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A review by borborygm
Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree Jr.
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.