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Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions
Ten tantalizing tales of man, woman and child - and their cosmic connections...
Contents:
Angel Fix (1974)
Beaver Tears (1976)
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
The Screwfly Solution (1977)
Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
Slow Music (1980)
A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
Out of the Everywhere (1981)
With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
234 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 12, 1981
3 people are currently reading
388 people want to read
About the author
James Tiptree Jr.
243 books596 followers"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
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
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 11, 2020
Ten tantalizing tales of Man, Woman and Child - and their cosmic connections.
This collection contains the following short stories;
Angel Fix
Beaver Tears
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
The Screwfly Solution
Time-Sharing Angel
We Who Stole the Dream
Slow Music
A Source of Innocent Merriment
Out of the Everywhere
With Delicate Mad Hands
When reviewing a collection of stories it is best to simply describe the most enjoyable story.
This without a doubt "The Screwfly Solution"
Just as we think nothing of disrupting nature in order to remove a pest from our lives so do aliens act on humanity.
Humans were hard at work removing the screwflies which infected and killed children.
Earth is having its current tenants removed so that aliens can live there.
Without even a shot being fired.
Slowly, at first, men all over the world kill their loved ones leaving Earth ready for the aliens!
Long before climate change and the Green party were talked about James Tiptree was writing thought provoking stories on these themes.
They are simply "extraordinary visions"
Enjoy!
This collection contains the following short stories;
Angel Fix
Beaver Tears
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!
The Screwfly Solution
Time-Sharing Angel
We Who Stole the Dream
Slow Music
A Source of Innocent Merriment
Out of the Everywhere
With Delicate Mad Hands
When reviewing a collection of stories it is best to simply describe the most enjoyable story.
This without a doubt "The Screwfly Solution"
Just as we think nothing of disrupting nature in order to remove a pest from our lives so do aliens act on humanity.
Humans were hard at work removing the screwflies which infected and killed children.
Earth is having its current tenants removed so that aliens can live there.
Without even a shot being fired.
Slowly, at first, men all over the world kill their loved ones leaving Earth ready for the aliens!
Long before climate change and the Green party were talked about James Tiptree was writing thought provoking stories on these themes.
They are simply "extraordinary visions"
Enjoy!
January 4, 2026
This collection of ten stories is the last one to be published in a mass market edition during Tiptree's lifetime. Four of them were originally published under one of her other pseudonyms, Raccoona Sheldon, and two of the longest are original to the book. There is no introduction in this one. While she still examines the topics of feminism and equality, the later stories in particular take a dark and sharp focus on mental health and the whole book has a bleaker tone overall. My favorite was The Screwfly Solution, which was published in Analog as by Raccoona Sheldon and won the Nebula award for the best novelette of 1978. With Delicate Mad Hands, an original novella, is pretty much a knock-out read, too.
January 22, 2021
I've got at least one hardcover collection by Tiptree (real name Alice Bradley) and I remember quite liking her stories. So now I've got this got stack of old SF/Fantasy paperbacks that a friend gave me, and there are at least 4 Tiptree short story collections, and this is the first I've selected. The opening story was a humorous alien encounter story with a twist. A rather enjoyable start, followed up with a very short, sharp story Beaver Tears which manages to be both sad and funny at the time. And then the third story Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light! comes in with a massive punch to gut. Holy shit, what a powerhouse of story dealing with mental illness and skewed perceptions of reality and a world destroyed by uncontrolled technology. The ending is just terribly tragic, but utterly perfect for delivering Tiptree's message. I have a vague memory of having read this specific story something like 15 years ago, and I'm glad to have come back to it again. Only 3 stories into this collection and I'm already impressed again by her creativity.
I had for some reason a vague memory of Tiptree's work being frequently humorous, but that must have been a confusion with some other author's work. Her stories are almost unrelentingly sad and tragic, and not in a hammy way. She is peculiarly adept at taking SF motifs and evoking deeply complex emotions from the wild speculations. The penultimate story Out Of The Everywhere is a heartbreaking examination of on utterly alien child intelligence being stranded in a human baby and the transgressive relationship with the human father, with a host of characters many of whom had their own outsider aspects. The final story With Delicate Mad Hands starts as a feminist examination and critique of male-dominated space exploration and warps into a violent murder/revenge tale and then finally into a hopeless and desperate love story that bears no resemblance to anything remotely romantic. And death always death.
These stories have left me reeling, and I'm glad that I have at least three more of Tiptree's anthologies sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read.
I had for some reason a vague memory of Tiptree's work being frequently humorous, but that must have been a confusion with some other author's work. Her stories are almost unrelentingly sad and tragic, and not in a hammy way. She is peculiarly adept at taking SF motifs and evoking deeply complex emotions from the wild speculations. The penultimate story Out Of The Everywhere is a heartbreaking examination of on utterly alien child intelligence being stranded in a human baby and the transgressive relationship with the human father, with a host of characters many of whom had their own outsider aspects. The final story With Delicate Mad Hands starts as a feminist examination and critique of male-dominated space exploration and warps into a violent murder/revenge tale and then finally into a hopeless and desperate love story that bears no resemblance to anything remotely romantic. And death always death.
These stories have left me reeling, and I'm glad that I have at least three more of Tiptree's anthologies sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read.
July 6, 2021
Alice James Tiptree Sheldon wasn't just a good science fiction writer, she was an excellent practitioner of short form fiction in general, who happened to work exclusively in the language of sci-fi. I usually prefer novels to short fiction whenever the choice is available, as many authors fail to develop ideas far as I'd like or enough to really have them stick without the weight of more pages, and I have trouble serially building a connection over short bursts of narrative. But Tiptree excels at constructing meaningful worlds in miniature, usually with a real feel for characters, even non-human or very very strange, that can create deep investment in spite of themselves. All the sadder, then, that Tiptree's bleak view of humanity and the cosmos means that few of them will ever find satisfaction, despite a universe of possibility.
As with a few other Tiptree collections, this one opens underwhelmingly, with a fine but one-note parable I'd expect of a lesser writer with fewer ideas to burn, then bare sketch of a scenario without the flesh to give it meaning. Oddly, these were stories Sheldon penned under her other, non-Tiptree pen-name, Raccoona Sheldon, which I'd always understood as her outlet for more directly angry feminist work. It's there a bit in the sad, gracefully spun dual reality of the third story, "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" but then we reach the Racoona story for which she received a Nebula, "The Screwfly Solution". Oh, yes, this is where that reputation came from. It's excoriating, but also just utterly terrifying. You can think of comparisons, but they just feel soft by comparison. And as with all her best work, it's highly layered, never doing only one thing, however effective any of those single threads might be. Biological control interventions, psychosexual horror, gender and religion, several flavors of apocalypse in the wings.
It's notable, in general, how Tiptree's PhD in psychology comes out in her frank portrayals of sexuality, in its many forms and dysfunctions. She shies from nothing that might advance her themes, and it gives her work a very different tone from the more adolescent level of a lot of what might be called "space adventure" fiction.
And when she writes, for once, something approaching, against all odds, a love story, it's of course tragic but also imbued with a rare warmth. The story I most needed not to end with a crushing reversal, for once, did not. And that piece, with all the novela-length work here, is distinctly worth the length and development.
Tiptree is interesting in that, as an excellent constructer of short narrative with a complicated range of experience to draw from, she never stepped beyond the tropes of science fiction. Yes, she does all kinds of unexpected thing with them, but she also tosses in all expected bits: space travel, unfamiliar future, alien species, sometimes time travel or parallel worlds. For many, she created all of her best work in a genre and universe they simply wouldn't be bothered to step into. For all her experimentation, intelligence, and purposeful direction, she remained clearly a sci-fi writer, never attempting to push beyond the limitations of genre into the upscale literature world. And in this, also, I find something to appreciate.
As with a few other Tiptree collections, this one opens underwhelmingly, with a fine but one-note parable I'd expect of a lesser writer with fewer ideas to burn, then bare sketch of a scenario without the flesh to give it meaning. Oddly, these were stories Sheldon penned under her other, non-Tiptree pen-name, Raccoona Sheldon, which I'd always understood as her outlet for more directly angry feminist work. It's there a bit in the sad, gracefully spun dual reality of the third story, "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" but then we reach the Racoona story for which she received a Nebula, "The Screwfly Solution". Oh, yes, this is where that reputation came from. It's excoriating, but also just utterly terrifying. You can think of comparisons, but they just feel soft by comparison. And as with all her best work, it's highly layered, never doing only one thing, however effective any of those single threads might be. Biological control interventions, psychosexual horror, gender and religion, several flavors of apocalypse in the wings.
It's notable, in general, how Tiptree's PhD in psychology comes out in her frank portrayals of sexuality, in its many forms and dysfunctions. She shies from nothing that might advance her themes, and it gives her work a very different tone from the more adolescent level of a lot of what might be called "space adventure" fiction.
And when she writes, for once, something approaching, against all odds, a love story, it's of course tragic but also imbued with a rare warmth. The story I most needed not to end with a crushing reversal, for once, did not. And that piece, with all the novela-length work here, is distinctly worth the length and development.
Tiptree is interesting in that, as an excellent constructer of short narrative with a complicated range of experience to draw from, she never stepped beyond the tropes of science fiction. Yes, she does all kinds of unexpected thing with them, but she also tosses in all expected bits: space travel, unfamiliar future, alien species, sometimes time travel or parallel worlds. For many, she created all of her best work in a genre and universe they simply wouldn't be bothered to step into. For all her experimentation, intelligence, and purposeful direction, she remained clearly a sci-fi writer, never attempting to push beyond the limitations of genre into the upscale literature world. And in this, also, I find something to appreciate.
September 15, 2021
Only 5 stories in this were new to me. The best of those 5 were Beaver Tears and Time-Sharing Angel. I didn't like A Source of Innocent Merriment and Out of the Everywhere. Angel Fix was just ok. Full RTC eventually
July 2, 2022
If you're interested in James Tiptree Jr., check out my review of the more expansive and more impressive collection here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This was a weird book to read and review because I had previously read half the stories in the above collection. So I’m only reviewing the stories that were new to me here, which were good but not great. However, if you’ve never read Tiptree Jr., this collection is as good a place to start as any as it contains a few of her greatest stories.
If you’re not familiar with Tiptree at all, I recommend looking her up, she had a fascinating life. Be warned that her stories can be and usually are extremely depressing, bleak, and angry; however, they are also wildly creative and menacingly memorable.
Angel Fix ** - Aliens convince nice people to move off Earth to a paradise so they can snatch up Earth later. Not great.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ****
Beaver Tears ** - Another lackluster story about humans being moved around like beavers.
The Screwfly Solution *****
Time-Sharing Angel *** Hamfisted story about overpopulation and a potential solution. Not sure the solution makes sense or works, but Tiptree throws out a lot of interesting tidbits to chew on and it definitely gets you thinking.
We Who Stole the Dream **
Slow Music ****
With Delicate Mad Hands *****
A Source of Innocent Merriment *** Classic Tiptree. Some kind of strange, surreal, orgasmic alien presence, representing everything good, great, and amazing, is there, it’s there, it’s there, it’s GONE. And it’s dead. And experiencing it ruins you haha.
Out of the Everywhere **** For me this is the strongest of the stories I hadn’t read previously, but is probably the 4th best story overall in the entire collection. There’s some incest and pedophilia, oh Tiptree, but it’s just a disturbing appetizer for the main course which is more about Earth being a pitstop and rehab facility for an interesting cosmic entity.
Stories-8, Language-8, Ideas-9, Characters-6, Enjoyment-8, Overall-7.8
This was a weird book to read and review because I had previously read half the stories in the above collection. So I’m only reviewing the stories that were new to me here, which were good but not great. However, if you’ve never read Tiptree Jr., this collection is as good a place to start as any as it contains a few of her greatest stories.
If you’re not familiar with Tiptree at all, I recommend looking her up, she had a fascinating life. Be warned that her stories can be and usually are extremely depressing, bleak, and angry; however, they are also wildly creative and menacingly memorable.
Angel Fix ** - Aliens convince nice people to move off Earth to a paradise so they can snatch up Earth later. Not great.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! ****
Beaver Tears ** - Another lackluster story about humans being moved around like beavers.
The Screwfly Solution *****
Time-Sharing Angel *** Hamfisted story about overpopulation and a potential solution. Not sure the solution makes sense or works, but Tiptree throws out a lot of interesting tidbits to chew on and it definitely gets you thinking.
We Who Stole the Dream **
Slow Music ****
With Delicate Mad Hands *****
A Source of Innocent Merriment *** Classic Tiptree. Some kind of strange, surreal, orgasmic alien presence, representing everything good, great, and amazing, is there, it’s there, it’s there, it’s GONE. And it’s dead. And experiencing it ruins you haha.
Out of the Everywhere **** For me this is the strongest of the stories I hadn’t read previously, but is probably the 4th best story overall in the entire collection. There’s some incest and pedophilia, oh Tiptree, but it’s just a disturbing appetizer for the main course which is more about Earth being a pitstop and rehab facility for an interesting cosmic entity.
Stories-8, Language-8, Ideas-9, Characters-6, Enjoyment-8, Overall-7.8
October 5, 2024
This is a very interesting collection of stories, often with a painful twist at the end. I got it for Time Sharing Angel, which is an interesting story dealing with the recurring theme of overpopulation, environmental degradation, and lack of foresight. It was nominated for the Hugo, and anthologised e.g. in Ikarus 2001. Best of Science Fiction., the current source of short stories for our reading circle. It's a decent story, but far surpassed by some of the others in this collection. Angel Fix feels light-hearted and humorous, but comes with a punch at the end. There is another recurring theme in this story - aliens wanting to take over the Earth (in this case because of the fantastic fremth), and doing so via relatively subtle means. I was most impressed by We Who Stole the Dream - one can't help to anticipate a twist at the end, but the punch line is still like a kick in the balls. Here, as in other stories, Tiptree does not hold back with elements of sexual and other abuse. I find all the stories and novellas well worth a read. Nearly all are based on a strong central idea. Very occasionally I get the feeling that Tiptree was writing towards a word limit, and stretched the idea out to breaking point, but that is rare, and even then, the prose is still worth reading. Definitely a collection that should make you think. Recommended.
November 4, 2019
There are a lot of great stories in this collection, though my favorite is definitely "With Delicate Mad Hands." I can read it multiple times and cry at the end of each. I'm going to include a brief summary of each of the stories, both for myself and others.
**Warning**: there will be spoilers as I'm going to give away the ending.
"Angel Fix:" Alien comes to earth and finds "good" people and offers them a portal to a fabulous vacation world and is like "don't tell people about it" except the aliens' plan is for the earthlings to all leave earth for the wonder land and they can sell earth for a profit after the bad people ruin it.
This one was very Tiptree, in that Tip liked to write about aliens manipulating humans into ruining the earth so they can sell it (see "The Screwfly Solution").
--
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" Girl thinks she's walking through a dystopian world as a messenger, but she's actually a regular woman who went a little crazy and is just walking through the streets. She gets "eaten by dogs"/raped and beaten by men.
This story was at once both beautiful and terrible at the same time, because it was more or less about women's journey through the world and the dangers they face.
--
"Beaver Tears:" Guy watches a documentary about relocated beavers, and then he and his neighbors are relocated by aliens.
This one was a little meh: interesting, but not as great as some of Tip's other stories.
--
"The Screwfly Solution:" Alien realtors infect men with a strong desire to murder all women so they can sell the earth.
This. One. Is. Amazing. I've read it several times and it's horrifying because it goes in a sort of "Handmaid's Tale" direction where women are subjugated by men, except it goes a step further because the men kill them all.
--
"Time-Sharing Angel:" Alien sends a "solution" to earth because this lady is sad that the earth is being overrun, and his solution is a thing that puts all but 1 child in a family asleep at a time, and they don't age so it slows population growth (and will eventually end up with far fewer humans).
I personally enjoy all the different ideas Tiptree comes up with on how to fix overpopulation and pollution. This story is a very "be careful what you wish for" tale.
--
"We Who Stole the Dream:" An enslaved race steals a ship, flies it toward where it thinks its people are, discovers they produce the torture juice the slavers enjoyed.
This was fascinating, thrilling, and ultimately depressing since the freedom the slaves thought they were getting was tainted.
--
"Slow Music:" The last woman and man want to stay on earth and do obsolete human things, everyone has been uploaded to a "river." The man and woman fail and ultimately join the flow as well.
This story sort of dragged on? It was interesting, as usual, but not as great as the others.
--
"With Delicate Mad Hands:" Carol Page aka Cold Pig goes to space and commandeers the space ship to fly toward where she has always heard a voice calling to her. She doesn't expect it to be real, but she finds a planet.
This one I won't spoil because the ending means so much to me and I want others to be overwhelmed by the result of Carol's journey. Suffice to say, I love it very very much.
--
"A Source of Innocent Merriment:" Guy talks about how he flew over a planet, and it was somehow alive and showed him things in his mind including a beautiful woman of his dreams that he then could never see again.
Another example of Tiptree finding joy in space and then wrenching it away.
--
"Out of the Everywhere:" This one contains incest, so if that's a big "no" from you, I'd skip this one. An alien has to hide in an iceberg on earth and splits its consciousness into three connected folks, including a father and daughter; the daughter seduces the dad (I totally called it) and ultimately the three people arrange to haul the iceberg to California and the alien is released, only to be tempted by another alien but the little girl saves him and joins his consciousness, and now the alien wants to study life on other planets.
Aside from the truly messed up father/daughter incest in this story (also the daughter is like 11 when she seduces her dad so it's also pedophilia), this is a really cool story about how aliens interact with earth. For the most part, earth and its humans are insignificant specks in the cosmos (a feeling Tiptree carried with him/her all their life) and Tiptree really enjoys telling stories that reinforce that perspective.
**Warning**: there will be spoilers as I'm going to give away the ending.
"Angel Fix:" Alien comes to earth and finds "good" people and offers them a portal to a fabulous vacation world and is like "don't tell people about it" except the aliens' plan is for the earthlings to all leave earth for the wonder land and they can sell earth for a profit after the bad people ruin it.
This one was very Tiptree, in that Tip liked to write about aliens manipulating humans into ruining the earth so they can sell it (see "The Screwfly Solution").
--
"Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!" Girl thinks she's walking through a dystopian world as a messenger, but she's actually a regular woman who went a little crazy and is just walking through the streets. She gets "eaten by dogs"/raped and beaten by men.
This story was at once both beautiful and terrible at the same time, because it was more or less about women's journey through the world and the dangers they face.
--
"Beaver Tears:" Guy watches a documentary about relocated beavers, and then he and his neighbors are relocated by aliens.
This one was a little meh: interesting, but not as great as some of Tip's other stories.
--
"The Screwfly Solution:" Alien realtors infect men with a strong desire to murder all women so they can sell the earth.
This. One. Is. Amazing. I've read it several times and it's horrifying because it goes in a sort of "Handmaid's Tale" direction where women are subjugated by men, except it goes a step further because the men kill them all.
--
"Time-Sharing Angel:" Alien sends a "solution" to earth because this lady is sad that the earth is being overrun, and his solution is a thing that puts all but 1 child in a family asleep at a time, and they don't age so it slows population growth (and will eventually end up with far fewer humans).
I personally enjoy all the different ideas Tiptree comes up with on how to fix overpopulation and pollution. This story is a very "be careful what you wish for" tale.
--
"We Who Stole the Dream:" An enslaved race steals a ship, flies it toward where it thinks its people are, discovers they produce the torture juice the slavers enjoyed.
This was fascinating, thrilling, and ultimately depressing since the freedom the slaves thought they were getting was tainted.
--
"Slow Music:" The last woman and man want to stay on earth and do obsolete human things, everyone has been uploaded to a "river." The man and woman fail and ultimately join the flow as well.
This story sort of dragged on? It was interesting, as usual, but not as great as the others.
--
"With Delicate Mad Hands:" Carol Page aka Cold Pig goes to space and commandeers the space ship to fly toward where she has always heard a voice calling to her. She doesn't expect it to be real, but she finds a planet.
This one I won't spoil because the ending means so much to me and I want others to be overwhelmed by the result of Carol's journey. Suffice to say, I love it very very much.
--
"A Source of Innocent Merriment:" Guy talks about how he flew over a planet, and it was somehow alive and showed him things in his mind including a beautiful woman of his dreams that he then could never see again.
Another example of Tiptree finding joy in space and then wrenching it away.
--
"Out of the Everywhere:" This one contains incest, so if that's a big "no" from you, I'd skip this one. An alien has to hide in an iceberg on earth and splits its consciousness into three connected folks, including a father and daughter; the daughter seduces the dad (I totally called it) and ultimately the three people arrange to haul the iceberg to California and the alien is released, only to be tempted by another alien but the little girl saves him and joins his consciousness, and now the alien wants to study life on other planets.
Aside from the truly messed up father/daughter incest in this story (also the daughter is like 11 when she seduces her dad so it's also pedophilia), this is a really cool story about how aliens interact with earth. For the most part, earth and its humans are insignificant specks in the cosmos (a feeling Tiptree carried with him/her all their life) and Tiptree really enjoys telling stories that reinforce that perspective.
April 4, 2019
I hadn't read any Tiptree before this; her stories are strong, and this anthology makes me want to read more. This is a good collection, reflecting a strong, wry wit and a healthy discomfort with a bellicose and sexist society. Only one story here dragged for me; I found "Slow Music" both drawn out and trite, a long doggerel a bit too precious and without much final pay-off. The last two stories are pretty brilliant, the first ("Angel Fix") is flat-out funny, and "We Who Stole the Dream" is ruefully memorable. This merits a bit more than a 4 and not quite a 5, but definitely worth recommending.
August 1, 2007
James Tiptree was the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon, who adopted a male pseudonym as at the time she wrote, sci-fi/fantasy was thoroughly male territory. This is a collection of some of her best short stories and one novella. If you like Ursula LeGuin, you'll probably also enjoy Tiptree. Her characters are multi-dimensional and she deals with complex social issues, sometimes with a hint of satire and keen wit. This is not your typical rocket blaster/ray gun sci fi.
February 11, 2011
"Slow music" makes this worth looking for. An enigmatic young girl plans to stay behind when all the other humans have left on the "river" a beam of unknown energy brought down to earth by an alien intelligence. Eternal life is promised to those who enter, but at what cost? Tiptree writes beautifully, and "Slow Music" is one of her best; poetic and poignant, and a very novel story as well.
April 20, 2024
A very dark set of stories, much more so than I was expecting. But these stories are among some of the more thoughtful stories about our troubled, human tendencies toward each other.
Tiptree is all in on examining gender troubles and the worlds portrayed in these stories have no shortage of men behaving terribly toward women. I could see some saying that the premise of some stories (e.g., a pathogen that causes men, collectively, to develop a desire to exterminate all women) is over the top, and I would agree. But it may be that I don't require as much boxing about the ears to see similar themes in more realistic and relatable narratives in 2024 than readers did in 1981. I don't know how well known it was at the time that James Tiptree was the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon. Nevertheless, these work for work for speculative science fiction pretty well.
In fact, the medium of science fiction seems well suited to this kind of intellectual and speculative work because it bridges the world we know with the world that could be. It bridges the here with the there, and the now with the future. On those grounds, Tiptree can fashion spaces and beings that bear a resemblance or connection to what we know but are just alien enough (in the general sense of the word) to be out of reach or unknowable. It is like a kind of latent frustration that it is possible to envisage a world that is not aggressively patriarchal and gender biased, but it remains out of reach. The last piece in this collection "With Delicate Mad Hands" is one of the best pieces in the collection and it illustrates this idea so nicely.
The other thing science fiction seems to do for Tiptree is to give an opportunity to set up aliens (in the more scifi-specific sense) as parallels to women. At the hands of men, aliens in this book are abused, enslaved, and generally mistreated in the worst possible ways. But in the absence of men, those relationships between aliens and women evolve in a different kind of way that allows insight into speculation about interpersonal relationship and politics.
Tiptree is all in on examining gender troubles and the worlds portrayed in these stories have no shortage of men behaving terribly toward women. I could see some saying that the premise of some stories (e.g., a pathogen that causes men, collectively, to develop a desire to exterminate all women) is over the top, and I would agree. But it may be that I don't require as much boxing about the ears to see similar themes in more realistic and relatable narratives in 2024 than readers did in 1981. I don't know how well known it was at the time that James Tiptree was the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon. Nevertheless, these work for work for speculative science fiction pretty well.
In fact, the medium of science fiction seems well suited to this kind of intellectual and speculative work because it bridges the world we know with the world that could be. It bridges the here with the there, and the now with the future. On those grounds, Tiptree can fashion spaces and beings that bear a resemblance or connection to what we know but are just alien enough (in the general sense of the word) to be out of reach or unknowable. It is like a kind of latent frustration that it is possible to envisage a world that is not aggressively patriarchal and gender biased, but it remains out of reach. The last piece in this collection "With Delicate Mad Hands" is one of the best pieces in the collection and it illustrates this idea so nicely.
The other thing science fiction seems to do for Tiptree is to give an opportunity to set up aliens (in the more scifi-specific sense) as parallels to women. At the hands of men, aliens in this book are abused, enslaved, and generally mistreated in the worst possible ways. But in the absence of men, those relationships between aliens and women evolve in a different kind of way that allows insight into speculation about interpersonal relationship and politics.
October 26, 2019
I was psyched to find this collection for $2 at my local used book store! I had already read most of the stories in it, and all of the really outstanding ones, but it's an excellent collection overall. I will never get tired of re-reading classics like "The Screwfly Solution", "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!", and "With Delicate Mad Hands" (which, bite me, is one of my favorite Tiptree works; a lot of people seem to be turned off by either the relentless abuse and despair and degradation of the beginning or by the somewhat sappy ending, which presents an arguably disturbing situation as unironically sweet and romantic, but I love the way those two emotional extremes give texture to one another and sketch what to me feels like a very truthful portrait of trauma and alienation and yearning).
I'd never read "Out of the Everywhere", the title story. It's all right, but a little longer than it needs to be. I wasn't expecting it to take a hard turn into alien-induced father/underage daughter incest halfway through, and I'm not sure how I feel about that particular twist-- at least the daughter initiates it, and both parties perceive their encounters as enthusiastically consensual and enjoy themselves? Or maybe that makes it *more* troubling, from an analytical standpoint if not a visceral one...anyway, apart from this strange plot device, the overarching narrative is engaging but a bit predictable in a way where at certain points I found myself wishing the story would hurry up and get to the climax I knew was coming (no pun intended).
My favorite new-to-me story in the collection is one of the shortest and slightest, "A Source of Innocent Merriment". I can't really explain the plot without spoiling the whole thing, but it strikes a perfect balance of melancholy, romance, cosmic awe, and a faint tinge of horror. Shades of SOLARIS and of Bradbury in his most elegiac and whimsical mode.
I'd never read "Out of the Everywhere", the title story. It's all right, but a little longer than it needs to be. I wasn't expecting it to take a hard turn into alien-induced father/underage daughter incest halfway through, and I'm not sure how I feel about that particular twist-- at least the daughter initiates it, and both parties perceive their encounters as enthusiastically consensual and enjoy themselves? Or maybe that makes it *more* troubling, from an analytical standpoint if not a visceral one...anyway, apart from this strange plot device, the overarching narrative is engaging but a bit predictable in a way where at certain points I found myself wishing the story would hurry up and get to the climax I knew was coming (no pun intended).
My favorite new-to-me story in the collection is one of the shortest and slightest, "A Source of Innocent Merriment". I can't really explain the plot without spoiling the whole thing, but it strikes a perfect balance of melancholy, romance, cosmic awe, and a faint tinge of horror. Shades of SOLARIS and of Bradbury in his most elegiac and whimsical mode.
xx-dnf-skim-reference
April 23, 2018Actually, the only story I didn't finish was the last, the novellette 'With Delicate Mad Hands," because by that time I'd had enough Tiptree (this collection confirms that I'm not a fan) and I found a review online that described it well enough to me that I felt comfortable abandoning. And that's all I can say.
Oh, and I can add that the title of the collection is from a poem called "Baby" by the wonderful George MacDonald.
Oh, and I can add that the title of the collection is from a poem called "Baby" by the wonderful George MacDonald.
Read
June 13, 2019It is perhaps not 100% fair to say I read this, but I read all of it that I'm going to..Tiptree was actually a woman, and a very talented woman, but my goodness, a woman with an extraordinarily grim turn of sci-fi-writing.
December 31, 2022
I always forget how much I enjoy James Tiptree jr.'s writing. This collection contained quite a few stories of the author's that I had not read before. There is something about the way she writes her short stories that draws the reader in so quickly. This collection had quite a big focus on alien encounters, there were very complex social situations, and her female protagonists delt with the sexisism that was prevalent at the time Tiptree was writing.
May 26, 2009
Ended up reading this by accident. The story quality is rather erratic, and some parts are definitely dated (as would be expected with older sci-fi short stories). Still, there are definitely some way cool ideas in it, even if I didn't entirely like where Tiptree went with 'em. So still interesting, all in all.
Also, is it just me, or does Tiptree have some severe hang-ups over the place of women in society? I suppose sexism was a much worse problem in the 60s and 70s, but still, there's lots of messed-up things going on in these stories and rapes and the like.
Roger Zelazny, my other main exposure to 60s-70s sci-fi short stories, is definitely better, but that's probably an unfair comparison.
Also, is it just me, or does Tiptree have some severe hang-ups over the place of women in society? I suppose sexism was a much worse problem in the 60s and 70s, but still, there's lots of messed-up things going on in these stories and rapes and the like.
Roger Zelazny, my other main exposure to 60s-70s sci-fi short stories, is definitely better, but that's probably an unfair comparison.
March 8, 2023
**** Angel Fix (1974)
*** Beaver Tears (1976)
***** Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
***** The Screwfly Solution (1977)
**** Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
***** We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
*** Slow Music (1980)
*** A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
**** Out of the Everywhere (1981)
**** With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
*** Beaver Tears (1976)
***** Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
***** The Screwfly Solution (1977)
**** Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
***** We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
*** Slow Music (1980)
*** A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
**** Out of the Everywhere (1981)
**** With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)
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