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audrey_the_kid's review against another edition
5.0
Yaaaaaas, QUEEN! Tiptree has been on my to-read list forever, but it's hard to find electronic copies of her work. But she lived up to my keen anticipation and surpassed my expectations. I mean, wow. Gender role-subverting aliens, check. Gas giant home planet, yup. Badass Black programmer gal, got 'er. Early computer and satellite geekery, yes ma'am. Telepathy, of course. Morality and time bending space leviathan speaking in all caps, sign me UP! She even managed not to get man-hatey. Again I say: WOW! My one complaint is that the three perspectives got a little repetitive towards the end, but I can't even knock a star off for that, the rest was so amazing.
nelleish's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 rounded up for effort
(The following was written by a genuine Tiptree megafan who had suuuuppperrr low expectations going into this book, which were not a mistake)
A big morass of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ with sprinkles of genuine insight. Might go down better with illicit substances, definitely benefits from having read the author‘s biography. Is pretty much all of the author‘s thinly veiled neuroses in a Trenchcoat
(The following was written by a genuine Tiptree megafan who had suuuuppperrr low expectations going into this book, which were not a mistake)
A big morass of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ with sprinkles of genuine insight. Might go down better with illicit substances, definitely benefits from having read the author‘s biography. Is pretty much all of the author‘s thinly veiled neuroses in a Trenchcoat
mburnamfink's review against another edition
3.0
I couldn't imagine a more 70s piece of science fiction if it showed up and challenged me to a disco dance competition, and I own a replica Zardoz mask. Tiptree weaves a tripart plot about telepathy, alien minds, and salvation.
THE DESTROYER is some kind of immense and ancient interstellar war-machine on an endless journey between systems, obliterating intelligent life by forcing their stars to go nova. It speaks in ITALICS ALL CAPS. Tyree is a gas giant world soon to be targeted by THE DESTROYER, where a civilization of telepathic wind dwelling mantas have a complex and peaceful society based around the wisdom of Fathers, and shared engram-experience patterns. On Earth, Dr. Daniel Dann is a drug addicted medical advisor to a U.S. Navy psi project to develop telepathic communications, which will be used to transmit orders to nuclear submarines.
The Tyreen embark on a desperate plan to transmit some of their minds telepathically to Earth, which might ensure their survival but is also their worst kind of crime. Dr. Dann mopes about his alienation and sexual frustration and the futility of the project. Then as doom approaches Tyree, Dann swaps minds with Giadoc, a Tyreen scientist. He learns telepathy, tries to heal the others as they seek shelter from THE DESTROYER deep within the gas giant, and then when all is lost, it turns out that THE DESTROYER has been partially hijacked by Margorie Omali, a brilliant African-American computer programmer, and TOTAL, a variant of the ARPANET. Dann, the Tyreens, and everybody struggles for mental integrity within the vast bulk of THE DESTROYER.
There's at least two really cool ideas here, gas giant civilizations and alien berserkers, and bunch of stuff about telepathy and alternate senses and socialities. As I've heard, Tiptree has a keen and ironic eye for gender politics, and there's some good style there, but so much of the story is buried under flopsy cruft that it's hard to discern what happens, or why we should care. The Tyreen's are so utopian they can't seem to conceive of their extinction except rationally. The whole thing feels rather half-baked.
I think I'd like to read some of Tiptree's short stories, but this first book has not impressed me.
THE DESTROYER is some kind of immense and ancient interstellar war-machine on an endless journey between systems, obliterating intelligent life by forcing their stars to go nova. It speaks in ITALICS ALL CAPS. Tyree is a gas giant world soon to be targeted by THE DESTROYER, where a civilization of telepathic wind dwelling mantas have a complex and peaceful society based around the wisdom of Fathers, and shared engram-experience patterns. On Earth, Dr. Daniel Dann is a drug addicted medical advisor to a U.S. Navy psi project to develop telepathic communications, which will be used to transmit orders to nuclear submarines.
The Tyreen embark on a desperate plan to transmit some of their minds telepathically to Earth, which might ensure their survival but is also their worst kind of crime. Dr. Dann mopes about his alienation and sexual frustration and the futility of the project. Then as doom approaches Tyree, Dann swaps minds with Giadoc, a Tyreen scientist. He learns telepathy, tries to heal the others as they seek shelter from THE DESTROYER deep within the gas giant, and then when all is lost, it turns out that THE DESTROYER has been partially hijacked by Margorie Omali, a brilliant African-American computer programmer, and TOTAL, a variant of the ARPANET. Dann, the Tyreens, and everybody struggles for mental integrity within the vast bulk of THE DESTROYER.
There's at least two really cool ideas here, gas giant civilizations and alien berserkers, and bunch of stuff about telepathy and alternate senses and socialities. As I've heard, Tiptree has a keen and ironic eye for gender politics, and there's some good style there, but so much of the story is buried under flopsy cruft that it's hard to discern what happens, or why we should care. The Tyreen's are so utopian they can't seem to conceive of their extinction except rationally. The whole thing feels rather half-baked.
I think I'd like to read some of Tiptree's short stories, but this first book has not impressed me.
krisheiney's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
This book is bonkers. I didn’t always enjoy reading it, but I love it anyway. I’m glad I read Tiptree’s other work and her biography first and fairly recently—I don’t think I could have gone along with the wild storyline and themes without that background.
I grant that this book is flawed, but I love the Tyrenni and their windswept joy, I love Tiptree’s nuanced construction of Tyrenni gender roles and communication styles and hierarchies. I love the focus on empathy and parenting and respect. I love how Alli Sheldon inhabits a male perspective and shows the world beyond maleness with such vivid simultaneous pain and beauty.
“For the first time he has really grasped life’s most eerie lesson:
“The Other Exists.”
I grant that this book is flawed, but I love the Tyrenni and their windswept joy, I love Tiptree’s nuanced construction of Tyrenni gender roles and communication styles and hierarchies. I love the focus on empathy and parenting and respect. I love how Alli Sheldon inhabits a male perspective and shows the world beyond maleness with such vivid simultaneous pain and beauty.
“For the first time he has really grasped life’s most eerie lesson:
“The Other Exists.”
toniherrero's review against another edition
adventurous
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Entesa com a ciència-ficció clàssica —Més enllà dels murs del món es va publicar l'any 1978—, és una de les obres, juntament amb Tau Cero i La nave del millón de años que més m'han fet xalar. La novel·la d'Alice B. Sheldon exsuda sentit de la meravella per totes les pàgines, de principi a final, i si bé és exigent de cara al lector compensa amb escreix l'esforç amb un desplegament d'idees brillant.
No vull parlar gaire de la seva trama per no desvelar res, només diré que els tres arcs narratius tenen evolucions d'allò més interessants i que el final, tot i que una mica extens, m'ha agradat molt. A l'obra hi trobem molta filosofia i reflexió, i ara que estic llegint la biografia d'Alice B. Sheldon vull pensar que trobo paral·lelismes amb aquesta obra de ficció i la seva vida real.
M'ha agradat moltíssim i la penso recomanar sense parar. Per mi, un clàssic rotund —i desconegut— de la ciència-ficció d'una autora que cal reivindicar. Tinc moltes ganes que la pugueu llegir en català.
No vull parlar gaire de la seva trama per no desvelar res, només diré que els tres arcs narratius tenen evolucions d'allò més interessants i que el final, tot i que una mica extens, m'ha agradat molt. A l'obra hi trobem molta filosofia i reflexió, i ara que estic llegint la biografia d'Alice B. Sheldon vull pensar que trobo paral·lelismes amb aquesta obra de ficció i la seva vida real.
M'ha agradat moltíssim i la penso recomanar sense parar. Per mi, un clàssic rotund —i desconegut— de la ciència-ficció d'una autora que cal reivindicar. Tinc moltes ganes que la pugueu llegir en català.
alexandrapierce's review against another edition
5.0
This book is absolutely bonkers. Mad. And completely wonderful.
This was Tiptree's first novel, but naturally enough many of the concerns and interests of his short stories are present here as well. I am so sad that he did not write more novels; this made me so happy, as did Brightness Falls from the Air, that I do wonder what else could have come from that amazing brain.
Let's start by talking about the authorial situation and get that out of the way. This was published in 1978. Tiptree had been revealed as Alice Sheldon at the end of 1976. I was surprised therefore to discover that the brief bio in the end flap (oh hard backs I really do love you) makes no mention of him being her, although it does acknowledge Tiptree as a pseudonym. But I guess that pre internet, how are people going to know about the identity? Via Locus maybe, and gamines, and word of mouth. Tiptree was not such a big deal that the New York Times was going to run an expose. Presumably therefor with this publication your more casual, less crazy SF fans aren't going to know who Tiptree 'really' is - and Tiptree is enough of a name (... and male...?) to make it worth keeping the pseudonym. But THEN I turned to the back and the back cover image is Sheldon! Now I've seen the pic before and it's quite obvious to me who this is; but others have suggested that this could, actually, be an ambiguously gendered person. I'm not entirely convinced. But anyway, there's that.
Now, to plot. I'm going to be entirely spoilery because I really want to think about what Tiptree is doing here.
The story is told for about the first half or so from three alternating perspectives. The first, IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW A LEVIATHAN OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED THANK YOU VERY MUCH, is some sort of being that is mammoth on a scale humans cannot comprehend. The wee beastie doesn't get that much page time, but it's enough to set up a vague sympathy; it's alone and cannot fulfil its duty. SAD. This being doesn't have much of a plot by itself, although it does play crucial roles in the lives and deaths of others.
The second is told mostly from the perspective of Tivonel, a flighty female of Tyree who enjoys hunting and gathering and is happy to leave such momentous tasks as Fathering to the Fathers; she'd rather be out flying on the High Winds. Because she is of a race of enormous manta-life beings who live in the winds of their planet, rarely interacting with solid matter. These beings mostly just live normal lives, thinking about who will Father their next child and whether to stay in the Deep for a long time or go flying the winds... until their scientist-equivalents report that the stars in a certain section of the sky are going out, and that they are receiving telepathic signals (which is how they communicate) from dying planets. And this wave of death is coming closer. So what can they do to save themselves and their children?
And there's the third part of the plot. The human one. Here, Doctor Daniel Dann is helping out with. Trial into the use of psionic skills with a ragtag group of people that he doesn't believe are capable of any such thing, with paranoid military types looking over their shoulder, and meanwhile he's heavily dosing himself with all sorts of not-meant-for -recreational-use drugs. He falls in love or lust or wonder with their computer analyst, and the discovers himself on Tyree. Because what the folk of Tyree discover is that they can swap minds and bodies with others. Of course on Tyree this is a life-crime, but if it's aliens and it's to save the children it doesn't really count... Right?
Eventually the plots join up, with Dann rather enjoying himself on Tyree and then some of them ending up with the GREAT LEVIATHAN TYPE THING IN SOME SORT OF MYSTERIOUS WAY. Its duty is revealed which is nice. Although then it's subverted which is for the good of others but I can't help but feel sad for a being whose entire existence is coopted by tiny little atoms of life who have the arrogance to think they know best.
Let's stop and consider for a moment that Tiptree is writing a story about experimental psychology, basically, using humans as test subjects. And the military and some sort of covert operations people are watching with paranoid glee wanting to control what goes on. Also quite a lot of this can be seen as first contact and exploration fiction. This, people, is what happens when someone with the life experience of Sheldon, and the imagination of Sheldon, writes a novel following Hemingways injunction to write what you know.
Anyway. The characters. Oh the characters. The humans are definitely the most interesting but I'll start by talking about Tyree, where Tiptree is setting up a a little gender mischief just because . You might have picked the idea that there, it's the males who care for the children. Fathering is considered the greatest and most important of skills and as a consequences the Fathers are the biggest, the strongest, the most revered. At the time we come to Tyree there are some females who are agitating for females to be allowed to develop Fathering skills, in the expectation that this will help them to develop their life field and you know, be more respected. OH THE LOLZ. Tivonel is our main focus here, and she's not one of these uppity females. In fact she doesn't really see the point in it all; why would you want to be tied down with children when you could be off exploring instead? She changes a little over the course of the story, becoming a but more reserved and interested in thinking beyond her own experiences, but that's about it. This isn't to say I didn't like her, I did - I don't know that she really needed to change all that much. It wouldn't have made sense for her to become the equivalent of a woman's-libber, since the planet is destroyed by the end and she's staying to be a part of the crew of the leviathan for possibly all time.
The humans, though. This is where Tiptree does some lovely things.
Dan isn't an especially nice person, although he takes his job seriously and tries to help those who need it. He's too caught up in his own grief to really comprehe d those around him, which begins to change when he has an experience with Margaret Omali in which they experience the worst event of the other's life. For him, that was his wife and child dying in a fire and the fear that he could have saved them. For her, it was a cliterodectomy in her early teens. Yes this is a book that mentions that this really happens. More in her in a minute. This is the beginning of Dan becoming empathetic, and he genuinely evolves and becomes more sympathetic as a character. Through him Tiptree explores the impossibility of knowing another human and the possible consequences if we did know another. We become more human. If we're not scared off. Also that taking lots of drugs is a bad idea.
Margaret... scarred physically and emotionally as an adolescent, incapable of having human relationships of any sort and far more interested in computers, is a cousin of the Parson women in "The Women Men Don't See." As soon as she's given an out she takes it, flying into the galaxy as pure life and taking up residence inside the great star beast/ship and far more at. Home there than on earth. Where, by the way, she is not alone because there's a Computer program - a ghost program from an early version of the Internet - - which has also made its way there. Of course. It is sad that Tiptree presents Margaret as incapable of even friendship because of that psychic scarring, although at the same time it's not necessarily so unlikely either, since it was inflicted by her stepfather and her mother seems not to have interfered. That's going to lose you trustIn humanity. She changes because she uses her skills to interact with something so completely alien as to be virtually unknowable, and she also starts to have friendships, on her own terms and because she wants to in her own way, not because she's expected to. And she is respected for what she is able to do.
The people who are being tested for their psychic abilities are the humans who get the rest of the page time, and it's the women who are most present. At first this is became of the way Dan looks at them, again like in "The Women Men Don't See." But ultimately they develop as their own human selves and Dan acknowledges his errors. The generic housewife type, Winona, is disregarded by Dan as having no brains to speak of and completely frumpy besides. But when she gets to Tyree, she is hugely valued because of her skills in Fathering, which of course is as it should be. She is more than just a mother though, contributing to their survival in real ways. Which don't involve sex.
Valerie, whom Dan regarded as basically a nice body and not much else, comes into her own once she is out of a system where men are all around ogling her body, as Dan had been; she flourishes in experimenting and investigating. Which is a bit hard on her friend, Fredericka, known as Frodo. Theirs is clearly a lesbian relationship, if so discretely described that I'm sure you could pretend not to see it if you wanted to. Frodo doesn't have that much to do aside from me a bit surly, but her moment of realising that Valerie doesn't need her as her only friend anymore and that this makes her sad is one of the more poignant and human-true moments of the story.
Most of the men are crazy. Noah, the investigator into psychic abilities, isn't, but he's largely ineffectual. The military man is nuts, the maybe-CIA man is definitely nuts, and the male psychic subjects are also basically nuts. Except for the young twins, who once they are reunited with one another are basically human and not nuts.
Things that this reminds me of: FarScape, since the leviathan beastie is somewhat like Moya. It also reminds me of the mysterious creature in Marianne de Pierres' Sentients of Orion series. There are some similarities to Paul McCauley work, although I can't pinpoint details. And with Margaret Omali being a computer programmer, with the TOTAL program inside the leviathan, and the possibility that our heroes are all actually existing as energy bundles within the synapses of some sort of a computer in the end, there are clearly some connections to cyberpunk too.
This book is crazy and awesome and trust me, I have not completely spoiled it and you should totally go out and read it. If you can find a copy. I'll lend you mine if you promise to return it.
This was Tiptree's first novel, but naturally enough many of the concerns and interests of his short stories are present here as well. I am so sad that he did not write more novels; this made me so happy, as did Brightness Falls from the Air, that I do wonder what else could have come from that amazing brain.
Let's start by talking about the authorial situation and get that out of the way. This was published in 1978. Tiptree had been revealed as Alice Sheldon at the end of 1976. I was surprised therefore to discover that the brief bio in the end flap (oh hard backs I really do love you) makes no mention of him being her, although it does acknowledge Tiptree as a pseudonym. But I guess that pre internet, how are people going to know about the identity? Via Locus maybe, and gamines, and word of mouth. Tiptree was not such a big deal that the New York Times was going to run an expose. Presumably therefor with this publication your more casual, less crazy SF fans aren't going to know who Tiptree 'really' is - and Tiptree is enough of a name (... and male...?) to make it worth keeping the pseudonym. But THEN I turned to the back and the back cover image is Sheldon! Now I've seen the pic before and it's quite obvious to me who this is; but others have suggested that this could, actually, be an ambiguously gendered person. I'm not entirely convinced. But anyway, there's that.
Now, to plot. I'm going to be entirely spoilery because I really want to think about what Tiptree is doing here.
The story is told for about the first half or so from three alternating perspectives. The first, IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW A LEVIATHAN OUGHT TO BE REPRESENTED THANK YOU VERY MUCH, is some sort of being that is mammoth on a scale humans cannot comprehend. The wee beastie doesn't get that much page time, but it's enough to set up a vague sympathy; it's alone and cannot fulfil its duty. SAD. This being doesn't have much of a plot by itself, although it does play crucial roles in the lives and deaths of others.
The second is told mostly from the perspective of Tivonel, a flighty female of Tyree who enjoys hunting and gathering and is happy to leave such momentous tasks as Fathering to the Fathers; she'd rather be out flying on the High Winds. Because she is of a race of enormous manta-life beings who live in the winds of their planet, rarely interacting with solid matter. These beings mostly just live normal lives, thinking about who will Father their next child and whether to stay in the Deep for a long time or go flying the winds... until their scientist-equivalents report that the stars in a certain section of the sky are going out, and that they are receiving telepathic signals (which is how they communicate) from dying planets. And this wave of death is coming closer. So what can they do to save themselves and their children?
And there's the third part of the plot. The human one. Here, Doctor Daniel Dann is helping out with. Trial into the use of psionic skills with a ragtag group of people that he doesn't believe are capable of any such thing, with paranoid military types looking over their shoulder, and meanwhile he's heavily dosing himself with all sorts of not-meant-for -recreational-use drugs. He falls in love or lust or wonder with their computer analyst, and the discovers himself on Tyree. Because what the folk of Tyree discover is that they can swap minds and bodies with others. Of course on Tyree this is a life-crime, but if it's aliens and it's to save the children it doesn't really count... Right?
Eventually the plots join up, with Dann rather enjoying himself on Tyree and then some of them ending up with the GREAT LEVIATHAN TYPE THING IN SOME SORT OF MYSTERIOUS WAY. Its duty is revealed which is nice. Although then it's subverted which is for the good of others but I can't help but feel sad for a being whose entire existence is coopted by tiny little atoms of life who have the arrogance to think they know best.
Let's stop and consider for a moment that Tiptree is writing a story about experimental psychology, basically, using humans as test subjects. And the military and some sort of covert operations people are watching with paranoid glee wanting to control what goes on. Also quite a lot of this can be seen as first contact and exploration fiction. This, people, is what happens when someone with the life experience of Sheldon, and the imagination of Sheldon, writes a novel following Hemingways injunction to write what you know.
Anyway. The characters. Oh the characters. The humans are definitely the most interesting but I'll start by talking about Tyree, where Tiptree is setting up a a little gender mischief just because . You might have picked the idea that there, it's the males who care for the children. Fathering is considered the greatest and most important of skills and as a consequences the Fathers are the biggest, the strongest, the most revered. At the time we come to Tyree there are some females who are agitating for females to be allowed to develop Fathering skills, in the expectation that this will help them to develop their life field and you know, be more respected. OH THE LOLZ. Tivonel is our main focus here, and she's not one of these uppity females. In fact she doesn't really see the point in it all; why would you want to be tied down with children when you could be off exploring instead? She changes a little over the course of the story, becoming a but more reserved and interested in thinking beyond her own experiences, but that's about it. This isn't to say I didn't like her, I did - I don't know that she really needed to change all that much. It wouldn't have made sense for her to become the equivalent of a woman's-libber, since the planet is destroyed by the end and she's staying to be a part of the crew of the leviathan for possibly all time.
The humans, though. This is where Tiptree does some lovely things.
Dan isn't an especially nice person, although he takes his job seriously and tries to help those who need it. He's too caught up in his own grief to really comprehe d those around him, which begins to change when he has an experience with Margaret Omali in which they experience the worst event of the other's life. For him, that was his wife and child dying in a fire and the fear that he could have saved them. For her, it was a cliterodectomy in her early teens. Yes this is a book that mentions that this really happens. More in her in a minute. This is the beginning of Dan becoming empathetic, and he genuinely evolves and becomes more sympathetic as a character. Through him Tiptree explores the impossibility of knowing another human and the possible consequences if we did know another. We become more human. If we're not scared off. Also that taking lots of drugs is a bad idea.
Margaret... scarred physically and emotionally as an adolescent, incapable of having human relationships of any sort and far more interested in computers, is a cousin of the Parson women in "The Women Men Don't See." As soon as she's given an out she takes it, flying into the galaxy as pure life and taking up residence inside the great star beast/ship and far more at. Home there than on earth. Where, by the way, she is not alone because there's a Computer program - a ghost program from an early version of the Internet - - which has also made its way there. Of course. It is sad that Tiptree presents Margaret as incapable of even friendship because of that psychic scarring, although at the same time it's not necessarily so unlikely either, since it was inflicted by her stepfather and her mother seems not to have interfered. That's going to lose you trustIn humanity. She changes because she uses her skills to interact with something so completely alien as to be virtually unknowable, and she also starts to have friendships, on her own terms and because she wants to in her own way, not because she's expected to. And she is respected for what she is able to do.
The people who are being tested for their psychic abilities are the humans who get the rest of the page time, and it's the women who are most present. At first this is became of the way Dan looks at them, again like in "The Women Men Don't See." But ultimately they develop as their own human selves and Dan acknowledges his errors. The generic housewife type, Winona, is disregarded by Dan as having no brains to speak of and completely frumpy besides. But when she gets to Tyree, she is hugely valued because of her skills in Fathering, which of course is as it should be. She is more than just a mother though, contributing to their survival in real ways. Which don't involve sex.
Valerie, whom Dan regarded as basically a nice body and not much else, comes into her own once she is out of a system where men are all around ogling her body, as Dan had been; she flourishes in experimenting and investigating. Which is a bit hard on her friend, Fredericka, known as Frodo. Theirs is clearly a lesbian relationship, if so discretely described that I'm sure you could pretend not to see it if you wanted to. Frodo doesn't have that much to do aside from me a bit surly, but her moment of realising that Valerie doesn't need her as her only friend anymore and that this makes her sad is one of the more poignant and human-true moments of the story.
Most of the men are crazy. Noah, the investigator into psychic abilities, isn't, but he's largely ineffectual. The military man is nuts, the maybe-CIA man is definitely nuts, and the male psychic subjects are also basically nuts. Except for the young twins, who once they are reunited with one another are basically human and not nuts.
Things that this reminds me of: FarScape, since the leviathan beastie is somewhat like Moya. It also reminds me of the mysterious creature in Marianne de Pierres' Sentients of Orion series. There are some similarities to Paul McCauley work, although I can't pinpoint details. And with Margaret Omali being a computer programmer, with the TOTAL program inside the leviathan, and the possibility that our heroes are all actually existing as energy bundles within the synapses of some sort of a computer in the end, there are clearly some connections to cyberpunk too.
This book is crazy and awesome and trust me, I have not completely spoiled it and you should totally go out and read it. If you can find a copy. I'll lend you mine if you promise to return it.
monumentalfolly's review against another edition
4.0
This is a hard book to rate or review. The first half or so is a very skillful interweaving of three plotlines, and this includes two set in distinct alien worlds/minds. The thought that went into created the alien worlds shows Tiptree's strong suit -- original ideas without seeming showy. The human characters are characters from "serious' rather than 'genre' fiction, and her portrayal of male psychology is unflinching.
The latter half or portion of the book, when the three plotlines largely become one was frankly difficult for me to sustain the attention for. It felt a bit like pages and pages and pages of those super cosmic, densely complicated, and hard-to-know-where-to-enter Jack Kirby drawings. I admit that I skimmed/skipped the last several chapters.
One imagines that in a lesser writer's hands the ideas at play here would have stretched out to three books, with more 'action' to pad a slower uncovering of the truly strange events that occur. The gender issues, politics, compassionate action and many other ideas that fill it out are in places sketched -- the reader has to fill in the gaps based on what the characters think and do.
So, it does take some real energy from the reader to remain engaged (and I guess I lacked it by the end).
The latter half or portion of the book, when the three plotlines largely become one was frankly difficult for me to sustain the attention for. It felt a bit like pages and pages and pages of those super cosmic, densely complicated, and hard-to-know-where-to-enter Jack Kirby drawings. I admit that I skimmed/skipped the last several chapters.
One imagines that in a lesser writer's hands the ideas at play here would have stretched out to three books, with more 'action' to pad a slower uncovering of the truly strange events that occur. The gender issues, politics, compassionate action and many other ideas that fill it out are in places sketched -- the reader has to fill in the gaps based on what the characters think and do.
So, it does take some real energy from the reader to remain engaged (and I guess I lacked it by the end).
katnissevergreen's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
4.0
borborygm's review against another edition
4.0
This is the most annoying 4 star book I've encountered!
Tiptree's debut novel is quite ambitious. Taking 3 radically different species with drastically different bodies/minds/environments and bringing them together with lots of moral challenges is exciting. She deftly handles that, giving the reader a coherent sense of how the species live and think, how their moral senses work. She also does a good job of making her characters flawed and relatable.
In addition to the extensive world building, Tiptree plays with gender norms. While the females on Tyree produce eggs, it's the males that carry and care for the offspring. The females are the hunters, the food gatherers. But in Tyree the males are still the larger and more esteemed. She writes:
"'Be serious, Tivonel. Somewhere out there must be a world where we aren't like this. Where the females are able to do Fathering and all the high status activities.'"
Later she writes from a male perspective:
"A mutinous though of Tivonel intrudes; perhaps this is the joy that females speak of, the pleasures of venturing into unknown relms. Certainly it is quite unFatherly, though it requires all his male field-strength. It does not occur to him that he is brave; such concepts are of the female world."
Parenting is the most esteemed activity and male. Bravery is not esteemed and female. The relativism of values is eye opening.
So why did I find this book so annoying? THe use of "Fathering", "Fatherly", "Father", "unFatherly" is so overdone, so tiresome, so boring. The worship/idealization of it simply was sickening. If that was her intent, intent achieved. The Berkeley publishing edition I read was also full of typos.
Considering that this book was written in 1978 and still holds up it deserves a very high rating, despite its overbearing father figures.
Tiptree's debut novel is quite ambitious. Taking 3 radically different species with drastically different bodies/minds/environments and bringing them together with lots of moral challenges is exciting. She deftly handles that, giving the reader a coherent sense of how the species live and think, how their moral senses work. She also does a good job of making her characters flawed and relatable.
In addition to the extensive world building, Tiptree plays with gender norms. While the females on Tyree produce eggs, it's the males that carry and care for the offspring. The females are the hunters, the food gatherers. But in Tyree the males are still the larger and more esteemed. She writes:
"'Be serious, Tivonel. Somewhere out there must be a world where we aren't like this. Where the females are able to do Fathering and all the high status activities.'"
Later she writes from a male perspective:
"A mutinous though of Tivonel intrudes; perhaps this is the joy that females speak of, the pleasures of venturing into unknown relms. Certainly it is quite unFatherly, though it requires all his male field-strength. It does not occur to him that he is brave; such concepts are of the female world."
Parenting is the most esteemed activity and male. Bravery is not esteemed and female. The relativism of values is eye opening.
So why did I find this book so annoying? THe use of "Fathering", "Fatherly", "Father", "unFatherly" is so overdone, so tiresome, so boring. The worship/idealization of it simply was sickening. If that was her intent, intent achieved. The Berkeley publishing edition I read was also full of typos.
Considering that this book was written in 1978 and still holds up it deserves a very high rating, despite its overbearing father figures.