Warm Worlds and Otherwise

by James Tiptree Jr.

'Tiptree's narratives of alien worlds and alienation make up one of science fiction's most vivid and influential bodies of work' The New York Times

This landmark collection of short stories shows the feminist pioneer James Tiptree Jr. at her most inventive and daring. Here a fake girl becomes a living advertisement, women choose alien invaders over the men of Earth, a creature discovers that love means death and a pandemic engulfs the planet.

'Feminist dystopian fiction owes just as much to this woman - who wrote as a man - as Margaret Atwood' Vox

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

266 pages, Paperback

First published January 12, 1975

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

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second Alice James Sheldon-Tiptree collection, more closely resembling the manic invention of Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home than the longer, slower burns of Star Songs of An Old Primate though with much concurrently-conceived material to the stories in both.

To be described as I read them:

All the Kinds of Yes (1972) :: An alien appears amidst the dizzying counter-cultural surge of the 60s/70s, conveyed in a colloquial confusion. Amidst such chaos and possibility what's an alien? Not such a surprise, perhaps. Mostly a light romp through its era, but not without a darker consideration of Earth's minor place in the universe and machinations of others reflective of our own cavalier treatment of it.

The Milk of Paradise (1972) :: The world is a reflection of the psyche that experiences it, and there's no going back. You can never return to the womb of early experience. The garden shall not be reclaimed.

And I Have Come upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972) :: First truly great story of the collection, an adventure tale built around multiplying frustrations with the push to purge individual intuitions in favor of computerized objectivity in scientific research. Likely drawn from her own experiences in clinical psychiatry, and a theme returned to even more scathingly in the next collection. But what I liked most here is how the story sheds its successive layers, like its protagonist, to leave itself only a spare single-minded upwards journey through spectral landscapes towards an uncertain or unachievable transcendence. The Holy Mountain has its roots in the concrete world and extends into the unknowable.

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain (1969) :: Another standout, here a condensed travelogue into anthropogenic apocalypse. Also not an uncommon Tiptree theme, but here handled interesting as almost the whole arc is presented in the first moments but it only gradually takes on weight and meaning throughout its rapid length. Apparently the breakthrough Tiptree story (according to Silverberg's introudction) but her very first, The Mothership, had even more thematic punch if a more conventional voice and structure.

Amberjack (1972)
Through a Lass Darkly (1972)
Minor short pieces, disorienting time travel variations each, executed in tragic and comic forms respectively.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)
A breathless miniature study (though novella-length, it's an exercise in compression) of the construction and marketing of celebrity. This takes a dystopian view of contemporary media via a dystopian future where all advertising is banned (and thus subverts in secret, because of course advertising is ineradicable and can only driven underground at this point). Though satiric it's perhaps more of a tragedy, of innocence crushed, impossible love, and the consumption and incorporation of dissent. The delivery is one of Tiptree's most breezily vernacular, the futuristic oddity and peripheral thematic implication of which just add another layer of varnish on an already dense-packed experience. In this way it's model Tiptree -- deceptively off-the-cuff pulp that bares the hidden marks of meticulous construction and thinking.

The Night-Blooming Saurian (1970)
Though I was also amused by the study of coprolites in middle school, here the joke gets stretched pretty thin. Even the voice grates on me here.

The Women Men Don't See (1973)
Another fine example of Tiptree's genre-bleed technique. A small plane goes down in the Yucatan mangroves, setting up a kind of survivalist story, with undertones of gender politics, until something else creeps in and overtakes the story.

Fault (1968)
A character coyly described as a space adventure type makes a cavalier blunder that such types are prone to, and pays, very conceptually, via an alien penal code. The central "what has actually happened" mystery is fun, but this falls towards Tiptree's most straight-forward, in general, which isn't surprising given that's it's the earliest-written here.

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)
Instinct and biological imperative rendered in all the cruelty of survival in an alien and never-defined species with a complicated life cycle an fleeting seasonal capacity for self-reflection. Questions about civilization, the pre-conditions for higher thought development. One of Tiptree's most impressively foreign, but with a rare interspecies pathos and, as often, a vision of impending apocalypse. A lot goes down in these 20 very strange pages.

On the Last Afternoon (1972)
That instinct and biological imperative returns, but now outside, from human colonizers trapped by it and facing a return of their own to that baseline without the "device for storing up time" that the physical city-apparatus and its cultural structures represent. Again, apocalypse seeps in, and, as with "She Waits for all Men Born" at the end of Tiptree's third collection, brings the arc to an aptly deathly finish.

Oh and let's just talk about this wonderful first edition cover I found in The Green Hand in Portland, Maine. It's so beautifully weird that I don't dare risk shredding it by reading it outside the house.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Tiptree Jr. was the penname of Alice Sheldon, one of the most important sf writers of the 1970s.

These are wonderful stories. One of the highlights is "The Women Men Don't See" which, as you can probably tell from the title, is the most explicitly feminist story in the collection. It's also a great alien contact story...

Some of the best stories from this collection are really bleak, particularly "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" and "On the Last Afternoon."

"The Milk of Paradise" is more melancholy than disturbing. This one is about miscommunication between aliens and humans, and also about loneliness.

The introduction to this book, by Robert Silverberg, has some insightful comments on the stories, but it also includes this: "It has been suggested that Tiptree is a woman, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing..."

There's a postscript to the second edition, in which Silverberg writes that he received a letter from Alice Sheldon, revealing her identity. He says: "She fooled me beautifully, along with everyone else, and so called into question the entire notion of what is 'masculine' or 'feminine' in fiction. I am still wrestling with that. What I have learned is that there are some women who can write about traditionally male topics more knowledgeably than most men, and that the truly superior artist can adopt whatever tone is appropriate to the material and bring it off. And I have learned -- again; as if I needed one more lesson in it -- that Things Are Seldom What They Seem..."

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was Tiptree's second collection of short fiction and contains a dozen stories that were first published 1968 - '73 in genre magazines including If, Galaxy, Amazing, Fantastic, and F & SF. There are also several stories from original anthologies, which I think represents her growing popularity in the field, including Harrison's Nova, Silverberg's New Dimensions, Gerrold's Generation, Goldin's The Alien Condition, and Ellison's Again, Dangerous Visions. There are a couple of award-winning stories (Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death and The Girl Who Plugged In), and a couple of others that probably should have won awards. The stories seem more experimental for the most part than those in the previous book, Ten Thousand Light Years from Home, with more fabricated words and phrases, and requiring more attention from the reader. (I'm still not sure I fully got Amberjack.) Also notable in this first edition are an unpleasant cover by Don Smith and a lengthy introduction by Silverberg which insists that the mysterious Tiptree is of the male gender. My other favorites from this one are The Women Men Don't See, The Milk of Paradise, On the Last Afternoon, and And I Have Come Across This Place by Lost Ways.

[Graham P · Rating 4 out of 5]

If there is any author that melds the colors of counterculture with the alien hivemind perspective, it is James Tiptree Jr. (of course, real name: Alice B. Sheldon). Full of reckless abandon and equally reckless disregard for chrome-clean prose, Tiptree throws a magical net over the space/time continuum like some mad anthropologist seeking meaning under the dubious guise of hallucinogenics. In this first collection of her early 1970s work, Tiptree shows why she was one of the few that truly can be termed, Dangerous Visionary. She cares little of cohesion and embellishes the alien and the monster like very few SF scribes achieved. To her, she both belittles and pities the monsters, but also backhands mankind in a uniquely passive way. Typically, only science can illuminate the dark reaches, but here in these watermark short stories, science can also remind us that alien environs and alien cultures can not be understood by mortal mechanics -- fat chance you'll get the swing of things. The universe is quite mad, and will always be so. Just come for the ride, Tiptree says. I'll show you why it makes no sense at all.

"Who Is Tiptree, What Is He?" (introduction by Robert Silverberg) - a case of foot-in-mouth speculation, but an important piece of the pseudonym, the mystery of the name.

"All the Kinds of Yes" - an alien tourist finds himself in counterculture California, hip to nothing much but the madness of the childishly hip counterculture. One can tell that Tiptree was no hip kid, but a witty imposter playing with convention and expectation like a seasoned yet feral cat.

"The Milk of Paradise" - man versus himself. Sexual filth overfloweth as a space traveler returns from a planet only to want to return to the raw and horribly moist landscape he'd grown up in. One peopled with creatures who communicate through swine-play and physical repulsion. Body horror, yes. Pulp science horror, equally yes.

"And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways" - the holy mountain is a fixture of enlightenment literature, and here ancient machinery and alien folklore show the paramount to be not a next-level beacon, but simply a quiet place to kiss your humanity goodbye.

"The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" - madness of Dr. Ain. A scattershot examination of the mad scientist in flight.

"Amberjack" - an experiment in wordplay but nothing more than that.

"Through a Lass Darkly" - a tabloid writer is visited by a gum-snapping teenager from the future. Memorable for its tawdry examination of the youth of yesterday.

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (winner of the Hugo Award for novella in 1974) - deserving of all its accolades, a pre-cyberpunk unwinding of an ugly woman who tries to commit suicide on a busy metropolis street, only to be penalized into a lab where she is altered and downloaded to a beautiful and bubbly pop star. In this world, not only is suicide illegal, but also advertising. Raw and confusing and important. The original story examining the awful concept of 'influencer.'

"The Night-Blooming Saurian" - cowslips is another word for cowshit. Here the joke plays well but like some Lester Del Rey tale suddenly turned scatological...complete with dinosaurs.

"The Women Men Don't See" - long-limbed black-faced aliens wearing white jumpsuits. What do they want with four stranded humans on an island. A bold analogy of why women prefer the unknown than the familiar stronghold of men. Essential SF feminist text.

"Fault" - alien contact has never been more obtuse. Instead of a human visitor being physically violated by offworld creatures, it is 'time' that is altered as a frat-boy scientist finds himself well beyond the time/space continuum. Living in the past takes on a whole new meaning.

"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" (winner of the Nebula Award for short story in 1974) - it took me a while to root myself to this Nebula winner. While it is colorful, its chaos betrays the reader with an imbecile narrative of a lusty creature. We see all the colors of the universe, creatures who may be blobs or may look like insects, beasts who rush the technicolor lands and eat and eat and fuck as well. It is like a mating ritual put to the page, and toss in cannibalism and purple prose, this tale will surely be remembered as a watermark headfuck of SF. I can see some purists despising this narrative.

"On the Last Afternoon" - a seaside tale of survivors building fortifications along the shores, in order to prevent destruction from the giant lobster creatures who have come to fornicate in fury. While it reads like a parody of kaiju (giant monsters flopping and fucking), it really is remembered for its weighty question of where does the human fit in the alien world. There is an another alien, looking like some dehydrated wasp nest, that puts the ultimate question to a scientist dying of cancer: choose the universe or your outdated humanity? A clunky tale in hindsight, but one that typifies everything that Tiptree was doing at the time: breaking the waves of SF and science fiction with a pen that might as well have been a dagger awaiting its prey.

Not perfect, but very much essential.

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘—a dry heathery nest. With enormous effort he got himself inside and into the coney’s form. It was safe here, surely. Safe as death—a hazy transience. Moon-glints on a forest of antlers.’

Stylistically, not what I like (or at least not the sort of 'tone' I like; the narrators were too much too ‘excited’ (for a lack of a better phrase/description) — like a Michael Bay action film on text/adapted to literature(?). But the narrative was interesting enough; a lot of food for thought and all that. For some reason, some of it reminds me of Terminal Boredom: Stories . But I prefer the latter (stylistically at least) mostly because I appreciate the more controlled and well-organised writing more. In any case, JTJ has one of the best story titles though — ‘The Milk of Paradise’? ‘Love is The Plan, The Plan is Death’? ‘And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways’? Like as if from the setlist of a 80s/90s grunge-ey, heavy-metal band almost verging on ‘emo’, no?

‘The crystalline-style-is-a-gelatinous-rodlike-affair-a-head-that-goes-around-clockwise-at-a-rate-of-sixty-to-seventy-rpm-in-a-certain-area-of-the-bivalve-stomach—It is perhaps the only rotating part of any animal, the nearest approach to the wheel found in nature. Huxley calls it one of the most remarkable structures in the animal kingdom. I don’t believe it’

‘‘You wanted the beauty!’—his last Human words. And then they were down, tearing and rolling in the sweet mud, grey bodies with him. Until he found that it was no longer fighting but love – love as it always had been, his true flowing, while the voices rose around him and the muddied thing under him that was dead or dying slipped away in the grey welter, in the music of many, flowing together in Paradise in the ruby light.’

‘Delphi is nothing but a warm little bundle of vegetative functions hitched to some expensive hardware – the same that sustained her before her life began.’

‘—I’m about as fit as a marshmallow at this time of winter, and I can’t pretend—so be it.’

[Bill Hsu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting some old favorites, after Nate D's review started the itch.

I'm loving the prose (for its time, so clean and tight), and the often subversive perspectives on sexuality.

The Milk of Paradise: of course. (And online now!) In the first few pages, so much is implied in a few words. She is so matter-of-fact about all this. And that's just the beginning.

The Night-Blooming Saurian: a slight piece, but I think it holds up pretty well.

The Women that Men don't See: I remember the central idea very well, so this was less impressive in 2017. But the Ruth Parsons character is so beautifully done. And sex is never too far beneath the surface.

Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death: this must have been positively mind-blowing back in the day; the play with language still works well, and things are not explained too much.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In: that vicious, snarky narration, wow. Where did that come from? We piece together the context from the dense montage of hints and snide asides. So relevant to our current dark times, and Tiptree had this all figured out in 1973? This is so much more impressive than I remember.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read most of these stories already in the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. The best of the stories in here were re-printed there. The remaining ones pale by comparison.

None of these stories is happy (thank g-d!), and most take a bit of effort to understand. She expects you to put the pieces together. Several reference other works. Both "The Girl Who Was Plugged-In" (my favorite) and "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" are deeply connected with the book Green Mansions , or the film version with Audrey Hepburn. "On the Last Afternoon" references the poem "Shine, Perishing Republic", though I don't understand the meaning.

If you are new to Tiptree, I recommend reading one of the best-of collections, such as the one mentioned earlier.

I celebrated "Prime Day" (2021) by purchasing this reprint, but not from Amazon.

[Baal Of · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ugh. Went into this expecting to love it given how great the other two collections were. First three stories I did not like. 1.5, 2.5 and 2.0 each. I hope it gets better.

About half-way through a marked improvement in the stories, starting with The Girl Who Was Plugged In which isn't my favorite but at least has glimmers of what I really like in a Tiptree story. I remember reading The Women Men Don't See many years back and it rightly has a reputation for being a stand-out story of the time. But for me the best is Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death which is a masterful portrayal of an utterly alien megafauna that seems to have taken at least some ideas from the mating behaviors of spiders, if I don't miss my guess. It's beautifully written and heart wrenching.

Final story was the kind of imaginative alien tragedy I expected, so a good way to end. Overall I found this collection less satisfying the other 2, but still worthwhile.

[Temucano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una serie de cuentos densos, extravagantes, tristes, alienígenos a más no poder, uno se siente parte de planetas verdaderamente extraños.

Acá los que más me gustaron:

"La leche de Paraíso": cuento triste y singular, su especialidad.
"Y he llegado a este lugar por caminos errados": centrada en el monte Clivorn, otra montaña importante para los anales de la ciencia ficción.
"El último vuelo del doctor Ain": un científico y su relación con el mundo hipercontaminado.
"La muchacha que estaba conectada": muy buena historia de amor, de cyborgs (o waldos), estanques, conexiones, con un estilo agresivo de final tremendo.
"Los saurios que florecen de noche": toque humorístico para viajes en el tiempo.
"Desliz": otros extraterrestres extravagantes, de tentáculos y poderes especiales. Corto pero bueno.
"El amor es el plan, el plan es la muerte": de lo más alienígeno que he leído, sólo los cantos y exclamaciones suenan humanos, a poesía enmarcada en el Plan. Inolvidable.
"En la última tarde", en un escenario exótico los humanos luchan contra las fuerzas de la naturaleza de un planeta verdaderamente salvaje.

En resumen, una obra de calidad que mantiene a esta escritora siempre en lo más alto de la ciencia ficción de ideas, con argumentos y finales que vuelan la cabeza.

[Jörg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of wild rides, often having quirky visions of alien creatures as the central plot idea. If I hadn't known that James Tiptree actually was a retired lady writing SF in the late 60's and early 70's, I would have guessed that a SF version of Hunter S. Thompson was writing this fueled by drugs. Creativity abounds more than once bordering on the surreal and absurd.

If I were to give an average rating, it would probably be two stars as I wasn't taken by the majority of the stories. The highlight of the collection is the novella 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In'. A fun social commentary on the overflowing importance of advertising and at the same time an early cyberpunk story before cyberpunk existed. It even could be seen as a presage of influencers omnipresent nowadays.

I also liked 'Fault' due to its original premise. Alien justice in a novel form, punishing a human perpetrator by removing his perception from the fabric of time. 'The Milk of Paradise' and 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain' also have nice ideas although the plots aren't that great.

The rest of the stories were forgettable. I'm especially astonished how the repellent 'Love is the Plan the Plan is Death' was awarded with the Nebula award in 1973. Get this collection for 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In' and skip the rest.

One more note: the German translation I read isn't good and has aged terribly, using a lot of out-of-date pseudo-hip vocabulary not used anymore since the 80's.

[Olethros · Rating 4 out of 5]

-Ejemplos de lo que supuso la autora en su época.-

Género. Relatos.

Lo que nos cuenta. Doce relatos de Ciencia-Ficción con algún espacio para lo fantástico (que incluyen un par de los que ya hemos hablado aquí y aquí) escritos entre 1968 y 1975, varios con premios importantes del género en su haber, con un prólogo de Silverberg que no sé si, entonces, iba en serio o no (sé que fueron amigos, por lo que me queda la duda sobre la verdadera intencionalidad de su texto), que nos llevarán a conocer el manejo virtual de marketing y el consumo, un primer contacto con alienígenas realmente surrealista o las consecuencias de tener la memoria alterada por recuerdos implantados, entre otros temas.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Radiantflux · Rating 3 out of 5]

REPORT: "WARM WORLDS AND OTHERWISE" BY JAMES TIPTREE

BACKGROUND: James Tiptree, also known as Alice Bradley Sheldon, was an American science fiction author and former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency. Her writing was notable for exploring themes of gender, sexuality, and the nature of humanity.

ANALYSIS: The collection of short stories titled "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" by James Tiptree offers a fascinating insight into the author's unique imagination. Tiptree's writing is characterized by the creation of dark feminist dystopias that challenge conventional norms and expectations.

The stories in this collection frequently explore the tension between instinctual desires and intellectual pursuits, a theme that is likely informed by Tiptree's background in ethology. This analysis suggests that Tiptree's work is influenced by her scientific training, and that she is interested in exploring the relationship between biology and behavior, as well as sex and gender.

While some stories in the collection are particularly compelling, such as "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" and "The Women Men Don’t See," others are relatively slight and offer little more than a lengthy exploration of potty humor, as seen in "The Night-Blooming Saurian."

CONCLUSION: The collection of short stories titled "Warm Worlds and Otherwise" by James Tiptree is a thought-provoking read that is likely to appeal to readers interested in speculative fiction and feminist literature. Tiptree's background in ethology is evident; while her writing style is modern and accessible. While some stories in the collection may not resonate with all readers, the collection as a whole is a fascinating insight into Tiptree's unique perspective.

3-stars

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of mid-to-late 1970s short stories by James Tiptree Jr. really isn't like any other collection of 1970s science fiction stories and it scratched all my itches! Perhaps that is because James Tiptree Jr. was a pseudonym for Alice Shelton, who published her first science fiction story in 1967 at the age 52, who served in the army and the CIA before getting her PhD in experimental psychology, who was divorced once before marrying her second husband, and who publicly identified as a lesbian later in life. Her real identity was revealed after this book was published, much to the chagrin of science fiction author Robert Silverberg who wrote the preface for this collection and insisted quite strongly that while Tiptree was definitely a pseudonym, the author of these stories was ABSOLUTELY not a woman. Whoops. The stories themselves are really varied and unique, and often hinge on the interaction between humans and aliens, humans and technology, or human-like aspects of alien life. This is not sterile and mechanical sci-fi (although I like that too!) -- these stories are gritty and emotional and sexual and often rather weird, but in an amazing way. To Silverberg's credit, he noted that the man who definitely wrote these stories was also a feminist, and there I don't think he was wrong (see especially "The Women Men Don't See"). Highly recommended for many reasons, not the least of which is the opening story ("All the Kinds of Yes") which includes a genderbending alien, a human / alien orgy of sorts, and an unexpected moral birthing dilemma. And it is hilarious.

[V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I needed one word to describe these stories it would be breathless ("certain lunatic energy of pace" says Silverberg about Tiptree's very first publication under this name in his foreword that I read after finishing the book). In the best sense of the word. Words tumbling. Screaming. Yelled accusations thrown against the world in this incredibly powerful voice.

That said: if you want a female voice that does not shy away from sex (but don't expect romance, expect a sentence like "but for her, sex is a four letter word spelled P-A-I-N"), not even back before 75? Here is one. You read and you can hardly believe that it's over 40 years since these stories were written. Still relevant. Still modern. Still pushing boundaries.

This starts with the infamous introduction by Silverberg - whose work I love, yes. And yet: "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing. I don't think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male"

All the Kinds of Yes
Very late sixties/yearly seventies. Great fun.

The Milk of Paradise
This one is a punch.

And I Have Come upon This Place by Lost Ways
Almost a golden age story. (And double scary in the face of today's funding crisis in science.)

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain
A very worthy Nebula nominee. (I actually thought it was a winner!) And huh, that was really her first short story?!

Amberjack
On one hand: oh, the language! On the other - it's almost too short, too quick to grasp what is happening. (But it may be my own struggle with language that condensed when it comes to English. Here not only does every word count, but every word that resonates, every image it creates counts just as much as the actual word on the paper, and it's hard to grasp them all not being a native speaker.)

Through a Lass Darkly
Another very sixties/seventies. And honestly ... How could someone be so vehement that these stories were not written by a woman?

The Girl Who Was Plugged In
This story ... This story! This is one of those that will hunt you forever afterwards. It's not my first read of it and still here I was, hoping for a different end but the logical one.

The Night-Blooming Saurian
It's not only the sex that she dares to go to ... And once again, science and funding.

The Women Men Don't See
And you wonder why some people suggested that Tiptree may be a woman? Back in the 70ies? And yes, it is a male, very much on purpose objectifying point of view that is employed here, but the why this particular pov is used ... Ouch!

Fault
What a unique idea! I don't think I've seen that one ever before.

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death
There is something fascinating to a story that are just a glimpse into a world, implying a bigger picture but never elaborating on it. And very few stories which manage to imply a world so large.

On the Last Afternoon
Oh, this one is powerful. Terrible, but powerful.
[Also, there is a certain fascination that Tiptree has with giant spiders. I wonder what she would have thought about Louise Bourgeois' "Maman".]

[Lisa Eckstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been aware of the Tiptree mythology for years (the author wrote under a male pseudonym for a decade before she was revealed to be a woman) but never read any of her work. This story collection blew me away. These are really well thought-out stories, with unusual premises, surprising characters, and fascinating narrative voices. The plots develop in unexpected ways and end in satisfying resolutions. Many of the stories contain humor, many are quite dark, and some fit both these descriptions.

What really makes these stories outstanding is the way they unfold without explanation, requiring the reader to figure out what's going on. This is a quality I love and admire in fiction when it's done artfully, as it is here. Robert Silverberg describes this well in his introduction to the collection: "He likes to create a sense of disorientation and alienation, gradually and never completely resolved as the story reaches his climax." (The introduction is worth reading, and not only for the fact that Silverberg weighs in on speculation that Tiptree is a woman, declaring "there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing.")

Alice Sheldon was used to being an outlier, not only as a woman writing science fiction, but as a woman in the military and in academia. "The Women Men Don't See" addresses this situation most directly, but the theme of outsider status runs throughout the collection. The longest story, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In", takes a character who doesn't belong and gives her the chance to fit in by assuming a secret identity. It's a beautiful, horrible tale, and was recognized with the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974.

Another award winner, "Love Is The Plan, The Plan Is Death", (Nebula Best Short Story, 1973) might be my favorite from the collection, though it's hard to choose. This is a love story from the viewpoint of an insect-like creature, and it mixes the alien and the familiar in a masterful way.

If you are a science fiction fan and haven't read any Tiptree, you owe it to yourself to check out the work of this amazing writer.

[John Defrog: global citizen, local gadfly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second time reading James Tiptree, Jr (a.k.a. Alice Sheldon) after Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home, her debut short-story collection which duly impressed me for the scope of its imagination alone. This collection was published two years later, and seems even more experimental than the first batch, with a number stories featuring a more stream-of-consciousness lyrical approach that I usually associate with the New Wave of SF in the 1960s.

Lead-off story “All The Kinds of Yes” is a good example, in which a telepathic shape-shifting alien lands in California and canoodles with a group of hippie anti-war protesters. An even greater example is "Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death" (winner of the Nebula Award for short story in 1974), narrated by Mogadeet, some kind of alien insect trying to comprehend his own life cycle and reminiscing about his mate and their short time together while she is eating him alive.

This collection was more of a mixed bag for me than the previous one, with more stories not really making an impression on me. On the other hand, the stories that do work are as brilliantly inventive as anyone could hope for. They also happen to be the more famous stories here, such as "The Women Men Don't See", in which a govt agent is stranded on a remote island with a woman who – much to his confusion – doesn’t seem to need comforting or protecting, not even when aliens suddenly show up. Also, extra points for "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (winner of the Hugo Award for novella in 1974) more or less predicting the rise of influencer culture.

[Dalibor Dado Ivanovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odlicna zbirka, jest da sam najbolje price procitao jos davno prevedene, tako da sam ih ovaj put prekakao, ove druge su isto dobre.

[Borja Vargas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hay en los relatos de Tiptree una sensación de inminencia del fin del mundo, un apocalipsis inevitable aunque, hasta cierto punto, tranquilo. La desaparición de la humanidad como algo triste pero no necesariamente trágico; de hecho, la tragedia incluso se percibe más en la propia existencia del ser humano, por el dolor que es capaz de causar y, también, por ser muchas veces incapaz de disfrutar de sus extraordinarias capacidades, al dejarse llevar por sus demonios. Incapaz, por su culpa o por culpa ajena, incapaz de, sin más, vivir la mejor vida posible.

El estilo de la autora es a veces un poco extravagante de más en esta antología. Los arranques desorientan, y no siempre de manera justificada por la historia o por lo que parece pretender conseguir. Algunos de los cuentos se ven lastrados por su manierismo, no tanto por hacerlos incomprensibles (el esfuerzo de comprensión compensa, porque casi todo se termina entendiendo si se lee con atención) sino por restarles autenticidad y, con ello, fuerza.

Pero Titpree compensa sus desvaríos (esos manierismos, los comienzos gratuitamente confusos, el querer meter demasiados temas en un solo relato...) con momentos de puro genio literario y humanista. Por ejemplo, las sociedades que describe están sugeridas por detalles, tanto cotidianos como fundamentales, en general presentados con la naturalidad del que los vive y escogidos con mucha inteligencia. Pero, sobre todo, su visión del abismo alcanza en algunos párrafos una intensidad, una oscuridad que le parte a uno el corazón. Esa negrura viene o bien del dolor del cuerpo, escrito con terribles y breves fogonazos (¡cómo no sufrir con 'La muchacha que estaba conectada'!), o bien de la desesperación que deriva de una concepción desesperanzada de la maldad/estupidez humana. De la maldad o estupidez de muchos, demasiados seres humanos. Pero no de todos: un hálito romántico y heroico, vitalista, anima a algunos (pocos) de sus personajes y los dota de dignidad inquebrantable.

-

'Todos los tipos de sí' (**): Mala elección para empezar. Una historia demasiado hija de su tiempo, demasiado confusa, demasiado histérica. Tiene sus momentos, sobre todo en una parte final más oscura, pero todavía es una Tiptree primitiva, haciendo sátira cuando aún no sabía del todo que debía hacer terror.

'La leche del paraíso' (****): No es ni mucho menos perfecto, todavía le falta valentía y le sobra rapidez y concisión, pero es una historia tristísima con, de nuevo, marca de la casa, un tramo final descorazonador.

'Y he llegado a este lugar por caminos errados' (*****): Este cuento es menos personal, menos Tiptree que otros. Tiene un aire incluso de aventura espacial clásica, pero la voluntad del personaje principal y cómo va dejando todo, todo, todo atrás de manera inevitable lo convierte en una pequeña obra maestra del género.

'El último vuelo del doctor Ain' (***): Aquí dentro hay una buena historia dispuesta a ser creada, pero la confusa narración y la urgencia lo hacen parecer más un boceto que un relato terminado.

'Amberjack' (**): Demasiado esfuerzo puesto en provocar extrañamiento que queda en poco, en otro boceto.

'A través de una chica, oscuramente' (***): Otra historia, y van tres seguidas, que parece a medio hacer, aunque el mundo que deja intuir en su pequeña escena se antoja interesante.

'La muchacha que estaba conectada' (****): Dolorosa historia proto-cyberpunk de una chica deforme y su avatar, que adelanta el mundillo de los influencers. Se pierde un poco en el manierismo narrativo-estilístico, y se empeña en no apretar con todas sus fuerzas el tronco central, pero momentos de insoportable tragedia body horror/abismo humanista elevan algunas partes y las hacen inolvidables. Me encantaría ver una película actual, dirigida por Vileneuve quizá.

'Los saurios que florecen de noche' (***): Una ocurrencia de viajes en el tiempo, entretenida y simpática (aunque con lagunas argumentativas). Sin mucho fuste, pero con apuntes decentes sobre sociología de la ciencia.

'Las mujeres que los hombres no ven' (*****): Pieza central de la colección, el espíritu de Tiptree destilado al fin en un relato ominoso, de un feminismo a veces muy sutil y a veces radical (¡hay párrafos que son puñetazos directos al estómago del patriarcado!). Un cuento inteligente pero profundamente emocional, comprometido, sugerente, discutido y discutible, díptico perfecto con su también célebre 'Houston, Houston, ¿me recibe?'.

'Desliz' (***): Una idea ingeniosa desarrollada quizá con demasiada premura y sin suficiente profundidad pero, en todo caso, una mejora sobre los primeros relatos de la antología. Daría para un episodio excelente de 'Futurama' o 'Rick y Morty'.

'Amor es el plan, el plan es la muerte' (****): Preciosa historia de amor, a medio camino entre el romanticismo extremo y el determinismo más deprimente. Es un poco irregular y repetitivo y eso le impide ser un cuento redondo, pero las primeras y las últimas páginas son maravillosas.

'En la última tarde' (***): Hay aquí dos relatos diferentes combinados en uno solo. Uno de ellos es puro Tiptree, otra historia del fin de la humanidad; el segundo es un cuento de acción, de lucha contra monstruos. El primero es sugerente pero no termina de explotarse hasta sus últimas consecuencias, mientras que el segundo logra pasajes de enorme "sense of wonder", casi anticipando a Jeff VanderMeer, aunque se extiende más de la cuenta y no está bien insertado en el conjunto del relato.

[María Tamargo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una colección de relatos de ciencia ficción muy interesante. Me parece que los temas y las ideas que plantea la autora son muy sugerentes y para nuestra época muy actuales, sin duda tenía una intuición aguda en cuanto a los problemas a los que nos enfrentaríamos en el futuro: guerras con armas biológicas, vidas falsas por medio de avatares, la duda sobre la autenticidad de la historia y los problemas derivados de la otredad. Creo que el mayor reto sin duda fue el aprehender el estilo ambiguo y complejo con el que entreteje cada historia, hay pocas descripciones y pocas explicaciones sobre el funcionamiento del mundo, por lo que hubo varios cuentos que me costó bastante trabajo leer. Mis favoritos fueron "La muchacha que estaba conectada" (joya), "Los saurios que florecen de noche" y "Amor es el plan, el plan es la muerte". Una lectura recomendada.

[Malena · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5, porque es un libro muy bueno pero es muy difícil de transitar, me sentí mayoritariamente perdida cuando leía sola, así que este libro es para leer en conjunto. Requiere un mano guía, una mano un poco más experimentada, práctica. Pero es un librazo.

[Xabi1990 · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10. Media de los 2 libros leídos del autor : 6/10

No estaba mal, pero los relatos y yo...como que no. Mejor "El color de los ojos del neanderthal".

[Barbora Havelkova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories that took me a while to digest, probably because they read as a translation from a different, alien language or - like in case of ‘Love is the plan the plan death’ - from an alien brain perceiving different, strange world. Some of the writing reminded me a bit of Harlan Elision, very inventive and physical. I had to look up James Tiptree Jr after the first few stories. Her complex life made me promise to myself to search for more of her work (James Tiptree is pen name of Alice Sheldon), even before finishing this one, but maybe after a short and lighter break.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the James Tiptree, Jr. collection which contains the infamous introduction by Robert Silverberg in which he claims that Tiptree was not just a man, but indubitably a man, based on the text herein. Of course, Tiptree wasn’t a man, which Silverberg discovered in a personal note from Alice Sheldon to himself, recounted in an afterword to his introduction in this later edition of the collection. Silverberg, it should be noted, is extremely gracious in noting his mistake, saying that Sheldon fooled him–and most everyone–beautifully and “called into question the entire notion of what is ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ in fiction.” While the point is well taken, as Silverberg thanks Sheldon for forcing him to examine his preconceptions once again, I note that Tiptree had good practice at imitating a man long before she began to publish as one, as many women of her generation had to. I would like to think that this is one of the things that has changed; I fear that it isn’t.

Although Tiptree wrote masterfully about the differences and problems of the sexes (here in probably her best-known story, “The Women Men Don’t See”), to me she is at her best when commenting on the general human race (here in stories like “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain” and “On the Last Afternoon”). Not only had Tiptree discovered and was able to relate the differences between the sexes, but she had also found the similarities–that is, what made us “human.” And that, to me, is the purpose of all fiction.

[Raj · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of short stories by an author that Robert Silverberg in the introduction couldn't believe was female, claiming that there was "something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing". It's easy to mock with hindsight, but although James Tiptree Jr is the pen name of Alice Sheldon and there was a degree of feminist tones to some stories here, most notably in The Women Men Don't See, I see little to suggest gender in these stories.

Of the collection, a few didn't do anything for me at all. The comic story All the Kinds of Yes about an alien who comes to Earth and ends up with a group of hippies was mildly amusing but no more. Amberjack just confused me and On the Last Afternoon was awfully bleak. But in here, we've got the aforementioned The Women Men Don't See, the wonderful Hugo-winning The Girl Who Was Plugged In, about a girl who ends up "driving" a beautiful meat-puppet into the world of the rich and famous. Love is the Plan the Plan is Death is a great piece of writing that gets us inside the heads of an alien and Fault is a nice little story about a man forced to experience time at a different rate to the rest of us.

There were definitely more hits than misses here and I'll definitely look out for more Tiptree.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alice Sheldon, writing as James Tiptree, Jr., has created some amazing stories, and experimented with language and writing in her works. This collection of her short stories is okay.

Of the 12 stories included here, I only found 4 that I liked. The two I liked the best were "And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways" and "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain". The latter was very haunting. I also liked "The Women Men Don't See", which was especially pertinent today when it says that when a crisis hits, the equality of men & women is thrown out and men turn women back into their "property" with no more rights. This is playing out in Republican states throughout America today. Included in this collection is a story of hers I read before, "The Girl Who Was Plugged In". It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1974. I read it first as part of Tor Double #7. I had the same opinion this time. I liked it but it wasn't a favorite.

I still think that "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" is her best work. It won the 1976 Nebula Award and 1977 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Start there first.

[j · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are quite a few notable stories in this collection, but the collection itself is most notorious for its original Robert Silverberg introduction (my copy doesn't include it, but I've read it elsewhere) in which the writer insists that Tiptree must be a man, which is -- of course, hardee har har har -- a fascinating thing for one to have insisted upon with such certainty so shortly before they were to be proven wrong. After reading a story like 'The Women Men Don't See' it comes across as ever more asinine an insistence. Tiptree's covert embodiment of the male persona (and her bamboozling of Silverberg) perhaps lends a great deal of credibility to her unflattering depiction of the general male psyche. You'd have to take a man's word for it (Mr. Silverberg?): is this what men are really like?

In 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In', Tiptree crafts a science fiction scenario that can be easily read as an allegory for her embodiment of the Tiptree persona. She is more subtle here in the way her story's narrator exemplifies the callous, uncaring, clueless perspective of the typical (?) man. In both stories, the protagonist is a woman, seen, described, and belittled by a masculine point-of-view. This is what I mean by saying that her bamboozling of Silverberg lends her points a great deal of credibility: for him to insist that only a man could have penned the interior thoughts of and conceived of the casually misogynistic atittudes of these depictions is perhaps the biggest inadvertent argument on behalf of the significance of Tiptree's writing. Don't listen to me though -- take a man's word for it. Are you really like this?

Not every story in this collection is centrally concerned with feminist themes (though many are), but it is clearly the central concern of the collection. One of the most impressive selections here is 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain', a short and incredibly economical, rather ingenius and particularly densely packed, nightmare of a story. Here some of the other themes of the collection (environmentalism, the fragility of community and cultures, etc.) are brought to the forefront, but only a politically resentful (or naive) reader would dismiss the story as one with nothing to say on the topics of sex and gender.

'Fault' is perhaps the collection's purest and tightest piece of 'science fiction' literature. 'The Night-blooming Saurian' is the cheekiest. 'Amberjack' is the collection's most elusive and out-of-place. I read this tiny piece several times (you would wise to read most of these stories several times, lest you miss the whole point entirely) and I'm still not quite sure I understand at all the extent of what is being expressed.

I had previously read 'The Milk of Paradise' in Again, Dangerous Visions, and it was the story that turned me on the Tiptree to begin with. Coming back to it, the story bowled me over all over again. It is such a strange, snakey, and viciously melancholy piece. Tiptree perfectly captures what it is, emotionally, to feel misfit, adrift, out-of-place, misplaced. The way she writes channels the energy of sneering, dismissive, and nonchalantly venomous individuals is really perfect -- you can see that in this story as well.

The other story I will comment on (I mean, sing the praises of) is 'Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death'. What a stunning piece of work. Again, you would be a fool to not do the mental exercise of analyzing what is going on here by considering it as allegory, or something beyond that, tilting the core of the story like a mirror in bright light to see the way the beams angle and dance. Tiptree's expression of alien sentiments, a human attempt to both render something inhuman and indirectly express something deeply, painfully human, wow. The environmentalist angle in this one is strong. The descriptions of alien bodies, wow.

Knowing that science fiction short story collections tend to be incredibly inconsistent, and with the added insistence (this is my insistence here) that these stories are the evidence of Tiptree as an enormously multi-faceted writer, you are not likely to find many short story collections more consistently high quality than this. Highly recommended!

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this for this (lovely & wonderful & fun) Book Walk that the SFF & horror bookshop I go to in Berlin is doing. Otherwise I probably would have never read this book and it would have been a shame. I discovered a fascinating author with a huge range of narrative voices employed, vibes and ideas. James Tiptree Jr. was actually a woman and she was a CIA operative at some point and I'm definitely interested in reading her biography and also my appetite was sparked for older feminist SFF.

The progression of stories is a bit strange. At first the writing feels very 'male' (apparently JTJ / Alice Sheldon was congratulated for that) and very male gaze-y in the first few stories. But I have a feeling that is intentional, because there's a particular story midway through, The Women Men Don't See which I ADORED and which very much explores the male gaze and subverts some tropes in super clever ways. The variety here is staggering. All of the stories have quite palpable worldbuilding, the kind where you're just thrown in and you need to figure it out (it works amazing in some cases, not so much in others, some felt very unclear because of made up words and such). There are a lot of ecological themes, most main characters are male and in the first few stories, the women feel like they're just sex objects or nurturers.

Also, there are some instances of the f slur, some fatphobia, one has dubious consent, some mentioned incest & creepiness, and some casual racism & cultural insensitivity. And now, after these content warnings, a bit about each story. I took a lot of notes for the book club and I have to put them somewhere, so here goes!

All the Kinds of Yes - this is a groovy baby kind of psychedelic first contact story that features some gender bending. I quite liked it, it feels a bit frantic but also chill, because the alien meets some counter-culture people instead of like... authorities and officials, which is great!

The Milk of Paradise - I did not get this one very much, the descriptions went over my head, and this is the one that features some dubious consent, but also it features an alien that seems to be bi (with humans!). It starts mid-sex with a human and it feels very titillating and 'male-written', but also has a bit of anti-colonial sentiment. Mixed bag!

And I Have Come upon This Place by Lost Ways - this one features a scientist in a world where all of science is processed by machines, there's a lot of groupthink going on. 'He always believed that Data were Data. But what if the wrong person found them in the wrong, Unscientific way?' This guy is kinda starting to think for himself, but he is still quite prejudiced (like a lot of scientists, don't @ me), he keeps talking about who is civilized or not and he judges the culture he and his ship are engaging with. And he is like the most open minded one. It feels like this is a skewering of that type of thinking about civilizations.

The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - this one builds and builds until the end, when all is clear, it's a pretty kick-ass story, it feels very current, idea-wise.

Amberjack - A story where some details and worldbuilding did not feel clear at all (to me and the other people in the book club), but to me it seemed to be exploring the ills of normativity and the nuclear family. Can't be sure though, but I was intrigued!

Through a Lass Darkly - A girl from the future visits a (male) advice columnist in the 70s. It would appear that in the future, marriage is still a thing, but the nuclear family is not, but all the alternative ways of having relationships and family all seem a bit fucked up with power dynamics. I found it fascinating, though I didn't understand what all the made up words were supposed to mean!

The Girl Who Was Plugged In - brilliant novella, and here is where I felt the collection hit its stride and got me. Apparently it's one of the first cyberpunk stories and it's about a disabled 17-year old girl collected from the street and taken to a laboratory where she project her consciousness into a sort of android/ perfect woman. It's a world where advertising was made illegal, but you know what they say... corporations find a way! Delphi, the beautiful android is basically a walking advertising person, who is not supposed to seem like she is doing that. My notes were: influencers?!?! We are now the product?!

This quote describing board members felt so good: Five of them technically male and the sixth isn't easily thought of as a mother .

The language in this novella is also pretty amazing. I wrote down so many quotes!

The idea that art thrives on creative flamboyance has long been torpedoed by proof that what art needs is computers. Because this showbiz has something TV and Hollywood never had – automated viewer inbuilt feedback.

'The investment’. Mr Cantle shudders.

Yeah, this is an amazing novella, gonna stop here! I will probably re-read it to get the intricacies of the language and plot.

The Night-Blooming Saurian - this short story is basically a long-ish poop joke, your mileage may vary, but I found it funny. This is also the instance of fatphobia, which wasn't funny (insinuating that eating lots of fiber and vegetables will help you lose weight).

The Women Men Don't See - the title really grabbed me when I was looking at the list and DAMN. I LOVED THIS SO MUCH. I could write a full essay about it! This is a novelette written from the male gaze, but with the very clear purpose of subverting it. A small plane crashes in the jungle and the narrator, *Don* is a total asshole, but more like a classic man. The other two passengers are a woman and her daughter, Mrs Ruth Parsons and Althea. When the crash happens, Don's first observation is that 'the women are shaky, but no hysteria'. His next one? 'The women are now in shorts, neat but definitely not sexy'.

This had such a great voice, because it is very obvious that the women are pragmatic and competent and self-possessed and this guy keeps waiting for them to become damsels so that he can swoop in. Ruth, who has a bigger presence, also has some very useful skills and empathy and is generally great. But this guy keeps thinking about her rump and desperately tries to fit her into a mold. He frets about sleeping arrangements, hoping he will have the opportunity to get some. 'Mrs Parsons continues to be tranquilly interested in Yucatan and unmistakably uninterested in togetherness.' He keeps thinking she is worried about her daughter (her daughter is chill and studied computer programming!)

Not only is this hilarious, but at some point it punched me in the heart. Fucking Don basically calls her a man-hater (lol) and says how women have the Equal Rights Amendment and Ruth has this whole speech about women only have the rights that men allow them. And I checked the timeline! This story was published in 1973-1974. The ERA passed Congress in 1972. Roe v Wade and legal abortions started in 1973! (and where is Roe v Wade now, hmmmmm???) And so, when Ruth says: 'Whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was, you’ll see', it is so true and sad and very current events. That I can't help but adore this!

(Unfortunately, this one has some cultural insensitivity bullshit about indigenous people, one could argue it was because the POV character is a white male asshole, but I am not sure)

Fault - this one was short and a bit forgettable.

Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - this story had a completely different voice than the others, it was emotional, it was primal it was intense and loving and dark. I quite love it. It's hard to describe, but it's about the circle of life and sacrifice and love. It's about some creatures in some place, and winter is coming.

On the Last Afternoon - I lost the plot on this story at some point (and to be honest, I still had 10 pages when we started the book walk), but this also had an intense visceral quality and some weird creatures. This also features some creepiness, mentions of incest. The worldbuilding needed a bit more clarity so that I could understand exactly the context of the creepiness. Like this guy, Mysha, is the patriarch type figure of this space colony and it is not clear if he is actually a father or The Father (biological title or honorary?), creepy either way but to different degrees maybe, it also was not clear to me if his 'offspring' were created in a lab and modified or not, it all feels too vague to tell. Still, the intriguing bones are there.

And even though most of the POV characters are male here, their perspective feels criticized and unpacked by Tiptree, most of the time. The sexist perspective, the colonial perspective, the civilized perspective.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had forgotten how very *1970s* the 1970s were, and this 1974 collection starts with the most trippy, least linear, most cringe-slang-filled ("pad") stories- making it a bit bewildering for a 21st Century reader (it was also unsurprising to learn that Tiptree took a *lot* of hallucinogenic drugs) . It is worth persisting as by halfway through the volume, the stories here become the kind of creepy, idea-filled trips you aren't likely to forget.
Tiptree's life is so incredible it tends to overshadow contemporary discussions about their* fiction. The story everyone told me I must read, "The women men don't see", felt relatively atypical to me and, while powerful, was far from the most interesting. But - despite the fact Tiptree's fiction was seen as masculine at the time - it is hard now not to see the story as involving some self-portraiture - a woman unable to carve out space to breathe, desperate to escape to somewhere easier to be.
It is, however, hardly the only story concerned with gender. The Hugo-winning Girl Who Was Plugged In was the first story to feel sharply modern and not pleasantly - it was impossible to imagine this class of celebrities created to sell products as anything other than 'influencers'. It also, given that the plot hinges upon the trauma of a deeply disfigured young woman who survived a childhood gang rape, felt like a story only a woman could write.
Most of the stories included strong gender themes. All of Tiptree's men - the non-arachnid ones anyway - felt confused at best and embarrassingly idiotic at worst, whereas female characters are more often in control and, when not, are passionately committed a course of action. The men often assume they are far more in charge than they are (and also, yes, smarter). This feels like both an observation and potentially an escape. Interestingly, Tiptree attracted criticism (in male persona) from Samuel Delaney about gender essentialism and corresponded with Le Guin, whose writing also focused on societies with reduced gendered differences. Tiptree's fiction here seems to be used to critique and explore current gender roles, not to position alternatives. This can make for savage reading at times, even when leavened with absurdity and laugh-out-loud humour.
The most unforgettable was "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death", a trippy, creepy, joyous, terrifying take that felt inspired by arachnids. Delving into the lines between biology and choice, gender roles and power, love and death, this first-person story of survival and determination managed to be both fun and disturbing at the same time. In the same ways that other stories play with gender analysis, this also felt almost queer to me (strange because cross gender attraction) in its ferocity in looking at how desire cannot be denied but only embraced.
I found the "Last flight of Dr Ain" nearly as haunting, and again scarily modern, as an anthropologist struggles to find his own balance between local knowledge and his civilization's certainty. Finally, Amberjack, a twist-ending story set firmly in the 1970s, juggles gender themes through the lens of a relatively sympathetic but ultimately impulsively murderous male protagonist.
All up, a thought-provoking read, worth the time taken to decode the aged style.

*Sheldon used male pronouns in referring to Tiptree as a persona, female when speaking as Alice Sheldon. Somehow it feels wrong to use either.

[Adelya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shakespeare can suck it, I would‘ve killed to analyse these stories in an English class instead

1. All the kinds of yes - literally no idea what was going on, re-read it twice and I’m still confused. I think it was good? Maybe if I was a bit more switched on 3/5

2. The milk of paradise - enjoyed this even though i’ve resigned myself to a semi permanent state of confusion while reading this collection 4/5

3. And I have come upon this place by lost ways - 5/5 finally one I understood !! And liked a lot !! lots to think about

4. The last flight of doctor ain - 5/5 clever and creepy what’s not to like

5. Amberjack - back to square one. the first couple of pages were stunning and then I got lost and had to google wtf just happened 3/5

6. Through a lass darkly - a nice funny one 4/5

7. The girl who was plugged in - 5/5 no notes

8. The night-blooming saurian - such a stupid concept but you have to laugh 3/5

9. The women men don’t see - so simple but so good I love a bit of reading between the lines 5/5

10. Fault - really cool sci fi concept and extra points for the existential dread 5/5

11. Love is the plan, the plan is death - didn’t expect to love this as much as I did 5/5

12. On the last afternoon - I didn’t need to be emotionally ruined like that at the very end 5/5

[Steven Poore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having never read any Tiptree, and indeed not knowing much about the author at all, I was drawn in by this rather lovely Penguin reissue of a 1975 short story collection. After reading the author biography on the first page, the book went straight through the tills.

This stuff is joyfully bleak, Tiptree approaching humanity slant-wise and with as much criticism as humour. The Night-Blooming Saurian is the most outright humourous, a scatological shaggy dog tale, and Amberjack is the shortest and perhaps weirdest (and also containing some very '70s language, ouch). It's a cohesive and eye-opening collection, and a great introduction to Tiptree's work, fully deserving of being published as a Penguin Classic.

Now, knowing more about who Tiptree was, it's a shame that the reissued collection does not include Robert Silverberg's original introduction, which might have been one of the best works of fiction that Alice Sheldon never wrote: "So, then James Tiptree—a man of 50 or 55, I guess, possibly unmarried, fond of outdoor life, restless in his everyday existence, a man who has seen much of the world and understands it well." (You can find the whole thing here: https://onionandartichoke.wordpress.c... )

One to keep and return to.