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grayjay's review
3.0
Tiptree's stories are startlingly dark, knowing, and full of rage. Her writing is preoccupied with perspectives, be they sex, gender, scientific, or dominant/submissive. I found some of them too dark for me but they have a lot to say about gender dynamics, and sexual violence.
**Some spoilers below.
"the screwtape letters"
A man rushes home from field work in South America to be with his wife during a plague of male violence against women, but when he arrives he finds that he has caught the plague himself.
"And I awoke and found me here on the cold hill's side"
Reporter comes to the space station to interview humans about aliens and runs into a human who has become obsessed with having sex with aliens.
"The girl who was plugged in"
Woman on her deathbed is rescued by a corporation plugs her in to a remote body. Her job is to buy things, go to parties, and drive nice cars, as anti-Huckster laws have made advertising illegal. The only way to get product out is by word of mouth, so companies pay people to advertise through use. She is essentially an influencer.
"The men who walked home"
In a time travel experiment gone wrong, a man is thrown into the future and back again but at a rate of a few seconds per year. A global disaster crushes civilization and and what's this man has forgotten his apparition which appears once every year is first thought of as a monster and then a mystery and then it is rediscovered what happened.
"And I have come upon this place by lost ways"
An scientists becomes obsessed with a mountain on the planet his ship is in orbit around believing that it has some kind of significance beyond what the other scientists are interested in. In this world scientists explorer using remote technology not by going out into the field and he is criticized for wanting to discover things in person. He abandons the ship and his mission climbing the mountain to find out what secrets it holds.
"The women men don't see"
A plane crashes in the bush leaving the Maya pilot a fisherman and a mother and daughter from Maryland stranded. The fisherman and the mother venture away from the wreckage to find water but once they're in the forest strange things begin to happen. The woman has a cynical view of men who she says control the world and even though women have made advances in civil rights they are still controlled by men who could take them away at any time. She dreams of getting away from everything and at the end of the story finds a way through weird circumstances.
"Your faces oh my sisters your face is filled with light"
A young woman is traveling through Chicago to Des Moines currying messages. She lives in a world after some kind of apocalyptic destruction and only women remain. Narrative alternates between her and another world in which her husband and parents are searching for her after she has escaped from a mental institution. Tiptree creates a thrilling disconnect between the two worlds and your concern for her safety increases as you realize how delusional she is about her surroundings.
"Houston, Houston do you read?"
Five male astronauts on their way around the Sun, slip through some kind of time distortion and are sent several hundred years into the future. A ship of female astronauts pick them up and it is slowly revealed that soon after the male astronauts left Earth, a pandemic destroyed the male genome on Earth and humanity recovered by cloning and breeding only the female genomes going forward. The male astronauts all represent extreme versions of toxic masculinity and prove to the female astronauts why they're fine without males. There were some great ideas in the story but it was really hard to read due to the severe portrayal of the toxic masculinity and one particularly gross rape scene.
**Some spoilers below.
"the screwtape letters"
A man rushes home from field work in South America to be with his wife during a plague of male violence against women, but when he arrives he finds that he has caught the plague himself.
"And I awoke and found me here on the cold hill's side"
Reporter comes to the space station to interview humans about aliens and runs into a human who has become obsessed with having sex with aliens.
"The girl who was plugged in"
Woman on her deathbed is rescued by a corporation plugs her in to a remote body. Her job is to buy things, go to parties, and drive nice cars, as anti-Huckster laws have made advertising illegal. The only way to get product out is by word of mouth, so companies pay people to advertise through use. She is essentially an influencer.
"The men who walked home"
In a time travel experiment gone wrong, a man is thrown into the future and back again but at a rate of a few seconds per year. A global disaster crushes civilization and and what's this man has forgotten his apparition which appears once every year is first thought of as a monster and then a mystery and then it is rediscovered what happened.
"And I have come upon this place by lost ways"
An scientists becomes obsessed with a mountain on the planet his ship is in orbit around believing that it has some kind of significance beyond what the other scientists are interested in. In this world scientists explorer using remote technology not by going out into the field and he is criticized for wanting to discover things in person. He abandons the ship and his mission climbing the mountain to find out what secrets it holds.
"The women men don't see"
A plane crashes in the bush leaving the Maya pilot a fisherman and a mother and daughter from Maryland stranded. The fisherman and the mother venture away from the wreckage to find water but once they're in the forest strange things begin to happen. The woman has a cynical view of men who she says control the world and even though women have made advances in civil rights they are still controlled by men who could take them away at any time. She dreams of getting away from everything and at the end of the story finds a way through weird circumstances.
"Your faces oh my sisters your face is filled with light"
A young woman is traveling through Chicago to Des Moines currying messages. She lives in a world after some kind of apocalyptic destruction and only women remain. Narrative alternates between her and another world in which her husband and parents are searching for her after she has escaped from a mental institution. Tiptree creates a thrilling disconnect between the two worlds and your concern for her safety increases as you realize how delusional she is about her surroundings.
"Houston, Houston do you read?"
Five male astronauts on their way around the Sun, slip through some kind of time distortion and are sent several hundred years into the future. A ship of female astronauts pick them up and it is slowly revealed that soon after the male astronauts left Earth, a pandemic destroyed the male genome on Earth and humanity recovered by cloning and breeding only the female genomes going forward. The male astronauts all represent extreme versions of toxic masculinity and prove to the female astronauts why they're fine without males. There were some great ideas in the story but it was really hard to read due to the severe portrayal of the toxic masculinity and one particularly gross rape scene.
mandi_lea's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abandonment, Alcoholism, Xenophobia, War, Violence, Slavery, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexism, Racism, Pregnancy, Pedophilia, Murder, Misogyny, Incest, Death, Confinement, and Colonisation
gavinsteyn's review
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
tricapra's review
4.0
A great anthology, some of the stories I had trouble getting in to, but that's to be expected.
ruththereader's review
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
This is what science fiction should be
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
hank's review
5.0
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?
suzemo's review against another edition
5.0
A collection of short stories & novellas from Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree Jr.
There was not a story in this book I did not like. Don't get me wrong, I found some of them to be more intense, or thought provoking than others, but all of them made me think. All of them had some sort of intensity. All of them were interesting. And the book, as a whole, is pure, fucking genius, and I wish I had read Tiptree years ago.
There was not a story in this book I did not like. Don't get me wrong, I found some of them to be more intense, or thought provoking than others, but all of them made me think. All of them had some sort of intensity. All of them were interesting. And the book, as a whole, is pure, fucking genius, and I wish I had read Tiptree years ago.
terrypaulpearce's review
5.0
In places this is hard going, but three-quarters of the best books are. And this is one of the best. I have no idea how people didn't clock sooner that James Tiptree Jr. wasn't a man, because I'm not sure I've read much fiction, let alone sci-fi, that's more staunchly feminist and more obviously borne of having lived experience of being a woman in modern Western society.
But that (although great) is not what makes this collection great. The imagination is the primary thing. Such a great sci-fi mind... the fact that she dreamed these up implies that she has some deep psychic connection with the universe. So many are jaw-dropping twists on humanity's relationship to life, death and the cosmos, but without being twisty for twisty's sake. How more of these are not movies I have no idea. She has better ideas than the much-filmed Dick (on the whole), and her prose is much, much better.
Maybe she's not more filmed because she's so dark, and so sexual. Actually, now I think about it, that really could be it. Every story is more or less about sex, or death, or sex and death. Which is another great thing about this collection.
But that (although great) is not what makes this collection great. The imagination is the primary thing. Such a great sci-fi mind... the fact that she dreamed these up implies that she has some deep psychic connection with the universe. So many are jaw-dropping twists on humanity's relationship to life, death and the cosmos, but without being twisty for twisty's sake. How more of these are not movies I have no idea. She has better ideas than the much-filmed Dick (on the whole), and her prose is much, much better.
Maybe she's not more filmed because she's so dark, and so sexual. Actually, now I think about it, that really could be it. Every story is more or less about sex, or death, or sex and death. Which is another great thing about this collection.
johnayliff's review against another edition
5.0
I think this is the best single-author collection of sf short stories I have read. Tiptree has a masterful ability to adapt her writing style to the needs of each story, and each one is saying something; none of these stories is just another Tiptree story. There are themes that run through the volume - love, sex, and death - but they are explored in different ways each time. The stories are sometimes shocking or challenging, but more often sad and beautiful. None of them could be described as really happy; the closest she gets to a happy ending is a bittersweet one. They are sometimes exhausting to read, demanding the reader's full attention and striking deep at their emotions, but I can think of no sf story collection more rewarding.
theaurochs's review against another edition
5.0
One of the greatest collections of sci-fi short stories ever put to print. Tiptree manages to tap into something transcendental and captures something fundamental about the human experience, while at the same time providing some really innovative visions of the future. These stories are filled with exquisite sadness; the deep anguish of existence and its futility, but presented in such fantastic prose and cleverly constructed ways. They brim with the “new, just anger” that Tiptree also describes in the feminist writings of their correspondent and somewhat-contemporary Joanna Russ; Tiptree (of course in reality actually one Alice Sheldon) uses their male point of view and assumed voice to publish some scathing criticisms of the society of the late 60s, much of which is depressingly relevant today. But rarely does this feel preachy; Tiptree manages to build these ideas deftly into her stories, even in miniscule wordcounts. Some might even argue too deftly, reading without a critical eye could render some of these (relatively) straightforward adventure stories. Of course nothing is ever entirely straightforward with Tiptree; even when things are blunt and surface-level they will have been designed to be such for maximum impact. Every single element is put carefully in its place with a strong literary sensibility.
The stories run a full gamut from frantic and chilling apocalypse scenarios, to an early and influential cyberpunk story, to one of the best explorations of really ‘alien’ aliens you’re likely to find, to incredibly succinct explorations of civilizational ennui, to intricate explorations of gender and the place of gender in society. It’s heavy stuff, certainly, and a lot of it could not unfairly be described as a ‘downer’; definitely not recommended if you need a comforting pick-me-up read. But these incredibly well-constructed works will challenge your views on the universe and invariably give you something to think about. I often had to leave a day or two between short stories as I was still mulling over the content of the last one.
The mystique around Tiptree themselves of course adds to the whole experience- this mysterious writer who crops up in the late sixties publishing stories that are widely regarded as ‘manly’ or ‘masculine’ almost without equal; being called an heir to Hemingway or ‘the man to beat’ at awards ceremonies. Naturally Tiptree was in fact Alice Sheldon writing under a pseudonym, and reading all of these stories with that knowledge adds an extra layer of deliciousness to the whole thing. Sheldon’s life was quite the story in itself, and I’d highly recommend looking into it if you are at all interested.
Safe to say I absolutely love this collection. It’s dark, it’s brutal, it’s unforgiving, it’s haunting, it’s wildly imaginative and profoundly real, and it’s entirely human.
The stories run a full gamut from frantic and chilling apocalypse scenarios, to an early and influential cyberpunk story, to one of the best explorations of really ‘alien’ aliens you’re likely to find, to incredibly succinct explorations of civilizational ennui, to intricate explorations of gender and the place of gender in society. It’s heavy stuff, certainly, and a lot of it could not unfairly be described as a ‘downer’; definitely not recommended if you need a comforting pick-me-up read. But these incredibly well-constructed works will challenge your views on the universe and invariably give you something to think about. I often had to leave a day or two between short stories as I was still mulling over the content of the last one.
The mystique around Tiptree themselves of course adds to the whole experience- this mysterious writer who crops up in the late sixties publishing stories that are widely regarded as ‘manly’ or ‘masculine’ almost without equal; being called an heir to Hemingway or ‘the man to beat’ at awards ceremonies. Naturally Tiptree was in fact Alice Sheldon writing under a pseudonym, and reading all of these stories with that knowledge adds an extra layer of deliciousness to the whole thing. Sheldon’s life was quite the story in itself, and I’d highly recommend looking into it if you are at all interested.
Safe to say I absolutely love this collection. It’s dark, it’s brutal, it’s unforgiving, it’s haunting, it’s wildly imaginative and profoundly real, and it’s entirely human.