Byte Beautiful: Eight Science Fiction Stories

by James Tiptree Jr., Michael Bishop (Introduction)

Short stories by award-winning science fiction writer, James Triptree, Jr. Stories include adventures in outer space and the world of the future. All but one of the stories, "Excursion Fare", have previously appeared in earlier short story collections by James Tiptree, Jr.

Table of contents:

- Introduction by Michael Bishop
- With Delicate Mad Hands
- Beam Us Home
- Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death
- The Man Who Walked Home
- Your Faces, O my Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
- The Peacefulness of Vivyan
- Excursion Fare
- I'll Be Waiting For You When the Swimming Pool is Empty.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Collections

177 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1985

About the author

"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

Reviews

[Ben Loory · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty sure that "the man who walked home" is one of the best stories i've ever read. some of the other stories in this collection didn't do as much for me, but even in the worst of them, tiptree's clearly a genius... she has so many strengths, it's incredible. the imagination, the humor, the emotional urgency, the economy and elegance of the prose... she writes action sequences better than anyone i've ever read and tosses off entire universes in ten page stories... there's always a heart and the heart is always torn and fighting valiantly and vainly to live on... and she has the kind of intelligence that makes you feel like a genius just being able to listen in. she actually reminds me a lot of virginia woolf, if virginia woolf had been a scientist who once worked for the CIA. i'm really excited to have finally discovered her. don't know how it took me so long.

i must say, though, i don't understand why this collection is called byte beautiful. there's no story in the collection called that, and i don't remember the phrase coming up, and none of the stories are about computers. also, it's a dumb title, and all her stories have awesome titles. "love is the plan the plan is death," for instance. why couldn't they call the collection that? it's a mystery.

i think i read the wrong collection, btw... i think the one to read is this one:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27...

which i will read next. as soon as the nice mailman delivers it.

WHERE THE FUCK IS THE NICE MAILMAN

[V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the stories I encountered in other collections, but most were new to me. Tiptree is still amazing. Often hard to stomach - but this is what good science fiction should be like.

[Sam · Rating 2 out of 5]

"With Delicate Mad Hands" (novella) (Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions, 1981.) *
"Beam Us Home" (Galaxy Science Fiction, April, 1969.) *
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" (The Alien Condition, 1973.) ***
"The Man Who Walked Home" (Amazing Stories, May, 1972.) **
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" (Aurora: Beyond Equality, 1976.) *
"The Peacefulness of Vivyan," (Amazing Stories, July, 1971.) *
"Excursion Fare," (novelette) (Stellar, #7, 1981.) **
"I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool Is Empty" (Protostars, 1971.) ***

[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ha ha! Tiptree is so awesome.

[Elisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

These eight SF stories include some of Tiptree's best as well as some lighter fare. Many of the stories deal with characters who are trapped in some kind of apparently false "reality" which may or may not prove to be authentic. "With Delicate Mad Hands" is an exquisite love story about a girl with a pig snout who feels called to the stars. After a life of sustained abuse, she crash lands on a plant populated by genuinely weird aliens and eventually meets her "Star Caller." "Beam Us Home" has another adolescent called to the stars, this time by his obsession with Star Trek. "Love is the Plan" is abt an adolescent alien for whom love is a biological death trap. "You Faces, O My Sisters" sets up a situation where "women's lib" becomes a kind of schizophrenia as a young wife imagines herself into a world of freedom. Vivyan lives in a similarly utopian world, but only because he remains unaware that he has be brainwashed into being an Imperial spy.

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I bought this I thought it was an original short story collection (or at least semi-original: collecting short stories that had so far appeared only in magazines). In fact, it’s a collection of collections, so to speak. I’m glad I didn’t know this when I bought it. It turns out to be a best of the best of “James Tiptree Jr.”.

Every story in here is either a phenomenal twisting of the literary shibboleths of then (and, for that matter, today), or a just plain beautiful story. From the wise peaceful alien to the feminist utopia, these stories verge widely from where I would have expected.

Note that, if you’re a Tiptree completist, one of the stories here, Excursion Fare was not in any previous Tiptree collection; it had been in the August 1981 Stellar #7 Science Fiction Stories.

[Arielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not normally a sci-fi person, though a couple of these really struck me - often more for their ideas than the execution. Tiptree's endings didn't really pack a punch for me, and in a short story, I really want that. But there were lines or thoughts or sly asides in each of these stories that I really appreciated, and if you are a sci-fi fan, maybe they'll land better for you. The author was recommended by a friend who recently discovered Tiptree's back story, which is fascinating in and of itself.

[Jennifer]

Only one story here was new to me: Excursion Fare. No matter what the plot of a tiptree story is you know it's going to be something about how all sentient life is innately doomed to drive itself extinct. This builds to an interesting variant on that.

[Zach Sparks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of sci-fi sex and death which is what I had been told was Alli Sheldon's hallmark going in.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly all excellent, dark space-twinged twists on leaving and not coming back.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
Beam Us Home (1969)
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)
The Man Who Walked Home (1972)
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
The Peacefulness of Vivyan (1971)
Excursion Fare (1981)
I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool Is Empty (1971)

A nice collection, only one of which is not available in the "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" anthology or the recent Penguin sf series reprints of her first two original collections. With Tiptree it seems that everything from her first decade is top-notch and then quality decay set in. Of these eight stories the two latest from 1981 are also the weakest.

Unrelated to any review but just a personal odd synchronicity side-note to my self:

Thank you Penguin for the reprints of her first two books and hoping I can read the rest of the stories in her 3rd and 4th collections some day, but a lot of Tiptree's later stories remain out of print and can be pricey to track down. But I did notice "Excursion Fare" in an older book, reasonably priced, and ordered it a couple weeks ago from an overseas seller. Among my long term "currently-reading" projects I've been reading a chapter of The Aeneid every now and then and this morning I decided to spend an hour and read the next chapter which happened to be chapter six - Aeneas's journey to the underworld. Just before the end of the chapter the doorbell rings and I have a delivery of the ordered book. Finished the chapter and decided to read Excursion Fare right away and I can give myself GR credit for this book read. Beginning in media res, the exhausted protagonists are going down in the stormy sea, all hope is lost. But awaken to find they are miraculously saved by a mysterious boat named Charon, which roams the seas serving as a hospice, caring for its terminally ill passengers in their last days ...

[Danni Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful and disturbing collection of short stories. I got really into about half of them, and about half of them just didn't quite do it for me. The general timbre of hopelessness and the use of sexual violence made it difficult for me to read these stories, but the author clearly has a committed writing style and a unique voice, and uses these elements well in the stories' artistic context. I am told this is not the best representation of the author's work and am encouraged to read some of Tiptree's other collections, which I am looking forward to doing.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an awkward place in Tiptree's body of work--all but one of the stories in it had been previously collected, so it doesn't have much structural coherence, and too many of Tiptree's major texts are missing for it to be really satisfying as a "Selected Stories"--but four of its stories ("With Delicate Mad Hands," "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death," "The Man Who Walked Home," and "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light") are as moving and tough-minded as any SF stories I've read, so it works well as an introduction to her project.

[Glaiza · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first dive into Tiptree's writing and by no means, my last. I love finding more sf writer's works to explore.