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A review by mattie
The Girl Who Was Plugged In/Screwtop by Vonda N. McIntyre, James Tiptree Jr.
4.0
(This review is just for The Girl Who Was Plugged In, since I'm going to give a miss to the trashy looking space-prison item published in the other half of this edition.)
The Girl Who Was Plugged In is one of the Tiptree novellas I kept hearing referenced as a classic, and I see why, especially given when it was published. Celebrity and consumerism and bodies (and women's bodies!) and corporations and the self, in a funky scifi package.
The writing was sometimes so stylized it was frustratingly hard to follow (I literally do not understand what was supposed to have happened in the last few sentences; time travel?), but I'd still rather read it written this way than in the hands of one of the fluffy-YA authors of scifi you'd see writing the same idea today. (Sorry, Scott Westerfeld. Kind of.) And generally the stylistic tics worked for the subject matter (and also reminded me of Phillip K Dick, fwiw). Fast, interesting read that left me thinking about it and wanting more.
The Girl Who Was Plugged In is one of the Tiptree novellas I kept hearing referenced as a classic, and I see why, especially given when it was published. Celebrity and consumerism and bodies (and women's bodies!) and corporations and the self, in a funky scifi package.
The writing was sometimes so stylized it was frustratingly hard to follow (I literally do not understand what was supposed to have happened in the last few sentences; time travel?), but I'd still rather read it written this way than in the hands of one of the fluffy-YA authors of scifi you'd see writing the same idea today. (Sorry, Scott Westerfeld. Kind of.) And generally the stylistic tics worked for the subject matter (and also reminded me of Phillip K Dick, fwiw). Fast, interesting read that left me thinking about it and wanting more.