Le donne che gli uomini non vedono: Racconti

by James Tiptree Jr., Nicoletta Vallorani (Editor), Annalisa Di Liddo (Translator)

Trecento anni fa, un'epidemia ha reso gli umani incapaci di riprodursi e ora la popolazione terrestre è ridotta a due milioni di persone. Tutte donne. Si rigenerano per clonazione, conducono una vita semplice e pacifica, non priva però di viaggi spaziali. Non c'è aggressività, competizione, violenza. È il luogo in cui è ambientato il premiatissimo racconto Houston, Houston, ci sentite?, diametralmente opposto al «mondo-macchina» dal quale vogliono fuggire le protagoniste di Le donne che gli uomini non vedono, anche a costo di inoltrarsi nell'ignoto. Con molte nuove traduzioni e testi mai pubblicati in Italia, questa raccolta di diciotto racconti presenta il meglio della produzione breve di Alice Sheldon, in arte James Tiptree, tra viaggi nel tempo e creature aliene, utopie e distopie, disastri ambientali e astronavi, la narrazione coniuga immaginazione visionaria e tematiche sociali, esplorando i concetti di vita e morte, identità e alterità, sesso e amore, genere e razza, oltre al ruolo e al destino dell'umanità nell'universo. Pur nella grande diversità di situazioni e modalità narrative, le storie - pubblicate tra il 1969 e il 1981 - si rimandano a vicenda, costruendo un senso complessivo nel quale istanze femministe, riflessioni sociologiche e ricerca scientifica si fondono nell'affresco di una realtà mutevole, che a chi legge pone domande senza fornire risposte. E in questo sta forse il dono più prezioso di un'autrice che rifiuta «di riconoscere il confine illusorio tra science fiction e realtà».

758 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 31, 2026

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