid-‘60s series The Outer Limits, this would have made a stellar episode of that.
Slow Music
** A naïve man meets a naïve woman at what might be the end of Earth history, there is a River from the stars that beckons, possibly offering an interdimensional immortality (I think). This has a lovely poignant ending but is too meandering getting to that point.
And So On, and So On
** A four-page vignette about the ennui of reaching the limits of our galaxy.
October 20, 2007
i borrowed her smoke rose up forever from my mother. i saved her from it, so it wouldn't distract her from the bar, the horrible, horrible hurdle baby lawyers have to throw themselves over. and now that i've returned it, i feel i must go purchase a copy, so i can share a little tiptree with everybody.
except it isn't really by james tiptree jr. at all. that's the pen name of alice bradley sheldon. and i have to say, i have no idea how she pulled this off. the stories are sparkling and poetic but always, always, inexorably feminist allegories. wonderful, shocking ones. i have no idea how anyone ever thought you were a man, mr. tiptree. and in the wikipedia article it says:
"The pseudonym was successfully maintained until the late 1970s. This is partly due to the fact that though it was widely known that 'Tiptree' was a pseudonym, it was generally understood that its use was intended to protect the professional reputation of an intelligence community official. Readers, editors and correspondents were permitted to assume gender, and almost invariably they assumed 'male.'"
that's hilarious. in 1975 she wrote:
"What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world machine."
"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like... smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was."
The Women Men Don't See
but that's not all... she also had a gift for some most wrenching turns of the screw, ones only science fiction can offer. her stories are often demonstrations of our smallness. when she sends humanity into the universe, it is usually our ineptitude that looms largest. our small fumbling attempts to understand the universe betray us. our attempts to understand ourselves even betray us:
"This is of great scientific interest Friend. But you won't believe it, of course. You're on your way here now, aren't you? Nothing will stop you, you have your reasons - saving the race, building a new world, national honor, personal glory, scientific truth, dreams, hopes, plans - does every little sperm have its reasons, thrashing up the pipe?"
A Momentary Taste of Being
at least her universes would have to notice us before they could betray us:
"A vast impersonal tonnage fell upon him and the stars raveled away from his brain."
On the Last Afternoon
always fragile, our relations with the tiptree cosmos. i do not see how anyone could not have seen the truth, she was so obsessed with describing the nests her characters built to fly through space. and the single thing that occurs to me, is how lucky i am, that i live in a culture lush with female voices in all genres. she knew it herself when she chose the pseudonym:
I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.
interview, 1983
i hear that, sister. the introduction said (don't read it! i beg you, not only is he silly, he spoils them!) your works were zen kōans; i say only if zen kōans are also primal screams.
except it isn't really by james tiptree jr. at all. that's the pen name of alice bradley sheldon. and i have to say, i have no idea how she pulled this off. the stories are sparkling and poetic but always, always, inexorably feminist allegories. wonderful, shocking ones. i have no idea how anyone ever thought you were a man, mr. tiptree. and in the wikipedia article it says:
"The pseudonym was successfully maintained until the late 1970s. This is partly due to the fact that though it was widely known that 'Tiptree' was a pseudonym, it was generally understood that its use was intended to protect the professional reputation of an intelligence community official. Readers, editors and correspondents were permitted to assume gender, and almost invariably they assumed 'male.'"
that's hilarious. in 1975 she wrote:
"What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world machine."
"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like... smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was."
The Women Men Don't See
but that's not all... she also had a gift for some most wrenching turns of the screw, ones only science fiction can offer. her stories are often demonstrations of our smallness. when she sends humanity into the universe, it is usually our ineptitude that looms largest. our small fumbling attempts to understand the universe betray us. our attempts to understand ourselves even betray us:
"This is of great scientific interest Friend. But you won't believe it, of course. You're on your way here now, aren't you? Nothing will stop you, you have your reasons - saving the race, building a new world, national honor, personal glory, scientific truth, dreams, hopes, plans - does every little sperm have its reasons, thrashing up the pipe?"
A Momentary Taste of Being
at least her universes would have to notice us before they could betray us:
"A vast impersonal tonnage fell upon him and the stars raveled away from his brain."
On the Last Afternoon
always fragile, our relations with the tiptree cosmos. i do not see how anyone could not have seen the truth, she was so obsessed with describing the nests her characters built to fly through space. and the single thing that occurs to me, is how lucky i am, that i live in a culture lush with female voices in all genres. she knew it herself when she chose the pseudonym:
I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.
interview, 1983
i hear that, sister. the introduction said (don't read it! i beg you, not only is he silly, he spoils them!) your works were zen kōans; i say only if zen kōans are also primal screams.
April 21, 2023
An outstanding collection, Tiptree, Our Dark Mistress from now on and forever refined quite the skill of making short stories. Strong, blunt, bleak and consistently filled with despair, you will leave shaken an unsettled. I took little sips of this book, taking it at once wouldn’t be wise.
- The Last Flight of Doctor Ain - ⭐ 5 She did what... stars
- The Screwfly Solution - ⭐18 give me anxiety stars ⭐ 6.2 Slap in the face stars
- And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side ⭐3 we almost got there but didn't stars
- The Girl Who Was Plugged In - ⭐ 16 sharp as a blade stars
- The Man Who Walked Home - ⭐ 20 falling stars
- And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways ⭐12 lazy stars ⭐ 3 meh stars
- The Women Men Don't See - ⭐1000 Sexy native stars ⭐32 cheeky stars ⭐ 99 Brilliant stars
- Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ⭐ 826 you hurt me bad stars
- Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - ⭐ 44 savage stars ⭐ 15 stars of doom
- With Delicate Mad Hands- ⭐ 15 Solid first part stars ⭐ 6 Solid ending stars ⭐ 8 Lousy middle part stars
- A Momentary Taste of Being - ⭐ 100000 Cosmic jizz stars ⭐ 99 I needed my hazmat suit stars ⭐ 3 Why? stars
- We Who Stole the Dream - ⭐ 32 Why do you hurt us stars ⭐ 15 I want to know more stars ⭐ 15 I dont want to know more stars
- Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - ⭐ 38 trippy stars ⭐ 59 fighting the friendzone forever stars
- Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - ⭐ 1000 awesome stars ⭐ 562 best title ever stars ⭐ 18 love hurts stars
- On the Last Afternoon - ⭐ 300 Cosmic jizz stars ⭐ 350 I needed my hazmat suit stars ⭐ 3 Why? stars ⭐ 3 Creepy dad stars
- She Waits for All Men Born - ⭐ 6 Why? stars ⭐ 3 meh stars ⭐ 54 evil savage squirrel men stars
- Slow Music - ⭐ 17 Why do you hurt us stars ⭐ 89 cinematic ending stars ⭐ 52 we didn't quite get there, but close stars
- And So On, and So On - ⭐ 10 stars of doom ⭐ 85 that´s why stars
- The Last Flight of Doctor Ain - ⭐ 5 She did what... stars
- The Screwfly Solution - ⭐18 give me anxiety stars ⭐ 6.2 Slap in the face stars
- And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side ⭐3 we almost got there but didn't stars
- The Girl Who Was Plugged In - ⭐ 16 sharp as a blade stars
- The Man Who Walked Home - ⭐ 20 falling stars
- And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways ⭐12 lazy stars ⭐ 3 meh stars
- The Women Men Don't See - ⭐1000 Sexy native stars ⭐32 cheeky stars ⭐ 99 Brilliant stars
- Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ⭐ 826 you hurt me bad stars
- Houston, Houston, Do You Read? - ⭐ 44 savage stars ⭐ 15 stars of doom
- With Delicate Mad Hands- ⭐ 15 Solid first part stars ⭐ 6 Solid ending stars ⭐ 8 Lousy middle part stars
- A Momentary Taste of Being - ⭐ 100000 Cosmic jizz stars ⭐ 99 I needed my hazmat suit stars ⭐ 3 Why? stars
- We Who Stole the Dream - ⭐ 32 Why do you hurt us stars ⭐ 15 I want to know more stars ⭐ 15 I dont want to know more stars
- Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - ⭐ 38 trippy stars ⭐ 59 fighting the friendzone forever stars
- Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - ⭐ 1000 awesome stars ⭐ 562 best title ever stars ⭐ 18 love hurts stars
- On the Last Afternoon - ⭐ 300 Cosmic jizz stars ⭐ 350 I needed my hazmat suit stars ⭐ 3 Why? stars ⭐ 3 Creepy dad stars
- She Waits for All Men Born - ⭐ 6 Why? stars ⭐ 3 meh stars ⭐ 54 evil savage squirrel men stars
- Slow Music - ⭐ 17 Why do you hurt us stars ⭐ 89 cinematic ending stars ⭐ 52 we didn't quite get there, but close stars
- And So On, and So On - ⭐ 10 stars of doom ⭐ 85 that´s why stars
November 9, 2021
I did not give many of the indivual stories 5 stars but the collection as a whole is almost a must read.
Sheldon/Tiptree's commentary on the human condition, specifically the male human condition is brutal. It hits too close to home to be satire and far to personal to be tongue in cheek.
Initially I was cringing at all the abhorrent things the men were doing to their worlds and the women in them, towards the end I got the impression that Sheldon was equally caustic towards the motivations and passiveness of the women.
I am glad I read this but sort of want to forget I did. The pain/suffering/experiences that Sheldon put her women characters through, just to set up the crappy parts of male human nature, were hard to read at times and surprising at how casually it happened.
There are some wonderful worlds in there but mostly filled with brutality. Don't read these if rape and violence are any of your triggers
The best stories were
The Girl Who Was Plugged In
The Man Who Walked Home
Houston, Houston, Do you Read?
Sheldon/Tiptree's commentary on the human condition, specifically the male human condition is brutal. It hits too close to home to be satire and far to personal to be tongue in cheek.
Initially I was cringing at all the abhorrent things the men were doing to their worlds and the women in them, towards the end I got the impression that Sheldon was equally caustic towards the motivations and passiveness of the women.
I am glad I read this but sort of want to forget I did. The pain/suffering/experiences that Sheldon put her women characters through, just to set up the crappy parts of male human nature, were hard to read at times and surprising at how casually it happened.
There are some wonderful worlds in there but mostly filled with brutality. Don't read these if rape and violence are any of your triggers
The best stories were
The Girl Who Was Plugged In
The Man Who Walked Home
Houston, Houston, Do you Read?
August 8, 2024
My deities, what a journey this was! I tried to read one story a day, but my mental health was not on board with that, so I ended up binging these weird, dark, full of rage, depression, sex, etc etc stories. They felt cathartic but also took a lot out of me. Not all of them were bangers, but I have to say, even if I didn't 'get it', I still really loved the weird vibe and the atmosphere of despair and dread, as thick as black smoke.
I cannot understand how people actually thought Tiptree Jr. was a man for such a long time, because these stories are so absolutely preoccupied with exploring gender and sexuality in such original ways (most straight men I know IRL have no clue what to say when I ask them 'so what's your relationship to your gender?'). The biographical note at the end of the book says that some stories are about 'good men' and I'm like, a man wrote that, because the male main characters in general are more like Nice Guys TM (aka not nice at all) and have a complicated relationship with what they see as their 'beta male' status. Tiptree Jr. is so confident and incisive and fucking angry at the treatment of women at the hands of men, I just really adore her and feel like she was ahead of her time.
These stories have all of the possible content warnings you could imagine, though. Proceed with caution.
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain: This was a re-read. (Some of them I would have read in Warm Worlds and Otherwise, aka my first ever book club, what a life-changer! Getting wistful in here). And yeah, it's super great, it's haunting, and having lived through a pandemic, it hits pretty hard.
The Screwfly Solution: What a tale! It drops you right into the thick of it (as a lot of Tiptree Jr. stories tend to do) and then has you crawling through the creeping dread until it escalates. A story about men forming cults and starting to kill women because of weird religious reasons, also about... *checks notes* real estate?!
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side: I just love Tiptree Jr.'s long titles for stories, they're beautiful! Anyway, this is a fucking kick-ass story about a world where humans get to meet aliens and they kind of go crazy from wanting to fuck them (which isn't always possible) and now they don't feel like fucking other humans anymore because aliens exist. I think it's brilliant and I'm buying it!
The Girl Who Was Plugged In:
The idea that art thrives on creative flamboyance has long been torpedoed by proof that what art needs is computers. Because this showbiz has something TV and Hollywood never had—automated inbuilt viewer feedback. (...) That started as a thingie to give the public more influence on content.
Possibly the first cyberpunk story, a re-read, a total absolute banger!
The Man Who Walked Home: Can't say I completely followed this, but this is one of those vibe reads, where it was just fucking good to experience. And a cool take on time travel. Like all of these stories, the worldbuilding is on point.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways: (really love the long titles). Re-read, reviewed in the Warm Worlds review.
The Women Men Don't See: Another absolute banger of a re-read. Wrote about it already. Just want to say that after 1.5 years, I still think about it often and it's my best example of what it means to have a great distinction between 'character voice' and 'narrative voice' in a piece of fiction.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Full of Light!: this had big Woman on the Edge of Time vibes and how can I not love that? It comments on women's lib, why female cops are bastards, internalized sexism, imagining a future world, the treatment of non-compliant women and so on.
Loved this commentary on marriage: Imagine when people had to sell their sex organs to the men just to eat.
I'd read this in concert with The Yellow Wallpaper and a bunch of Shirley Jackson stories.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: this also had some Woman on the Edge of Time vibes, from another POV. It has the great line, spoken to a man: What you protected people from was largely other males. And ain't that the truth? My notes are quite silly, I don't know what else to comment, I hated the 'beta' POV character, but I get why and I think she deconstructs his mindset in interesting ways, and loved everything else.
With Delicate Mad Hands: This one was a huge surprise, because it started in maybe the darkest of places and then had such a shocking (explicitly!!!) queer romantic turn, while also kind of commenting upon romantic dynamics and what's healthy and what's not in a cool way. But wow, did the beginning hurt! The ending hurt in a completely different way. I love how Tiptree Jr.'s stories hurt me in different ways, with her and Butler and Piercy, they all hurt me good, and I love it!
This one, I realized, features a totally queer paradise of a planet, because there is really no norm to observe. There is no dominant alien race - everyone is mutated and looks completely different and I loved that image of queerness.
A Momentary Taste of Being: This is a story that begins with a sort of planet testicle pushing a monster penis toward the stars and it's about as jizzy as you might think it is (If you don't think it's extremely jizzy, you need to imagine more jizz). But that might make it sound shlocky, when it's actually quite clever in what it's doing, it's just that Tiptree Jr. really approaches themes that other people leave on the table and she twists them around in fascinating ways. This was a bit too long though, did quite love it in the end.
We Who Stole the Dream: Another heartbreaking one, that calls to mind colonialism and how the very existence of an Empire (the fucking cruel true-to-life human empire) can change other people.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever: Didn't fully get this, but it was once again pleasantly weird and possibly time-travelly? I ended up stopping myself from critiquing and just letting these weird tales wash over me and that was great.
Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death: Wrote about it in the other post. (A banger, if you ask me)
On the Last Afternoon: Already reviewed.
She Waits for All Men Born: This felt like a take on 'the Earth is tired of our human shit' trope and I really loved the vibes and the sort of unresolved feeling I had at the end. I really enjoy the mystery of it.
Slow Music: Did not get it, but loved it, just for the eeriness of it, that feeling of watching the end of the world unfold slowly and all of the things we know now are strange and absurd and off-kilter. Would definitely re-read this one to try to understand it better.
And Soon, And Soon: Did not get this very well, but it's probably the shortest one, will revisit.
I cannot understand how people actually thought Tiptree Jr. was a man for such a long time, because these stories are so absolutely preoccupied with exploring gender and sexuality in such original ways (most straight men I know IRL have no clue what to say when I ask them 'so what's your relationship to your gender?'). The biographical note at the end of the book says that some stories are about 'good men' and I'm like, a man wrote that, because the male main characters in general are more like Nice Guys TM (aka not nice at all) and have a complicated relationship with what they see as their 'beta male' status. Tiptree Jr. is so confident and incisive and fucking angry at the treatment of women at the hands of men, I just really adore her and feel like she was ahead of her time.
These stories have all of the possible content warnings you could imagine, though. Proceed with caution.
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain: This was a re-read. (Some of them I would have read in Warm Worlds and Otherwise, aka my first ever book club, what a life-changer! Getting wistful in here). And yeah, it's super great, it's haunting, and having lived through a pandemic, it hits pretty hard.
The Screwfly Solution: What a tale! It drops you right into the thick of it (as a lot of Tiptree Jr. stories tend to do) and then has you crawling through the creeping dread until it escalates. A story about men forming cults and starting to kill women because of weird religious reasons, also about... *checks notes* real estate?!
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side: I just love Tiptree Jr.'s long titles for stories, they're beautiful! Anyway, this is a fucking kick-ass story about a world where humans get to meet aliens and they kind of go crazy from wanting to fuck them (which isn't always possible) and now they don't feel like fucking other humans anymore because aliens exist. I think it's brilliant and I'm buying it!
The Girl Who Was Plugged In:
The idea that art thrives on creative flamboyance has long been torpedoed by proof that what art needs is computers. Because this showbiz has something TV and Hollywood never had—automated inbuilt viewer feedback. (...) That started as a thingie to give the public more influence on content.
Possibly the first cyberpunk story, a re-read, a total absolute banger!
The Man Who Walked Home: Can't say I completely followed this, but this is one of those vibe reads, where it was just fucking good to experience. And a cool take on time travel. Like all of these stories, the worldbuilding is on point.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways: (really love the long titles). Re-read, reviewed in the Warm Worlds review.
The Women Men Don't See: Another absolute banger of a re-read. Wrote about it already. Just want to say that after 1.5 years, I still think about it often and it's my best example of what it means to have a great distinction between 'character voice' and 'narrative voice' in a piece of fiction.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Full of Light!: this had big Woman on the Edge of Time vibes and how can I not love that? It comments on women's lib, why female cops are bastards, internalized sexism, imagining a future world, the treatment of non-compliant women and so on.
Loved this commentary on marriage: Imagine when people had to sell their sex organs to the men just to eat.
I'd read this in concert with The Yellow Wallpaper and a bunch of Shirley Jackson stories.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: this also had some Woman on the Edge of Time vibes, from another POV. It has the great line, spoken to a man: What you protected people from was largely other males. And ain't that the truth? My notes are quite silly, I don't know what else to comment, I hated the 'beta' POV character, but I get why and I think she deconstructs his mindset in interesting ways, and loved everything else.
With Delicate Mad Hands: This one was a huge surprise, because it started in maybe the darkest of places and then had such a shocking (explicitly!!!) queer romantic turn, while also kind of commenting upon romantic dynamics and what's healthy and what's not in a cool way. But wow, did the beginning hurt! The ending hurt in a completely different way. I love how Tiptree Jr.'s stories hurt me in different ways, with her and Butler and Piercy, they all hurt me good, and I love it!
This one, I realized, features a totally queer paradise of a planet, because there is really no norm to observe. There is no dominant alien race - everyone is mutated and looks completely different and I loved that image of queerness.
A Momentary Taste of Being: This is a story that begins with a sort of planet testicle pushing a monster penis toward the stars and it's about as jizzy as you might think it is (If you don't think it's extremely jizzy, you need to imagine more jizz). But that might make it sound shlocky, when it's actually quite clever in what it's doing, it's just that Tiptree Jr. really approaches themes that other people leave on the table and she twists them around in fascinating ways. This was a bit too long though, did quite love it in the end.
We Who Stole the Dream: Another heartbreaking one, that calls to mind colonialism and how the very existence of an Empire (the fucking cruel true-to-life human empire) can change other people.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever: Didn't fully get this, but it was once again pleasantly weird and possibly time-travelly? I ended up stopping myself from critiquing and just letting these weird tales wash over me and that was great.
Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death: Wrote about it in the other post. (A banger, if you ask me)
On the Last Afternoon: Already reviewed.
She Waits for All Men Born: This felt like a take on 'the Earth is tired of our human shit' trope and I really loved the vibes and the sort of unresolved feeling I had at the end. I really enjoy the mystery of it.
Slow Music: Did not get it, but loved it, just for the eeriness of it, that feeling of watching the end of the world unfold slowly and all of the things we know now are strange and absurd and off-kilter. Would definitely re-read this one to try to understand it better.
And Soon, And Soon: Did not get this very well, but it's probably the shortest one, will revisit.
November 27, 2010
The best stories in this collection are brilliant and devastating science fiction - I was particularly grabbed by the slow build up of tension in 'A Momentary Taste of Being' - perfectly paced and pitched, with just enough depth given to the protagonist to make his struggle against the tragedy very moving. Some of the shorter stories seemed more like capsule sketches of one of Tiptree's (real name, Alice Sheldon) bleak points. She usually needs a longish short story (of which there a good number) to put enough meat on her ideas. Though the brief and terrifying 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain' proves she could put lightning into a truly short short story when she tried.
'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?' was probably my second favorite story, excellently sketched characters and a fresh, precise take on several familiar sf themes (it's hard to even start describing any of the stories without being spoiler-y). Sheldon's view is almost overwhelmingly bleak, but somehow not bitter - perhaps her precision has something to do with that. This almost completely consistent bleakness made it so that I was surprised by the one story that had a sentimental ending (I won't spoil which one that is) .
One aspect that did distract me while reading was knowing her double identity. 'Tiptree' was secretive about personal details, but practically no one doubted he was male. 'Tiptree' was often lauded at the time for being an 'obviously' masculine science-fiction writer who nevertheless could tackle subtle feminist themes, and I was occasionally distracted by thinking of the balancing act Sheldon was doing. It would have been very interesting to have read the stories without foreknowledge of her double-identity, and *then* learn of it.
I am fascinated enough with her double-identity and other aspects of her life (for example, she and her husband worked for the CIA) that I'm going to read her biography next.
'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?' was probably my second favorite story, excellently sketched characters and a fresh, precise take on several familiar sf themes (it's hard to even start describing any of the stories without being spoiler-y). Sheldon's view is almost overwhelmingly bleak, but somehow not bitter - perhaps her precision has something to do with that. This almost completely consistent bleakness made it so that I was surprised by the one story that had a sentimental ending (I won't spoil which one that is) .
One aspect that did distract me while reading was knowing her double identity. 'Tiptree' was secretive about personal details, but practically no one doubted he was male. 'Tiptree' was often lauded at the time for being an 'obviously' masculine science-fiction writer who nevertheless could tackle subtle feminist themes, and I was occasionally distracted by thinking of the balancing act Sheldon was doing. It would have been very interesting to have read the stories without foreknowledge of her double-identity, and *then* learn of it.
I am fascinated enough with her double-identity and other aspects of her life (for example, she and her husband worked for the CIA) that I'm going to read her biography next.
February 5, 2012
I'm not even a full quarter through these stories and I'm flabbergasted. The writing is quite challenging, but the payoff is so incredible. Already I've read one of the most unusual alien invasion concepts I've ever come across ("The Screwfly Solution"), I've also been subjected to a mind-bending idea for future advertising ("The Girl Who Was Plugged In") and a horrifying and beautiful time travel tale ("The Man Who Walked Home"). What a beautiful intellect was Alice's. Gone too soon, but I expect her fictions will linger for quite some time in many minds.
update: I'm more in love with the concepts here than the actual writing, though I appreciate the density and literary qualities, and how she slowly forms imagery for the readers. There's a lot to chew on in these stories; I keep reflecting upon the ideas in several of the stories, particularly The Man Who Walked Home. Many writers can entertain, but so very few can take up a recurring residence. This girl is one of them . . . she belongs with the gender politics of Octavia Butler, John Varley and David Gerrold, among the bravest of sci fi writers.
update: I'm more in love with the concepts here than the actual writing, though I appreciate the density and literary qualities, and how she slowly forms imagery for the readers. There's a lot to chew on in these stories; I keep reflecting upon the ideas in several of the stories, particularly The Man Who Walked Home. Many writers can entertain, but so very few can take up a recurring residence. This girl is one of them . . . she belongs with the gender politics of Octavia Butler, John Varley and David Gerrold, among the bravest of sci fi writers.
February 9, 2023
Short story writing, especially in a genre where worldbuilding is pretty much everything, is really an art in itself and absolutely no one masters that art like Tiptree Jr. does!
It's not easy engaging your reader within such a short span of time, all the while creating an accomplished speculative environment and narrating a meaningful story. Reading "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever", you will often find yourself dropped into the middle of a new world, a new story and will immediately adapt, which is an amazing thing for an author to achieve! Be warned though, it’s not easy reading and her stories often require re-reading in order to grasp the full scope of what she does.
Triptree Jr. (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon) can invent perfectly developed worlds/characters/settings even in the shortest of her stories and has the talent to use and bend language as she wishes – and her use of it is incredibly powerful.
Concerning the scope of topics of this collection, it all boils down to a few recurring themes: gender issues; feminism; the nature and urges of beings and the impossibility of defeating them; the interaction between humans and aliens and finally sex, which is depicted very gloomily and in imminent relation with violence and death. Please consider that this collection was released in 1990, but the stories it comprises were all written in the 60s and 70s.
James Tiptree Jr. is basically telling her readers that being a woman sucks – now and in the future. This is the core element that creeps through all of her stories and makes the collection, as you go from story to story, pull you down and down and further down… Almost every way a woman is bound to suffer is presented in this collection: Hostility (The Screwfly Solution); being ignored and denied an identity (The Girl Who Was Plugged In, The Women Men Don’t See and With Delicate Mad Hands); sexual humiliation, degradation and being reduced to an object (With Delicate Mad Hands, The Women Men Don’t See); being denied basic needs and rights (Your Faces, O My Sisters Your Faces Filled of Light).
The portrayal of alien beings and their interactions with humans is also something Tiptree Jr. does particularly well. In “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” we witness humans trying to pick up aliens at a bar. And the diversity of possible alien beings is mind-boggling! In fact, “the fear of the unknown” is a thought ‘alien’ to Tiptree Jr. Extraterrestrials are not the creepy, stomach-churning, dubious beings we have come to read and see in fiction. They aren’t driven by some pseudo-Darwinistic cause that will wipe us all out. As “The Women Men Don’t See” and “With Delicate Mad Hands” suggest, they're indeed a serious alternative to patriarchy.
My absolute favorite in this collection is "Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death", the story of an arachnoid alien being becoming conscious and trying to overcome its nature. It is an impressive piece of writing especially due to its strangely compelling prose which ensures a very engaging read.
As refreshing as some stories are (for instance “The Man Who Walked Home”, the story of an astronaut trapped in time, trying to go back home or “Slow Music” which is about the last woman and man on earth) the overall tone of this collection remains a bitter, grave and very imposing one.
It's not easy engaging your reader within such a short span of time, all the while creating an accomplished speculative environment and narrating a meaningful story. Reading "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever", you will often find yourself dropped into the middle of a new world, a new story and will immediately adapt, which is an amazing thing for an author to achieve! Be warned though, it’s not easy reading and her stories often require re-reading in order to grasp the full scope of what she does.
Triptree Jr. (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon) can invent perfectly developed worlds/characters/settings even in the shortest of her stories and has the talent to use and bend language as she wishes – and her use of it is incredibly powerful.
Concerning the scope of topics of this collection, it all boils down to a few recurring themes: gender issues; feminism; the nature and urges of beings and the impossibility of defeating them; the interaction between humans and aliens and finally sex, which is depicted very gloomily and in imminent relation with violence and death. Please consider that this collection was released in 1990, but the stories it comprises were all written in the 60s and 70s.
James Tiptree Jr. is basically telling her readers that being a woman sucks – now and in the future. This is the core element that creeps through all of her stories and makes the collection, as you go from story to story, pull you down and down and further down… Almost every way a woman is bound to suffer is presented in this collection: Hostility (The Screwfly Solution); being ignored and denied an identity (The Girl Who Was Plugged In, The Women Men Don’t See and With Delicate Mad Hands); sexual humiliation, degradation and being reduced to an object (With Delicate Mad Hands, The Women Men Don’t See); being denied basic needs and rights (Your Faces, O My Sisters Your Faces Filled of Light).
The portrayal of alien beings and their interactions with humans is also something Tiptree Jr. does particularly well. In “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” we witness humans trying to pick up aliens at a bar. And the diversity of possible alien beings is mind-boggling! In fact, “the fear of the unknown” is a thought ‘alien’ to Tiptree Jr. Extraterrestrials are not the creepy, stomach-churning, dubious beings we have come to read and see in fiction. They aren’t driven by some pseudo-Darwinistic cause that will wipe us all out. As “The Women Men Don’t See” and “With Delicate Mad Hands” suggest, they're indeed a serious alternative to patriarchy.
My absolute favorite in this collection is "Love is the Plan and the Plan is Death", the story of an arachnoid alien being becoming conscious and trying to overcome its nature. It is an impressive piece of writing especially due to its strangely compelling prose which ensures a very engaging read.
As refreshing as some stories are (for instance “The Man Who Walked Home”, the story of an astronaut trapped in time, trying to go back home or “Slow Music” which is about the last woman and man on earth) the overall tone of this collection remains a bitter, grave and very imposing one.
March 19, 2012
Not a light read. In story after story the author shows she is willing to put humankind up to the most unflattering of mirrors. If beauty or joy is found, it is fleeting. Still, it's easy to see why James Tiptree Jr. was so exciting to the SF establishment when "he" burst on the scene. There's something dangerous and intense about the prose, and a sort of gathering of confidence if you look at the stories in a roughly chronological order, from "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" to "With Delicate Mad Hands," though that is not how they are arranged in this volume.
I had read several of these stories before, as well as Alice Sheldon's biography. "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" and "The Women Men Don't See" are still daring after multiple reads. My own two favorites in this omnibus turned out to be stories I hadn't read before: "The Man Who Walked Home" and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" I enjoyed both for the tragedies hidden at their core, slowly and expertly unraveled by the author.
I had read several of these stories before, as well as Alice Sheldon's biography. "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" and "The Women Men Don't See" are still daring after multiple reads. My own two favorites in this omnibus turned out to be stories I hadn't read before: "The Man Who Walked Home" and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" I enjoyed both for the tragedies hidden at their core, slowly and expertly unraveled by the author.
February 20, 2022
Check out my video review here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqx8u...
This book also made my top 10 science fiction reads from 2021! Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a1w1...
“Nothing but loss and suffering and extinction lay ahead” - Tiptree Jr., 492
“Man is an animal whose dream comes true and kills him” - Tiptree Jr., 422
“You carry despair as your gift” - Tiptree Jr., 508 (and also what I would have said to her if we met)
“Stay a while and listen” - Deckard Cain
This review came in over 3500 words, too long, and so a few of the short stories have links provided to read the full review. I had a lot to say haha.
Each of these stories hits like a hammer to the head, bringing you to your knees, leaving you to scramble and scoop up the fragments of your skull. And yet, I’m so glad I found this. This book is powerful, mesmerizing, and important. After almost every single story I would pause and let it wash over me like acid rain. And think about it while suffering. And turn it over, and over like blackened pancakes while my house burnt down around me. And look it up and read about it. And check to see what other people had said about it, and thought about it. Even for the stories I didn’t like. And there were a few that I REALLY didn’t like. That’s one of the primal reasons I read. To experience something new. To think about life, and the world, and people. This collection of short stories achieves that and more.
It's also infuriating at times. Sheldon was brilliant; full of eerie, grim creativity framed with lucid prose that danced darkly around themes of death. But she also leaned on her militant man-hating and singular obsession with the biological imperative like a patient with acl surgery would lean on a crutch. It's exhausting. It's a sad truth when in stories about space travel, black holes, and strange aliens, the most unbelievable element is the often rapey, apey men.
Old science fiction is notoriously sexist. It's mostly written by older white men who either populated their stories with no women, forgettable women, regrettable women, or flirts in skirts. But the stories are almost never about how women suck. It's an unfortunate side effect. Sheldon's stories are consistently about men sucking and the inescapable, pulsating control of their biological imperative; often to the detriment of an otherwise interesting story. And as much as I love a fresh perspective, it doesn't stay fresh long, and long after it's gone stale Sheldon keeps on flogging the dead horse. Still, I can’t recommend this book enough. I LOVE IT EVEN WHEN I HATE IT.
I read the collection all in one go, which I wouldn’t recommend. Just like being choked out, the darkness might induce euphoria, but it’s best taken in small doses.
Favorite stories: The Screwfly Solution; The Girl Who Was Plugged In; With Delicate Mad Hands
Also great: Slow Music; Houston, Houston, Do You Read?; A Momentary Taste of Being; Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death; Your Faces O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light!; The Last Flight of Doctor Ain; The Man Who Walked Home;And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways
Disappointing: The Women Men Don’t See; She Waits For All Men Born; And So On, and So On
Yes, there’s only 3 disappointing stories in this entire collection, and one of them is considered by almost everyone except me as an all time classic.
Spoilers below.
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain **** And so my introduction to the dark mind of Alice Sheldon begins… A scientist is in love with Earth and seemingly wants to protect it by removing its greatest threat: humans. To do so he has developed a virus, a biological weapon, which he generously spreads across the globe before his death. One part CIA dossier, one part stylistic symbolism, all parts dark and intriguing.
The Screwfly Solution ***** Holy $#! +. This story is absolutely menacing and haunting. You can read my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side *** "Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That's a drive, y'know, it's built in." So in this story Sheldon has humans dying because they're chasing alien tail. It's a world of Mike Tysons in space. It’s Sheldon’s obsession with humanity’s biological imperative, and while it’s interesting, I just don’t agree with the premise.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In ***** "You were warned, this is the FUTURE." This story gives me flashbacks of Neuromancer, wildly confusing and simultaneously brilliant. While many will focus on the feminist angles and parallels with the female author pretending to be a man, I don't think that's the most interesting aspect to this story - yes life is always easier for beautiful women, men as well; no the science fiction world didn't reject Tiptree for being a woman because her writing was brilliant regardless. What I enjoyed most was her prescient pre-internet writing on the oversaturation of ads (Facebook, YouTube) and the power of influencers (Instagram). Her ability to build and hold mystery and tension is brilliant, as is her prose.
The Man Who Walked Home **** The title is self explanatory. Except it's a spaceman. And he's walking through time and space. And he might never make it back home, or he's been home already since before this started. Excellent riff on time travel gone wrong.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways **** Man doesn’t fit in, ostracizes himself. Risks everything on an idea. An idea no one believes in but him. Was he wrong to believe so? He despairs. He’s alone. And at long last, on his brief pilgrimage, a truth is revealed as he dies. What truth? I have no idea, haha. That the world is a big strange place?
The Women Men Don’t See ** Well that was disappointing. You can find my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Your Faces O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light! **** Such a sad story about the hopelessness of having mental health issues, combined with Sheldon's signature move of 'there's nothing worse, or harder than being a woman.' Seriously, women being raped and/or murdered is her James Harden step back 3. You know it's coming, you might even roll your eyes at the predictability, but damn if it isn't effective. What makes this story even more interesting is that despite the underlying message being full of anger and sadness the majority of it is told in an uplifting manner. At least until the end, when Sheldon shits on your heart.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? **** Brilliant, and staggering, and marred by Sheldon's dark feminist obsessions. You can read my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
With Delicate Mad Hands ***** This story is the foil to Houston, Houston, Do You Read? In Houston there was a classic science fiction premise aided by Sheldon’s brilliant feminist touch, that then devolved into men are evil blah blah blah. With Delicate Mad Hands the men are evil blah blah blah is put out of the way early, so that the rest of the story can unfold without that wicked crutch. And yes it is a crutch, I will die on this hill; the captain of the ship bloodies the protagonists face while raping her and then tells her to make him a sandwich after for literally no other reason than she is good at her job and she wants to do her job. Ridiculous.
Reading all her stories consecutively has really messed my head up. I’m always waiting for something terrible to happen. When good things are happening, I’m not fooled, I know it’s just a setup to some particularly nasty, rapey, disaster that looms on the horizon. This is what reading Sheldon has done to me. So when I arrived at the end of this story, and it turned out it was actually an across the cosmos love story and the protagonist found a place she truly belonged and was loved, I cried a little. It’s a beautiful story, and the only story of hers that I’ve read with what I consider to be a happy ending. Then the protagonist died, because of course she died, it’s still Sheldon writing these stories with a bloody sledgehammer!
Once again Sheldon demonstrates her mastery of suspense as the sanity of CP, the protagonist, is constantly in question. Learning her history she has every reason to be insane, and she clearly carries a few hallmarks of the insane, but what if she’s not? What if it’s the world around her that’s crazy and she’s just special? That sounds like something a crazy person would say haha... But eventually it’s discovered that actually she is special! And damn was it beautiful.
Sheldon’s alien planet is also a masterclass and bizarre and insane creativity that I struggle to even put into words so I won’t try. Just read the damn story. And I’m sorry if I spoiled it.
A Momentary Taste of Being **** Another excellent, dark story, with many possible thematic undercurrents, including: humanity’s troubling relationship with sex, the purpose of life, whether human life is valuable at all, whether women have any purpose besides making babies and dying, are humans ruled by their animal impulses and would we be better off without those biological imperatives.
These ideas are subtly explored, I may even be imagining them, and that is part of what makes her writing so powerful and interesting is that it’s open to interpretation.
The story follows a human ship traveling through space searching for a new planet to colonize. Humanity has destroyed Earth, and possibly each other, and this is a final effort to locate a possible planet to colonize before our species goes extinct. This is typical Sheldon, when humans aren’t raping each other they’re raping the planet. She really does seem to hate people, men in particular. I wonder if any of her unsettling views and perceptions were influenced by her service in WWII and brief employment for the CIA?
Anyway, a member of the crew has recently returned from an immense discovery: a new habitable planet! However, some of her data has gone missing, along with her crew mates, and she’s brought back an alien. What could possibly go wrong?
Knowing the author, I wasn’t surprised at all when everything fell apart. However, the way in which everything goes wrong is wildly creative, disturbing, and the zenith of this story. My only real issue is that I felt it could have achieved the same purpose in less pages, as the first part of the story does drag on a bit.
We Who Stole the Dream ** One of my least favorite stories in this collection. It is concerned with a small and weak alien species who have been subjected by humans, planning their revolt and escape from captivity and a return to their homeland.
The themes here are just too blatant and even a bit obnoxious in my opinion which lessened the impact and my interest in the story.
It’s clear that the alien species here are meant to represent women. They are smaller and weaker and have been enslaved, raped, and treated horrible by humans. Humans here only exist as a farcical representation of everything Sheldon seemingly hates about men; they’re mean, nasty, they rape everything, and they treat the aliens as their property. The aliens escaping captivity to a theoretical promised land is again classic Sheldon, as in many of her stories she yearns for the possibility of women creating their own society without men. However, in this story the alien, or female society, is also rotten, and our group of escapees are faced with the unrelenting reality that everyone is bad everywhere.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever *** I’m not quite sure what this story was about honestly. If I had to guess, a man has died, and in his strange march to death or conversion of spiritual energy to another plane of existence he relives some of his strongest memories before his consciousness winks out forever. He’s hunting ducks, he’s being humiliated sexually, he’s interacting with his wife. It’s filled with stunning prose, which comfortably carried me through the story despite my confusion.
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death **** A wild story written by an alien spider, who is forced to once again shoulder the burden of Sheldon’s dark obsession with sex and the biological imperative. Definitely some weird and kinky BDSM and fetish vibes, but hey, blame the alien spiders right? At this point is it even a spoiler to mention that this story ends in death?
On the Last Afternoon *** A human settlement on an alien planet have their very existence threatened by building sized lobsters that need to have sex on top of their village. Haha. For real. That’s the plot. Incredible. Not much for creepy men here, but we at least get the biological imperative and the story ending with I guess everyone dying because a man didn’t have enough faith in his people, so Sheldon’s hit 2 out of 3 on her greatest hits list.
She Waits For All Men Born** Another story I’m not sure I understand. An entity that is death, or humanity, or love, but definitely death, or something, is traveling through time, and people are dying, until it’s born into a blind albino who kills a bunch of people. The second half of this story was superior to the first in my opinion, but still not great.
Slow Music ****Classic Sheldon. Weird, dark, guilty sex vibes, and everyone died at the end. What more could you ask for? This story also had a cameo from Sheldon herself! But I might have made that up. Anyway, I’m going to stick by it. It was a Tarantino style cameo that shared the following paragraph that not only summarized the backstory here but neatly enveloped what this entire collection of stories was about.
“Every one of them died. They lived knowing that nothing but loss and suffering and extinction lay ahead. And they cared, terribly...Oh, they made myths, but not many really believed them. Death was behind everything, waiting everywhere. Aging and death. No escape...Some of them went crazy, they fought and killed and enslaved each other by the millions, as if they could gain more life. Some of them gave up their precious lives for each other. They loved - and had to watch the ones they loved age and die. And in their pain and despair they built, they struggled, some of them sang. But above all, boy, they copulated! Fornicated, fucked, made love!” (492)
Is this Sheldon actually coming to grips that our life, the way we live, isn’t that bad? She almost looks upon humanity’s lifestyle in a darkly romantic and wistful way, which perhaps is even connected to the title. A last slow dance for Sheldon and her troubled thoughts on humans, life, and death.
So what’s the story about? Well, humans messed up the Earth again, I think, and killed a lot of people. And what’s left? Weird humans. Humans that have evolved, or transcended, or something. They aren’t interested in sex anymore. They also don’t have aggression or rage or animal instinct, which is seemingly the same as sex in Sheldon’s eyes, although someone did steal crazy chicken lady’s bicycle. They all quest towards ‘the river,’ which is some sort of cosmic transcendental highway being used to leave Earth, or die, or both, but it definitely ceases life on Earth. Did she read Philip Jose Farmer before writing this?
There’s a girl, a weird one, she wants to have babies and raise goats and bees and be human and not leave to the river. And she meets a boy, who is reluctant at first, but eventually becomes agreeable to making some babies and helping to run a farm. But they need to go to the river so the boy can say goodbye to his dead cosmic dad entity. And of course everything goes wrong and they both end up in the cosmic sausage maker.
And So On, and So On * A bit too short, even for a short story, and it never gets its hooks in. In this case the best wasn’t saved for last, as I think this was the weakest story in the collection.
Stories-9, Language-10, Ideas-9, Characters-8, Enjoyment-10, O9.3
This book also made my top 10 science fiction reads from 2021! Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a1w1...
“Nothing but loss and suffering and extinction lay ahead” - Tiptree Jr., 492
“Man is an animal whose dream comes true and kills him” - Tiptree Jr., 422
“You carry despair as your gift” - Tiptree Jr., 508 (and also what I would have said to her if we met)
“Stay a while and listen” - Deckard Cain
This review came in over 3500 words, too long, and so a few of the short stories have links provided to read the full review. I had a lot to say haha.
Each of these stories hits like a hammer to the head, bringing you to your knees, leaving you to scramble and scoop up the fragments of your skull. And yet, I’m so glad I found this. This book is powerful, mesmerizing, and important. After almost every single story I would pause and let it wash over me like acid rain. And think about it while suffering. And turn it over, and over like blackened pancakes while my house burnt down around me. And look it up and read about it. And check to see what other people had said about it, and thought about it. Even for the stories I didn’t like. And there were a few that I REALLY didn’t like. That’s one of the primal reasons I read. To experience something new. To think about life, and the world, and people. This collection of short stories achieves that and more.
It's also infuriating at times. Sheldon was brilliant; full of eerie, grim creativity framed with lucid prose that danced darkly around themes of death. But she also leaned on her militant man-hating and singular obsession with the biological imperative like a patient with acl surgery would lean on a crutch. It's exhausting. It's a sad truth when in stories about space travel, black holes, and strange aliens, the most unbelievable element is the often rapey, apey men.
Old science fiction is notoriously sexist. It's mostly written by older white men who either populated their stories with no women, forgettable women, regrettable women, or flirts in skirts. But the stories are almost never about how women suck. It's an unfortunate side effect. Sheldon's stories are consistently about men sucking and the inescapable, pulsating control of their biological imperative; often to the detriment of an otherwise interesting story. And as much as I love a fresh perspective, it doesn't stay fresh long, and long after it's gone stale Sheldon keeps on flogging the dead horse. Still, I can’t recommend this book enough. I LOVE IT EVEN WHEN I HATE IT.
I read the collection all in one go, which I wouldn’t recommend. Just like being choked out, the darkness might induce euphoria, but it’s best taken in small doses.
Favorite stories: The Screwfly Solution; The Girl Who Was Plugged In; With Delicate Mad Hands
Also great: Slow Music; Houston, Houston, Do You Read?; A Momentary Taste of Being; Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death; Your Faces O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light!; The Last Flight of Doctor Ain; The Man Who Walked Home;And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways
Disappointing: The Women Men Don’t See; She Waits For All Men Born; And So On, and So On
Yes, there’s only 3 disappointing stories in this entire collection, and one of them is considered by almost everyone except me as an all time classic.
Spoilers below.
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain **** And so my introduction to the dark mind of Alice Sheldon begins… A scientist is in love with Earth and seemingly wants to protect it by removing its greatest threat: humans. To do so he has developed a virus, a biological weapon, which he generously spreads across the globe before his death. One part CIA dossier, one part stylistic symbolism, all parts dark and intriguing.
The Screwfly Solution ***** Holy $#! +. This story is absolutely menacing and haunting. You can read my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side *** "Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That's a drive, y'know, it's built in." So in this story Sheldon has humans dying because they're chasing alien tail. It's a world of Mike Tysons in space. It’s Sheldon’s obsession with humanity’s biological imperative, and while it’s interesting, I just don’t agree with the premise.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In ***** "You were warned, this is the FUTURE." This story gives me flashbacks of Neuromancer, wildly confusing and simultaneously brilliant. While many will focus on the feminist angles and parallels with the female author pretending to be a man, I don't think that's the most interesting aspect to this story - yes life is always easier for beautiful women, men as well; no the science fiction world didn't reject Tiptree for being a woman because her writing was brilliant regardless. What I enjoyed most was her prescient pre-internet writing on the oversaturation of ads (Facebook, YouTube) and the power of influencers (Instagram). Her ability to build and hold mystery and tension is brilliant, as is her prose.
The Man Who Walked Home **** The title is self explanatory. Except it's a spaceman. And he's walking through time and space. And he might never make it back home, or he's been home already since before this started. Excellent riff on time travel gone wrong.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways **** Man doesn’t fit in, ostracizes himself. Risks everything on an idea. An idea no one believes in but him. Was he wrong to believe so? He despairs. He’s alone. And at long last, on his brief pilgrimage, a truth is revealed as he dies. What truth? I have no idea, haha. That the world is a big strange place?
The Women Men Don’t See ** Well that was disappointing. You can find my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Your Faces O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light! **** Such a sad story about the hopelessness of having mental health issues, combined with Sheldon's signature move of 'there's nothing worse, or harder than being a woman.' Seriously, women being raped and/or murdered is her James Harden step back 3. You know it's coming, you might even roll your eyes at the predictability, but damn if it isn't effective. What makes this story even more interesting is that despite the underlying message being full of anger and sadness the majority of it is told in an uplifting manner. At least until the end, when Sheldon shits on your heart.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? **** Brilliant, and staggering, and marred by Sheldon's dark feminist obsessions. You can read my full review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
With Delicate Mad Hands ***** This story is the foil to Houston, Houston, Do You Read? In Houston there was a classic science fiction premise aided by Sheldon’s brilliant feminist touch, that then devolved into men are evil blah blah blah. With Delicate Mad Hands the men are evil blah blah blah is put out of the way early, so that the rest of the story can unfold without that wicked crutch. And yes it is a crutch, I will die on this hill; the captain of the ship bloodies the protagonists face while raping her and then tells her to make him a sandwich after for literally no other reason than she is good at her job and she wants to do her job. Ridiculous.
Reading all her stories consecutively has really messed my head up. I’m always waiting for something terrible to happen. When good things are happening, I’m not fooled, I know it’s just a setup to some particularly nasty, rapey, disaster that looms on the horizon. This is what reading Sheldon has done to me. So when I arrived at the end of this story, and it turned out it was actually an across the cosmos love story and the protagonist found a place she truly belonged and was loved, I cried a little. It’s a beautiful story, and the only story of hers that I’ve read with what I consider to be a happy ending. Then the protagonist died, because of course she died, it’s still Sheldon writing these stories with a bloody sledgehammer!
Once again Sheldon demonstrates her mastery of suspense as the sanity of CP, the protagonist, is constantly in question. Learning her history she has every reason to be insane, and she clearly carries a few hallmarks of the insane, but what if she’s not? What if it’s the world around her that’s crazy and she’s just special? That sounds like something a crazy person would say haha... But eventually it’s discovered that actually she is special! And damn was it beautiful.
Sheldon’s alien planet is also a masterclass and bizarre and insane creativity that I struggle to even put into words so I won’t try. Just read the damn story. And I’m sorry if I spoiled it.
A Momentary Taste of Being **** Another excellent, dark story, with many possible thematic undercurrents, including: humanity’s troubling relationship with sex, the purpose of life, whether human life is valuable at all, whether women have any purpose besides making babies and dying, are humans ruled by their animal impulses and would we be better off without those biological imperatives.
These ideas are subtly explored, I may even be imagining them, and that is part of what makes her writing so powerful and interesting is that it’s open to interpretation.
The story follows a human ship traveling through space searching for a new planet to colonize. Humanity has destroyed Earth, and possibly each other, and this is a final effort to locate a possible planet to colonize before our species goes extinct. This is typical Sheldon, when humans aren’t raping each other they’re raping the planet. She really does seem to hate people, men in particular. I wonder if any of her unsettling views and perceptions were influenced by her service in WWII and brief employment for the CIA?
Anyway, a member of the crew has recently returned from an immense discovery: a new habitable planet! However, some of her data has gone missing, along with her crew mates, and she’s brought back an alien. What could possibly go wrong?
Knowing the author, I wasn’t surprised at all when everything fell apart. However, the way in which everything goes wrong is wildly creative, disturbing, and the zenith of this story. My only real issue is that I felt it could have achieved the same purpose in less pages, as the first part of the story does drag on a bit.
We Who Stole the Dream ** One of my least favorite stories in this collection. It is concerned with a small and weak alien species who have been subjected by humans, planning their revolt and escape from captivity and a return to their homeland.
The themes here are just too blatant and even a bit obnoxious in my opinion which lessened the impact and my interest in the story.
It’s clear that the alien species here are meant to represent women. They are smaller and weaker and have been enslaved, raped, and treated horrible by humans. Humans here only exist as a farcical representation of everything Sheldon seemingly hates about men; they’re mean, nasty, they rape everything, and they treat the aliens as their property. The aliens escaping captivity to a theoretical promised land is again classic Sheldon, as in many of her stories she yearns for the possibility of women creating their own society without men. However, in this story the alien, or female society, is also rotten, and our group of escapees are faced with the unrelenting reality that everyone is bad everywhere.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever *** I’m not quite sure what this story was about honestly. If I had to guess, a man has died, and in his strange march to death or conversion of spiritual energy to another plane of existence he relives some of his strongest memories before his consciousness winks out forever. He’s hunting ducks, he’s being humiliated sexually, he’s interacting with his wife. It’s filled with stunning prose, which comfortably carried me through the story despite my confusion.
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death **** A wild story written by an alien spider, who is forced to once again shoulder the burden of Sheldon’s dark obsession with sex and the biological imperative. Definitely some weird and kinky BDSM and fetish vibes, but hey, blame the alien spiders right? At this point is it even a spoiler to mention that this story ends in death?
On the Last Afternoon *** A human settlement on an alien planet have their very existence threatened by building sized lobsters that need to have sex on top of their village. Haha. For real. That’s the plot. Incredible. Not much for creepy men here, but we at least get the biological imperative and the story ending with I guess everyone dying because a man didn’t have enough faith in his people, so Sheldon’s hit 2 out of 3 on her greatest hits list.
She Waits For All Men Born** Another story I’m not sure I understand. An entity that is death, or humanity, or love, but definitely death, or something, is traveling through time, and people are dying, until it’s born into a blind albino who kills a bunch of people. The second half of this story was superior to the first in my opinion, but still not great.
Slow Music ****Classic Sheldon. Weird, dark, guilty sex vibes, and everyone died at the end. What more could you ask for? This story also had a cameo from Sheldon herself! But I might have made that up. Anyway, I’m going to stick by it. It was a Tarantino style cameo that shared the following paragraph that not only summarized the backstory here but neatly enveloped what this entire collection of stories was about.
“Every one of them died. They lived knowing that nothing but loss and suffering and extinction lay ahead. And they cared, terribly...Oh, they made myths, but not many really believed them. Death was behind everything, waiting everywhere. Aging and death. No escape...Some of them went crazy, they fought and killed and enslaved each other by the millions, as if they could gain more life. Some of them gave up their precious lives for each other. They loved - and had to watch the ones they loved age and die. And in their pain and despair they built, they struggled, some of them sang. But above all, boy, they copulated! Fornicated, fucked, made love!” (492)
Is this Sheldon actually coming to grips that our life, the way we live, isn’t that bad? She almost looks upon humanity’s lifestyle in a darkly romantic and wistful way, which perhaps is even connected to the title. A last slow dance for Sheldon and her troubled thoughts on humans, life, and death.
So what’s the story about? Well, humans messed up the Earth again, I think, and killed a lot of people. And what’s left? Weird humans. Humans that have evolved, or transcended, or something. They aren’t interested in sex anymore. They also don’t have aggression or rage or animal instinct, which is seemingly the same as sex in Sheldon’s eyes, although someone did steal crazy chicken lady’s bicycle. They all quest towards ‘the river,’ which is some sort of cosmic transcendental highway being used to leave Earth, or die, or both, but it definitely ceases life on Earth. Did she read Philip Jose Farmer before writing this?
There’s a girl, a weird one, she wants to have babies and raise goats and bees and be human and not leave to the river. And she meets a boy, who is reluctant at first, but eventually becomes agreeable to making some babies and helping to run a farm. But they need to go to the river so the boy can say goodbye to his dead cosmic dad entity. And of course everything goes wrong and they both end up in the cosmic sausage maker.
And So On, and So On * A bit too short, even for a short story, and it never gets its hooks in. In this case the best wasn’t saved for last, as I think this was the weakest story in the collection.
Stories-9, Language-10, Ideas-9, Characters-8, Enjoyment-10, O9.3
December 29, 2023
To be completely honest with you, I'm not sure how to talk about this reading experience. Reading Tiptree is A LOT. I read this collection such a long time because making myself to actually read the next short-story has always been a struggle. The stories are DARK and written in a way that's complex and in most cases very difficult to read. That said, this was very interesting experience and I found myself thinking back on some stories quite a lot. Definitely glad I read this, but I suspect it will take me at least 10 years to pick up another book by Tiptree 🤭
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain ⭐⭐⭐
Really, poor monkeys & apes, they didn't deserve this fate!
This was a solid short-story with a nice surprise in its sleeve and absolutely slimy protagonist. If someone could convince me that exterminating humanity is a good idea, it would be Tiptree...
Also, note for myself - read Children of Time asap!
The Screwfly Solution ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This was kind of brilliant and completely revolting. The ending slaps, this is how you write a great short-story!
Also, this story was great inspiration for Manhunt, so I would definitely recommend reading those two together, if you are inclined to read them both.
And I Woke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side ⭐⭐⭐
This story has so much potential, but ultimately fell flat for me. I suppose it should have been take on colonialism, but it seemed to me that Tiptree didn't really think it through.
One thing that I think makes this read much more satisfying is reading La Belle Dame Sans Merci beforehand. It's a poem from which the title originates and it honestly makes the story so much more fun.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I have to say that the U.S. political implications and contexts inside this story went completely over my head, but I guess that really doesn't matter so much. Even though, it makes me frustrated just a little bit.
While I read this one, I kept wondering about the sickening way Tiptree has with language. I just find the way she writes about (potentially) controversial topics really intriguing. Like the way she describes
The way she makes me feel things is masterful and I kind of hate her for it...
The Man Who Walked Home ⭐⭐
This was a meh for me. I thought the idea was interesting, but... the story felt pointless. I thought I would rate it three stars, but then I looked that I rated The Last Flight of Doctor Ain three stars and there is a big difference between those two.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways ⭐⭐
Meh! Don't really have anything to say... eeeh, I guess I just don't know what was the point of this short-story? The Man Who Walked Home was way more interesting than this one, maybe I should start doing half stars in this review...
Also, switched to audio, we'll see if that takes me through the collection faster or if it won't mash well with Tiptree's prose...
______
Alright! I'm challenging myself to finishing this collection this year! I'm such chickenshit...😨
Edit 24.9. I'm so behind, I can't believe I only read 6 of the short-stories, I'm so not going to make this! 🙈
Visual presentation of how this book makes me feel
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The Women Men Don't See ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This is one of Tiptree's famous short-stories and if you don't know why or anything about it at all, you are so lucky and go read it before someone spoils it for you! This short-story very cleverly conveys its feminist idea and that's all you gonna hear about it from me 🤐
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The first half of this story was so confusing that I feel Tiptree might have teamed up with Joanna Russ to write it. I literary didn't know what was happening util the fist was right in front of my nose and I didn't even had time to breath before the punch landed. What the fuck was this, Tiptree?! I might eye re-read this one later, because I think I might have missed quite a bit in the audio. Kameron Hurley has a short story inspired by this one: Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!, so I think I'm going to re-read that one next.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This one has been really hyped to me before reading, so I ended up being kind of disappointed even though the short-story is at least fine. I just felt that there was a lot of space and potential for gender exploration that wasn't explored and that the short-story had a natural potential to be VERY queer but was... very straight in the final product (there was especially one aspect of pronoun usage that I felt was potentially problematic but could also be interesting if more deeply explored). This story also goes in the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Joanna Russ gendered utopias/apocalypses (isn't it funny that these are kind of synonymous in these cases) and even though I find them appealing on one level, I find them unrealistic and naive on another level. Yes, once again, I was reminded of Manhunt while reading this...
Definitely an interesting read, but a bit disappointing in wasting some potential (not that it's surprising considering the publication date...).
With Delicate Mad Hands ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This story was a bit unnecessarily long and could use some editing, but I ended up liking it. It kind of felt like starting in one story (fifties household transported into a space-ship) and ending in an entirely different one (star-crossed lovers), but it worked for me. Definitely TW for with this one though, the beginning is super rough.
A Momentary Taste of Being ⭐⭐⭐
This was simply too long and the protagonist was completely despicable and I'm kind of mad that There were also a lot of "weird family dynamics" turned into incestuous thoughts I mostly just feel like this story didn't really went anywhere and... huh... just why?
We Who Stole the Dream ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Really loved this one. It is a story of oppressed people in the struggle of freeing themselves from human dominion. It is a tough one from the beginning, starting . The closing line was brilliant. Definitely one of the more honed short-stories in this collection.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ⭐⭐⭐
Huh? I guess this one went over my head? <- This is what I wrote after finishing it, honestly, now I can't remember anything about the story... Edit: After going back to the story I now know which one it was, but... yeah, no clue what it was supposed to be about, not my favourite.
Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read this one before, my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
On the Last Afternoon ⭐⭐⭐
For a short story containing graphic monster lobster sex this was kind of boring? Idk, nothing really surprising happened in the story? Didn't love this one...
She Waits for All Men Born ⭐⭐
... .... ... Huh? I... what?
Okay, once more I had to go back to the story and... yeah, my reaction is the same as above, what is this?! (This is the Snow child story, future me...)
Slow Music ⭐⭐⭐
This was a weird story... I don't really know what much more to say about it. Maybe.... the interesting thing about this story is that it very explicitly shows Tiptree's idea that male violence is linked to the urge to reproduce so if we took this out of the equation, men could be actually nice. Which... I just don't know... I think there is more factors in play. Overall, a weird one, interesting one, but not very memorable.
And so on, and so on
I actually listened to this story twice and still I didn't manage to focus and therefore I have no clue what is it about...
BRing at WotF: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
An older BR thread I don't want to misplace: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain ⭐⭐⭐
Really, poor monkeys & apes, they didn't deserve this fate!
This was a solid short-story with a nice surprise in its sleeve and absolutely slimy protagonist. If someone could convince me that exterminating humanity is a good idea, it would be Tiptree...
Also, note for myself - read Children of Time asap!
The Screwfly Solution ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This was kind of brilliant and completely revolting. The ending slaps, this is how you write a great short-story!
Also, this story was great inspiration for Manhunt, so I would definitely recommend reading those two together, if you are inclined to read them both.
Do you know I never said “we” meaning women before? “We” was always me and Alan, and Amy of course. Being killed selectively encourages group identification… . You see how sane-headed I am.
And I Woke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side ⭐⭐⭐
This story has so much potential, but ultimately fell flat for me. I suppose it should have been take on colonialism, but it seemed to me that Tiptree didn't really think it through.
One thing that I think makes this read much more satisfying is reading La Belle Dame Sans Merci beforehand. It's a poem from which the title originates and it honestly makes the story so much more fun.
“What I’m trying to tell you, this is a trap. We’ve hit the supernormal stimulus. Man is exogamous—all our history is one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger. Or get impregnated by him; it works for women too. Anything different-colored, different nose, ass, anything, man has to fuck it or die trying. That’s a drive, y’know, it’s built in. Because it works fine as long as the stranger is human. For millions of years that kept the genes circulating. But now we’ve met aliens we can’t screw, and we’re about to die trying… . Do you think I can touch my wife?”
The Girl Who Was Plugged In ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I couldn't put it down until I finished it. I have to say that the U.S. political implications and contexts inside this story went completely over my head, but I guess that really doesn't matter so much. Even though, it makes me frustrated just a little bit.
While I read this one, I kept wondering about the sickening way Tiptree has with language. I just find the way she writes about (potentially) controversial topics really intriguing. Like the way she describes
The way she makes me feel things is masterful and I kind of hate her for it...
She's always known Delphi has almost no sense of taste or smell. They explained about that: only so much bandwith. You don't have to taste suncar, do you? And the slight overall dimness of Delphi's sense of touch-she's familiar with that, too. Fabrics that would prickle P. Burke's own hide feel like a cool plastic film to Delphi.
But the blank spots. It took her a while to notice them. Delphi doesn't have much privacy; investments of her size don't. So she's slow about discovering there's certain definite places where her beastly P.Burke body feels things that Delphi's dainty flesh does not.
The Man Who Walked Home ⭐⭐
This was a meh for me. I thought the idea was interesting, but... the story felt pointless. I thought I would rate it three stars, but then I looked that I rated The Last Flight of Doctor Ain three stars and there is a big difference between those two.
They believe his oxygen tab went red because of the state of their souls," Laban chuckled. "Their souls are going to have to stay damned awhile; John Delgano has been on oxygen reserve for five centuries - or rather, he will be low for five centuries more. At a half-second per year his time, that's fifteen minutes. We know from the audio trace he's still breathing more or less normally, and the reserve was good for twenty minutes. So they should have their salvation about the year seven hundred, if they last that long."
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways ⭐⭐
Meh! Don't really have anything to say... eeeh, I guess I just don't know what was the point of this short-story? The Man Who Walked Home was way more interesting than this one, maybe I should start doing half stars in this review...
Also, switched to audio, we'll see if that takes me through the collection faster or if it won't mash well with Tiptree's prose...
______
Alright! I'm challenging myself to finishing this collection this year! I'm such chickenshit...😨
Edit 24.9. I'm so behind, I can't believe I only read 6 of the short-stories, I'm so not going to make this! 🙈
Visual presentation of how this book makes me feel
______
The Women Men Don't See ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This is one of Tiptree's famous short-stories and if you don't know why or anything about it at all, you are so lucky and go read it before someone spoils it for you! This short-story very cleverly conveys its feminist idea and that's all you gonna hear about it from me 🤐
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The first half of this story was so confusing that I feel Tiptree might have teamed up with Joanna Russ to write it. I literary didn't know what was happening util the fist was right in front of my nose and I didn't even had time to breath before the punch landed. What the fuck was this, Tiptree?! I might eye re-read this one later, because I think I might have missed quite a bit in the audio. Kameron Hurley has a short story inspired by this one: Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light!, so I think I'm going to re-read that one next.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This one has been really hyped to me before reading, so I ended up being kind of disappointed even though the short-story is at least fine. I just felt that there was a lot of space and potential for gender exploration that wasn't explored and that the short-story had a natural potential to be VERY queer but was... very straight in the final product (there was especially one aspect of pronoun usage that I felt was potentially problematic but could also be interesting if more deeply explored). This story also goes in the tradition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Joanna Russ gendered utopias/apocalypses (isn't it funny that these are kind of synonymous in these cases) and even though I find them appealing on one level, I find them unrealistic and naive on another level. Yes, once again, I was reminded of Manhunt while reading this...
Definitely an interesting read, but a bit disappointing in wasting some potential (not that it's surprising considering the publication date...).
With Delicate Mad Hands ⭐⭐⭐⭐
This story was a bit unnecessarily long and could use some editing, but I ended up liking it. It kind of felt like starting in one story (fifties household transported into a space-ship) and ending in an entirely different one (star-crossed lovers), but it worked for me. Definitely TW for with this one though, the beginning is super rough.
A Momentary Taste of Being ⭐⭐⭐
This was simply too long and the protagonist was completely despicable and I'm kind of mad that There were also a lot of "weird family dynamics" turned into incestuous thoughts I mostly just feel like this story didn't really went anywhere and... huh... just why?
We Who Stole the Dream ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Really loved this one. It is a story of oppressed people in the struggle of freeing themselves from human dominion. It is a tough one from the beginning, starting . The closing line was brilliant. Definitely one of the more honed short-stories in this collection.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ⭐⭐⭐
Huh? I guess this one went over my head? <- This is what I wrote after finishing it, honestly, now I can't remember anything about the story... Edit: After going back to the story I now know which one it was, but... yeah, no clue what it was supposed to be about, not my favourite.
Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read this one before, my review here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
On the Last Afternoon ⭐⭐⭐
For a short story containing graphic monster lobster sex this was kind of boring? Idk, nothing really surprising happened in the story? Didn't love this one...
She Waits for All Men Born ⭐⭐
... .... ... Huh? I... what?
Okay, once more I had to go back to the story and... yeah, my reaction is the same as above, what is this?! (This is the Snow child story, future me...)
Slow Music ⭐⭐⭐
This was a weird story... I don't really know what much more to say about it. Maybe.... the interesting thing about this story is that it very explicitly shows Tiptree's idea that male violence is linked to the urge to reproduce so if we took this out of the equation, men could be actually nice. Which... I just don't know... I think there is more factors in play. Overall, a weird one, interesting one, but not very memorable.
And so on, and so on
I actually listened to this story twice and still I didn't manage to focus and therefore I have no clue what is it about...
BRing at WotF: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
An older BR thread I don't want to misplace: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
April 9, 2012
James Tiptree Jr. (pen name for Alice Sheldon) was a truly amazing writer. Her life - both public and internal - is fascinating in itself, but her collected fiction is a rare and precious legacy.
This particular collection of many of her short works is an impressive, daunting hunk of wordage. There are so many stories here and so many ideas within that one could spend a lifetime mulling them over. Unfortunately, my copy must be returned to the library for the enjoyment of a waiting patron, so I was unable to get to all of the stories available here. But I read most of the inclusions I wanted to read right now, so I'll go ahead and offer my thoughts. I really need to buy a copy for my home shelves!
Many of the stories here upset me in some way, be it anger, or sadness, or frustration or feelings harder to pin down and describe. They were wonderfully-written, yet difficult to read. I don't regret the effort, though, as I greatly respect an author who can so move my emotions. Each story here was well worth my time, but this quality in the writing did necessitate my taking things in slow, more digestible bites. Tiptree was masterful at exposing imbalance, unfairness, iniquity, and hypocrisy.
There are several 5-star stories here as well as a number to which I would give 3 stars. As with most collections, especially one so lengthy and covering such a wide period in an author's career, there was considerable variance in subjective quality and impact from story to story. However, as with a few other short story authors I can think of, (Ted Chiang comes to mind.) a mediocre Tiptree story stands tall above the ouvres of many of her peers.
One note on format: I liked the organizational layout of this collection. Tiptree's included stories were categorized into themed sections, such as "The Boundaries of Humanity" or "Male and Female," and I felt the system worked well, providing a method of comparison that I found useful. It was good to read several thematically-related stories together. I would definitely recommend this particular collection as a prime place to introduce yourself to this phenomenal and often misunderstood writer.
This particular collection of many of her short works is an impressive, daunting hunk of wordage. There are so many stories here and so many ideas within that one could spend a lifetime mulling them over. Unfortunately, my copy must be returned to the library for the enjoyment of a waiting patron, so I was unable to get to all of the stories available here. But I read most of the inclusions I wanted to read right now, so I'll go ahead and offer my thoughts. I really need to buy a copy for my home shelves!
Many of the stories here upset me in some way, be it anger, or sadness, or frustration or feelings harder to pin down and describe. They were wonderfully-written, yet difficult to read. I don't regret the effort, though, as I greatly respect an author who can so move my emotions. Each story here was well worth my time, but this quality in the writing did necessitate my taking things in slow, more digestible bites. Tiptree was masterful at exposing imbalance, unfairness, iniquity, and hypocrisy.
There are several 5-star stories here as well as a number to which I would give 3 stars. As with most collections, especially one so lengthy and covering such a wide period in an author's career, there was considerable variance in subjective quality and impact from story to story. However, as with a few other short story authors I can think of, (Ted Chiang comes to mind.) a mediocre Tiptree story stands tall above the ouvres of many of her peers.
One note on format: I liked the organizational layout of this collection. Tiptree's included stories were categorized into themed sections, such as "The Boundaries of Humanity" or "Male and Female," and I felt the system worked well, providing a method of comparison that I found useful. It was good to read several thematically-related stories together. I would definitely recommend this particular collection as a prime place to introduce yourself to this phenomenal and often misunderstood writer.
April 26, 2022
Fiercely intelligent, darkly pessimistic, incendiary SF stories that challenge the reader
We all now know that James Tiptree Jr was actually Alice Sheldon, but at the time s/he suddenly appeared on the SF scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, nobody know anything about the author other than they wrote incredibly original, dark, and challenging stories, with muscular and lyrical prose, touching on so many topical themes at the time that remain just as relevant today. This was an author unafraid to upset, shock, and push readers out of their comfort zone in so many ways, and yet still do that within the familiar genre tropes of space colonization, time travel, alien contact, post-apocalypse, etc. And yet these stories owe far less to the Golden Age of Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov - instead they are on par with some of the greats of that era, especially Ursula K. LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Phillip K. Dick, and Cordwainer Smith, to name just the most dazzling. This posthumous collection gathers 18of her short stories and novellas, and they are intense and memorable.
And yet Alice Sheldon's secret life was far more surprising and dramatic and troubled than readers might have suspected. I have yet to read her biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips, but am eager to move onto that now. I wanted to approach her stories without preconceptions, and they are absolutely worthy of her formidable reputation - this woman was a bad-ass, and must have been a fierce person to meet and debate in person. I listened to the audiobook version, but found I really had to focus carefully on the stories to get their full effect - this is no light beach reading, but rewards the attentive reader's time and engagement. I relistened to quite a few, and appreciated them even more the second time round - it's a collection well worth revisiting again someday.
We all now know that James Tiptree Jr was actually Alice Sheldon, but at the time s/he suddenly appeared on the SF scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, nobody know anything about the author other than they wrote incredibly original, dark, and challenging stories, with muscular and lyrical prose, touching on so many topical themes at the time that remain just as relevant today. This was an author unafraid to upset, shock, and push readers out of their comfort zone in so many ways, and yet still do that within the familiar genre tropes of space colonization, time travel, alien contact, post-apocalypse, etc. And yet these stories owe far less to the Golden Age of Clarke, Heinlein, and Asimov - instead they are on par with some of the greats of that era, especially Ursula K. LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Phillip K. Dick, and Cordwainer Smith, to name just the most dazzling. This posthumous collection gathers 18of her short stories and novellas, and they are intense and memorable.
And yet Alice Sheldon's secret life was far more surprising and dramatic and troubled than readers might have suspected. I have yet to read her biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, by Julie Phillips, but am eager to move onto that now. I wanted to approach her stories without preconceptions, and they are absolutely worthy of her formidable reputation - this woman was a bad-ass, and must have been a fierce person to meet and debate in person. I listened to the audiobook version, but found I really had to focus carefully on the stories to get their full effect - this is no light beach reading, but rewards the attentive reader's time and engagement. I relistened to quite a few, and appreciated them even more the second time round - it's a collection well worth revisiting again someday.
August 20, 2013
Yowza. Missed this author completely in the scifi years. The introduction to this collection discusses the change in status for the author when it was discovered that James Tiptree Jr. was really Alice Sheldon. Why no one questioned the profound feminism of somebody named James is weird, but unmistakenly feminist this 2004 collection be. Sheldon/Tiptree has some of the swankiest titles ever devised - little pieces of standalone/standup poetry, starting with the book title from the short story contained within. And I Came Upon This Place by Lost Ways. Your Faces, Oh My Sisters! Your Faces Filled With Light! Gems, all. Not much love for humans in the 18 stories, and I was dismayed to find one of my favorite private lines about earthling behavior I share with my brother on a page. Sheldon sends humans into space, oblivion, Rubik's cube quandaries, down shit's creek without proper equipment, and up a shaft of misty light. I want to read more Sheldon work, but I'm not sure I have enough antidepressants to get me through. I recommend small doses of this book. Read one story, pick up something else lightheartedly hopeful, repeat.
March 11, 2023
I've tried reviewing each story separately, but ultimately Tiptree's pessimism wiped me out. Her Darkness, as I like to call the author, offers a number of pessimistic, dystopian stories filled with sex, violence, and misogyny. Some of these stories are breathlessly amazing; others are simply blunt and obvious. Regardless, I love this author and her ideas.
"The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" - 4 stars
For 1969, this is groundbreaking, heady stuff. For a post-Covid 2023, with global climate change and increasing animal extinction, I'm just saddened.
I must say, however, how much I am impressed by Tiptree's writing style - both her word choice, and the way that she frames her narrative, describing and dropping hints and never revealing the full story until the last page.
"The Screwfly Solution" - 5 stars
Holy apocalypse, this was effin' good, and well deserved of Nebula, Hugo, and Locus nods. Published in 1977, this tense story, told in a series of letters and notes, reads extremely well as SF horror almost fifty years later. The title refers to the "sterile insect technique" that scientists use to control and eliminate the population of parasitic insects. The full meaning of the title is revealed at the very end of the story, and adds an additional layer of horror. Personally, I loved the twist at the end.
While reading this, I learned that the excellent "Masters of Horror" tv series created an installment for this back in 2006, Season 2, Episode 7, which I must now track down and watch.
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side" - 2 to 3 stars
I wanted to like this more. I mean, the subtext is "don't fuck the aliens," and the title is drawn from John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." But, when situated next to her other short stories with the O'Henry-style endings, this one felt flat to me.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" - 4 stars
Written in 1973, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" won the Hugo award for its category and was nominated for the Nebula and the Locus awards. It's well deserving of its accolades, and fifty years later, it has aged as I have - a little grey around the edges, but still sharp as a tack and insightful as hell (haha!)
The girl is P. (Philadelphia) Burke, an abused, suicidal teenager whose consciousness is transmitted into a living, brainless waldo doll, whose new job is to buy products publicly in an effort to get around advertising laws. As the beautiful Delphi becomes a celebrity in her new, jet-setting life, P. Burke becomes a hulk in a wired cabinet, taken out to eat and walk and poop, most likely.
Of course, all good things must come to an end, and that end comes abruptly when Delphi (and P. Burke) encounters the handsome Paul Isham, son of one of the big wigs. Love, and heartbreak, quickly follow.
"The Man Who Walked Home" - 4 stars
This is an interesting time travel/time loop story set in a framework structure. As I've learned, it has one of Tiptree's favorite themes of catastrophic human destruction.
"And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" - 2.5 stars
Crappy scientists doing lazy science and leave a young scientist out to dry. Not my favorite.
"The Women Men Don't See" - 4 stars
Written in 1973, "The Women Men Don't See" received critical attention and was nominated for several major awards, including the Hugo and the Locus. Tiptree withdrew the story from the Hugo ballot. It's a strange story that has not aged all that well, particularly in its lush descriptions of the Mexican tropics, which are now built up as world-class tourist destinations.
The story is written by a women pretending to be a man, and told from the perspective of man observing two women as the group is stranded in the tropical isles off the coastline. Completely self-absorbed, the man has no understanding of Ruth and her daughter Althea, and only views them in a sexual manner. When they are rescued by alien explorers, he fails to understand why the women would prefer to leave with the aliens rather than stay in his world.
It's feminism, but it's very pessimistic. What's the message? that true equality and women's lib resides in escape? That's a sad thought.
But if it means to go where no woman has gone before, well, why the hell not?
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" - 5 stars
Holy fuck, that was good. It needs a serious trigger warning, because of the at the end.
Kameron Hurley was inspired by this story and wrote Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light! for the "Nevertheless, She Persisted" writing prompt a few years ago.
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" - 5 stars
Wow. Just wow.
Written in 1976 and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, this novella still holds up fifty years later. At some point I was expecting Charlton Heston to show up, hairy chest exposed, and proclaim in a loud voice, "Let my men go, you damn, dirty women!" And the women float by in their polyester jumpsuits, smiling and taking video.
I was shocked by the profanity in this story, and I can only imagine how contemporary readers might have felt. I understand Tiptree's purpose here, and it definitely has the intended impact, decades later. Excellent story.
"With Delicate Mad Hands" - 1 star
After the brilliance of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", this overly long story felt heavy handed and blah. A pig-faced woman, an overachiever in life, travels the stars, abused and raped by horrible males, and in vengeance, kills her crewmates and escapes to an alien planet of pigs. Blah, I disliked this very much.
"A Momentary Taste of Being" - 3 stars
I might have to shelve this collection for a bit, as I feel the stories are getting bleaker and darker by the reading.
This one, Nebula nominated, details an international space mission from an over-populate Earth to find a habitable planet for humanity. Once discovered, however, the alien lifeform on the new planet seeks to create a new species with the human species. Strange, dark, and perverted. I'm starting to wonder about Tiptree. This one has sibling sexual abuse.
“We Who Stole the Dream” - 3 stars
An alien race, subjugated and raped by humans, manages to steal a ship to return to their home world, only to find that their own people are just as brutal as humans. Welcome human to the bleakness that continues to be Tiptree's vision of the future.
"Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" - 3 stars
Another dark, dark vision of the future, where a man's consciousness is ripped through various periods of his lifetime by an alien race - for fun? for profit? who knows. There are beautifully written passages of utter bleakness that would rip a person's soul apart. How does Tiptree pen such ideas?
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" - 5 stars
Another stellar offering from Tiptree, otherwise known as Alice Sheldon, this early story of Tiptree's was nominated for the Hugo and recipient of the Nebula in its short story category. It's a tragic story of love and death, told from the point-of-view of an alien insect who is fated to feed his mate, quite literally. Tiptree's frequently returning theme of fatal biological imperatives is both literary poetic here. I wanted so much for giant bug Moggadeet to escape his fate, even as he steamrolled happily towards it.
Excellent story.
“On the Last Afternoon” - 1 star
Doomed colony on alien planet is killed off by giant lobsters copulating on their island oasis. Jesus H. Christ, this was depressing and perverted at the same time.
“She Waits for All Men Born” - 2 stars
...And Then She Kills Them With Her Silver Eyes. This one was a hot mess. Good thing it was at the end of the collection.
“Slow Music” -
“And So On, and So On” -
"The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" - 4 stars
For 1969, this is groundbreaking, heady stuff. For a post-Covid 2023, with global climate change and increasing animal extinction, I'm just saddened.
I must say, however, how much I am impressed by Tiptree's writing style - both her word choice, and the way that she frames her narrative, describing and dropping hints and never revealing the full story until the last page.
"The Screwfly Solution" - 5 stars
Holy apocalypse, this was effin' good, and well deserved of Nebula, Hugo, and Locus nods. Published in 1977, this tense story, told in a series of letters and notes, reads extremely well as SF horror almost fifty years later. The title refers to the "sterile insect technique" that scientists use to control and eliminate the population of parasitic insects. The full meaning of the title is revealed at the very end of the story, and adds an additional layer of horror. Personally, I loved the twist at the end.
While reading this, I learned that the excellent "Masters of Horror" tv series created an installment for this back in 2006, Season 2, Episode 7, which I must now track down and watch.
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side" - 2 to 3 stars
I wanted to like this more. I mean, the subtext is "don't fuck the aliens," and the title is drawn from John Keats' poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." But, when situated next to her other short stories with the O'Henry-style endings, this one felt flat to me.
"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" - 4 stars
Written in 1973, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" won the Hugo award for its category and was nominated for the Nebula and the Locus awards. It's well deserving of its accolades, and fifty years later, it has aged as I have - a little grey around the edges, but still sharp as a tack and insightful as hell (haha!)
The girl is P. (Philadelphia) Burke, an abused, suicidal teenager whose consciousness is transmitted into a living, brainless waldo doll, whose new job is to buy products publicly in an effort to get around advertising laws. As the beautiful Delphi becomes a celebrity in her new, jet-setting life, P. Burke becomes a hulk in a wired cabinet, taken out to eat and walk and poop, most likely.
Of course, all good things must come to an end, and that end comes abruptly when Delphi (and P. Burke) encounters the handsome Paul Isham, son of one of the big wigs. Love, and heartbreak, quickly follow.
"The Man Who Walked Home" - 4 stars
This is an interesting time travel/time loop story set in a framework structure. As I've learned, it has one of Tiptree's favorite themes of catastrophic human destruction.
"And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" - 2.5 stars
Crappy scientists doing lazy science and leave a young scientist out to dry. Not my favorite.
"The Women Men Don't See" - 4 stars
Written in 1973, "The Women Men Don't See" received critical attention and was nominated for several major awards, including the Hugo and the Locus. Tiptree withdrew the story from the Hugo ballot. It's a strange story that has not aged all that well, particularly in its lush descriptions of the Mexican tropics, which are now built up as world-class tourist destinations.
The story is written by a women pretending to be a man, and told from the perspective of man observing two women as the group is stranded in the tropical isles off the coastline. Completely self-absorbed, the man has no understanding of Ruth and her daughter Althea, and only views them in a sexual manner. When they are rescued by alien explorers, he fails to understand why the women would prefer to leave with the aliens rather than stay in his world.
It's feminism, but it's very pessimistic. What's the message? that true equality and women's lib resides in escape? That's a sad thought.
But if it means to go where no woman has gone before, well, why the hell not?
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" - 5 stars
Holy fuck, that was good. It needs a serious trigger warning, because of the at the end.
Kameron Hurley was inspired by this story and wrote Our Faces, Radiant Sisters, Our Faces Full of Light! for the "Nevertheless, She Persisted" writing prompt a few years ago.
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" - 5 stars
Wow. Just wow.
Written in 1976 and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, this novella still holds up fifty years later. At some point I was expecting Charlton Heston to show up, hairy chest exposed, and proclaim in a loud voice, "Let my men go, you damn, dirty women!" And the women float by in their polyester jumpsuits, smiling and taking video.
I was shocked by the profanity in this story, and I can only imagine how contemporary readers might have felt. I understand Tiptree's purpose here, and it definitely has the intended impact, decades later. Excellent story.
"With Delicate Mad Hands" - 1 star
After the brilliance of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", this overly long story felt heavy handed and blah. A pig-faced woman, an overachiever in life, travels the stars, abused and raped by horrible males, and in vengeance, kills her crewmates and escapes to an alien planet of pigs. Blah, I disliked this very much.
"A Momentary Taste of Being" - 3 stars
I might have to shelve this collection for a bit, as I feel the stories are getting bleaker and darker by the reading.
This one, Nebula nominated, details an international space mission from an over-populate Earth to find a habitable planet for humanity. Once discovered, however, the alien lifeform on the new planet seeks to create a new species with the human species. Strange, dark, and perverted. I'm starting to wonder about Tiptree. This one has sibling sexual abuse.
“We Who Stole the Dream” - 3 stars
An alien race, subjugated and raped by humans, manages to steal a ship to return to their home world, only to find that their own people are just as brutal as humans. Welcome human to the bleakness that continues to be Tiptree's vision of the future.
"Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" - 3 stars
Another dark, dark vision of the future, where a man's consciousness is ripped through various periods of his lifetime by an alien race - for fun? for profit? who knows. There are beautifully written passages of utter bleakness that would rip a person's soul apart. How does Tiptree pen such ideas?
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" - 5 stars
Another stellar offering from Tiptree, otherwise known as Alice Sheldon, this early story of Tiptree's was nominated for the Hugo and recipient of the Nebula in its short story category. It's a tragic story of love and death, told from the point-of-view of an alien insect who is fated to feed his mate, quite literally. Tiptree's frequently returning theme of fatal biological imperatives is both literary poetic here. I wanted so much for giant bug Moggadeet to escape his fate, even as he steamrolled happily towards it.
Excellent story.
“On the Last Afternoon” - 1 star
Doomed colony on alien planet is killed off by giant lobsters copulating on their island oasis. Jesus H. Christ, this was depressing and perverted at the same time.
“She Waits for All Men Born” - 2 stars
...And Then She Kills Them With Her Silver Eyes. This one was a hot mess. Good thing it was at the end of the collection.
“Slow Music” -
“And So On, and So On” -
May 16, 2018
Hinter dem Pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. versteckt sich eine der erfolgreichsten Schriftstellerinnen aus dem Science-Fiction-Genre. Ihr bürgerlicher Name lautete Alice B. Sheldon. Aus beruflichen Gründen, aber auch um den zu ihrer Zeit verbreiteten Vorurteilen gegenüber schreibenden Frauen zu entgehen, wählte sie die Anonymität für ihre schriftstellerische Arbeit. Der ungewöhnliche Nachname Tiptree, verdankt sich übrigens einer Inspiration durch die gleichnamige englische Marmeladenmarke.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ist eine Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten, dem bevorzugten Genre von Tiptree. Zwar hat sie auch zwei Romane verfasst, aber der Schwerpunkt ihres kreativen Schaffens lag in der literarischen Kurzform. Die Themen ihrer Geschichten sind von großer Vielfalt gekennzeichnet, aber allen gemein ist ein unterschwelliger Grundton, der eine hoffnungslose Ausweglosigkeit zum Ausdruck bringt. Egal wie weit der Mensch sich vom heimatlichen Sonnensystem entfernt und in ferne Galaxien vordringt, letztlich kann er doch nicht sich selbst entkommen. Die Triebkräfte des Lebens sind es die ihn vorantreiben, zu technologischen Höchstleistungen anspornen, aber ihn auch bis zur Selbstvernichtung treiben können. "Man is an animal whose dreams com true and kill him …", heißt es in einer Geschichte. Ein Satz der prägnant Tiptrees Sicht auf die Welt beschreibt. Düster sind diese Erzählungen, aber stets von einer tiefsinnigen psychologischen Kenntnis unserer menschlichen Natur durchzogen.
Das ich dem Band nur vier Sterne gebe, liegt einfach daran, dass mir einige Geschichten besser gefallen haben als andere. Insgesamt kann ich das Buch aber wirklich empfehlen. Erst kürzlich wurde vom Septime Verlag eine hervorragende Werkausgabe vollendet, worin alle Erzählungen Tiptrees in deutscher Übersetzung enthalten sind.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ist eine Sammlung von Kurzgeschichten, dem bevorzugten Genre von Tiptree. Zwar hat sie auch zwei Romane verfasst, aber der Schwerpunkt ihres kreativen Schaffens lag in der literarischen Kurzform. Die Themen ihrer Geschichten sind von großer Vielfalt gekennzeichnet, aber allen gemein ist ein unterschwelliger Grundton, der eine hoffnungslose Ausweglosigkeit zum Ausdruck bringt. Egal wie weit der Mensch sich vom heimatlichen Sonnensystem entfernt und in ferne Galaxien vordringt, letztlich kann er doch nicht sich selbst entkommen. Die Triebkräfte des Lebens sind es die ihn vorantreiben, zu technologischen Höchstleistungen anspornen, aber ihn auch bis zur Selbstvernichtung treiben können. "Man is an animal whose dreams com true and kill him …", heißt es in einer Geschichte. Ein Satz der prägnant Tiptrees Sicht auf die Welt beschreibt. Düster sind diese Erzählungen, aber stets von einer tiefsinnigen psychologischen Kenntnis unserer menschlichen Natur durchzogen.
Das ich dem Band nur vier Sterne gebe, liegt einfach daran, dass mir einige Geschichten besser gefallen haben als andere. Insgesamt kann ich das Buch aber wirklich empfehlen. Erst kürzlich wurde vom Septime Verlag eine hervorragende Werkausgabe vollendet, worin alle Erzählungen Tiptrees in deutscher Übersetzung enthalten sind.
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