Souls/Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

by James Tiptree Jr., Joanna Russ

Two novellas: Souls by Joanna Russ (1982) (88 pages) and Houston, Houston, do you read? by James Tiptree Jr. (1976)(92 pages)


Houston, Houston

The astronauts had the "right Stuff" to deal with . . . almost anything...


Houston isn't there any more

Lorimer comes through to the command module in time to hear a girl's voice over the speaker, "--Dinko trip. What did Lorna say? Gloria over!"

He starts up the Lurp and begins scanning. No results this time. "They're either in line behind us or on the sunward quadrant," he tells Dave and Bud. "I can't isolate their position."

Presently the speaker holds another thin thread of sound. A hard soprano says suddenly, "--should be outside your orbit. Try around Beta Aries."

The first girl's voice comes back. "We see them, Margo! But they're so small, how can they live in there. Maybe they're tiny aliens. Over."

Bud chuckles. "Dave, this is screwy, it's all in English. It has to be some UN thingie."

Dave massages his elbows, flexes his fists; thinking. The three astronauts wait. In thirteen minutes the voice from Earth says, "Judy, call the others, will you? We're going to play you the conversation, we think you should all hear. Oh, while you're waiting, Zebra wants to tell Connie the baby is fine. And we have a new cow."

"Code," says Dave.


Souls

The Vikings thought the pickings would be easy--but the Abbess was more than she seemed.

The woman who had been Radegunde did not change; it was still Radegunde's gray hairs and wrinkled face and old body in the peasant woman's brown dress, and yet at the same time it was a stranger who stepped out of the Abbess Radegunde as out of a gown dropped to the floor. This stranger was without feeling, though Radegunde's tears still stood on her cheeks, and there was no kidness or joy in her. She said in a voice I had never heard before, one with no feeling in it, as if I did not concer her or Thorvald Einarsson either, as if neither of us were worth a second glance:

"Thorvald, turn around.:

Far up the hall something stirred.

"Now come back. This way."

There were footsteps, coming closwer. Then the big Norseman walked clumsily into the room--jerk! jerk! jerk! at ever step as if he were being pulled by a rope. Sweat beaded his face. He said, "You--how?"

"By my nature," she said.

(From the blurb in each novella)

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Queer, Novella, Short Stories

180 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1983

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

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a Tor Double, two novellas printed back-to-back and in opposite orientation to one another tête-bêche fashion, each with its own cover, in the format that Ace made popular in the 1950s - '70s. Both stories are award-winning feminist novellas by women, though, of course, Alice Sheldon wrote under a male name. Souls was published in the January 1982 issue of F & SF and won the Hugo, and Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (from an original 1976 feminist anthology edited by Susan Janice Anderson and Vonda N. McIntyre called Aurora: Beyond Equality) won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for that year. In both stories, men are primarily savage and brutal rapists who attack the females, but the Russ story lacks any subtlety or balance. It's the story of a Viking raid and the Abbess Radegunde who opposes them, and the ending is an indeterminate conclusion that shows she isn't what she appeared to be, and the reader is left to more or less flip a coin and decide if it's a fantasy or a science fiction tale. Maybe her point is that it doesn't matter? Tiptree's story is a sly and well-crafted one about a crew of men on a NASA mission who are pulled into a future world that they learn is far different from the one they left. I decided on four stars for it and two for the Russ for a median three. The Russ novella has a sort of generic fantasy cover by Dieter Rottermund and the other half is a nice outer space scene by Ron Walotsky.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the uninspiring (actively dispiring, really) 80s-era cover art, Tiptree and Russ in a back-to-back pairing of feminist sci-fi novellas (from 1976 and 1981 respectively) is pretty hard to pass up.

Russ feints first into history, filling out her novella largely with dialogues between a middle-aged abbess and a viking raider, before revealing... something else. The framing (that else, and the expected violence of the viking raid premise) are merely okay, but the characters delved into through debate and verbal sparring have much more to say.

The pseudonymous Tiptree, on the other hand, offers a gender-studies examination of a post-male world*, presented mostly through the drug-swirled memory and present action of a lost astronaut. Some nice dissection and take-down of the inexplicable dominance of the "space jock" in science fiction writing, and the slightly psychotropic presentation is enjoyable, if used rather conservatively, considering (but here I am reading Christine Brooke-Rose in parallel, of course this is conservative compared to the world-remaking experimentalists).

More enjoyable than the gross-looking sci-fi double feature book design, but also a little less than what I might hope for from Russ and Tiptree, both of whom I'll be reading more from soon.

*Possibly a riff off of Russ' The Female Man, in a way, increasing the sense of dialogue between the two novellas.

[Tomislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Tor Double #11, of a series of 36 double books published from 1988 to 1991 by Tor Books. It contains two novellas, bound together tête-bêche in mass market paperback – back-to-back, inverted, with two front covers and both titles on the spine. The novellas are listed here alphabetically by author; neither should be considered “primary.”

Souls, by Joanna Russ (1982)
This was originally published in the January 1982 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and won the 1983 Hugo Award in the novella category, and was nominated for Nebula that year. I had previously read it in the The Nebula Awards 18 anthology.

Joanna Russ is one of the originators of the feminist subgenre within SF. The story is set in 12th-century Germany, where Radulphus tells the story of Radegunde, abbess of the abbey where he spent his childhood, and of what she did when the Norsemen came. She ransomed herself to the headman of the invaders in return for her people's safety, but eventually her supernatural revenge was revealed. It is possible to map maleness generally onto the headman and femaleness onto the abbess, but that is not a particularly emphatic point in the story. I found the story kind of boring - medieval supernaturalism is just not interesting to me.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, by James Tiptree (1976)
This work was originally published in Vonda McIntyre's 1976 anthology Aurora: Beyond Equality, and won both the 1977 Hugo Award and Nebula Award, in their novella categories. It has been widely anthologized, and I had previously read it several times.

In case you did not know it, James Tiptree Jr. is a pseudonym used by Alice Sheldon, during her short but prolific SF writing career. She is known for her explorations of gender and sex, and there is today an annual award for that, named for her. The story portrays a crew of three male astronauts launched in the near future on a circumsolar mission in the spaceship Sunbird. A large solar flare damages their craft and leaves them drifting and lost in space. They make repeated attempts to contact NASA in Houston, to no avail. Soon, however, they begin to pick up strange radio communications. They are puzzled that almost all of the voices are female, usually with a strong Australian accent. Gradually, they learn that they have somehow been moved into a future in which no human males have survived. At the time I first read this, I was not aware that James Tiptree was in fact a female writer - but the ending convinced me it could not have been written by a male. Unlike me, however, Harlan Ellison was fooled by Sheldon and famously lauded a male Tiptree as "the man to beat this year", in his 1972 anthology Again, Dangerous Visions 2. Heh heh. But, no question, this is one of Tiptree's finest works.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for BOTH novellas. Superbly written, fast flowing, great storytelling. Why didn’t I know about these amazing writers growing up?!? Joanna Russ is such a sublime writer while James Tiptree (aka Alice Bradley Sheldon) wove a great tale.

[Reet · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 los dos novelas
5 stars Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
4 stars Souls

"Souls," Joanna Russ, 4 stars
Somewhere in England (?) And in time, there is an abby, and an abbess. A Viking ship comes to steal their treasures and rape their nuns and make slaves of their folk.
The abbess is a wise nun, who never panicked when the Vikings came to ravage the Abby. She instead talks to the leader:
" '..you are a very clever man, torvald. I beg your pardon, Thorvald. I keep forgetting. But as to what men want from women, if you ask the young men, they would only wink and dig one another in the ribs, but that is only how they deceive themselves. That is only body calling to body. They themselves want something quite different and they want it so much that it frightens them. So they pretend it is anything and everything else: pleasure, comfort, a servant in the home. Do you know what it is that they want?'
'What?' Said Thorvald.
'The mother,' said Radegunde, 'as women do, too; we all want the mother...' "
I agree.

Inside of the Abbess, there is another being. All these years Radegunde has been playing the Abbess, the mother Superior. When Thorvald and his men attack the Abby, and break their promise not to hurt the inhabitants, it brings forth The hidden Radegunde:
" '...he said, 'out of my way then, old witch!'
She began to cry in sobs and gulps. She said, 'one is here but another will come! One is buried but another will rise! She will come, Thorvalvd!' and then in a low, quick voice, 'do not push open this last door. There is one behind it who is evil and I am afraid' --but one could see that he was angry and disappointed and would not listen. He struck her for a second time and again she fell, but with a desperate cry, covering her face with her hands...
...I could see the Abbess clearly -- at that time I did not wonder how this could be, with the Shadows from the Tallow dip half hiding everything in their drunken dance -- but I saw every line in her face as if it had been full day and in that light I saw Radegunde go away from us at last.
have you ever been at some great King's Court or some Earl's and heard the storytellers? There are those so skilled in the art that they not only speak for you what the person in the tale said and did, but they also make an action with their faces and bodies as if they truly were that man or woman, so that it is a great surprise to you when the tale ceases, for you almost believe that you have seen the tale happen in front of your very eyes and it is as if a real man or woman had suddenly ceased to exist, for you forget that all this was only a teller and a tale.
So it was with the woman who had been Radegunde. She did not change; it was still Radegunde's gray hairs and wrinkled face and old body in the peasant woman's brown dress, and yet at the same time it was a stranger who stepped out of the Abbess Radegunde's as out of a gown dropped to the floor. The stranger was without feeling, though Radegunde's tears still stood on her cheeks, and there was no kindness or joy in her... "

The little boy who is now an old man, and is relating the talr to us, the reader, was Radegunde's little Foster son. When Radegunde, the Abbess, changed into Radegunde, the spiritual Other, she went away, but not before she left a little fire of contentment inside of her foster son. She knew he would be suffering from the abandonment, so her last gift to him was a lasting contentment in his heart:
"But something troubles me even there, and will not be put to rest by the memory of the Abbess's touch on my hair. As I grow older it troubles me more and more. It was the very last thing she said to me, which I have not told you but will now. When she had given me the gift of contentment, I became so happy that I said, 'Abbess, you said you would be revenged on Thorvald, but all you did was change him into a good man. That is no revenge!'
What this saying did to her astonished me, for all the color went out of her face and left it gray. She looked suddenly old, like a death's head, even standing there among her own true folks with love and joy coming from them so strongly that I myself might feel it. She said 'I did not change him. I lent him my eyes; that is all.' Then she looked beyond me, as if at our village, at the Norsemen loading their boats with weeping slaves, at all the villages of Germany and England and France where the poor folks sweat from dawn to dark so that the great Lords may do battle with one another, at castles under siege with the starving folk within eating mice and rats and sometimes each other, at the women carried off or raped or beaten, at the mother's wailing for their little ones, and beyond this at the Great wide world itself with all its battles which I had used to think so grand, and the misery and greediness and fear and jealousy and hatred of folk one for the other, save -- perhaps -+ for a few small bands of savages, but they were so far from us that one could scarcely see them."



If you know that James Tiptree, Jr, is the pen name of Alice Sheldon, then you understand more about how the author could write a story like"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?". Her understanding of the male psyche, with its need to control and keep down women, makes reading stories like this one a salve for someone who's been hurt by a man trying to control their life, and come out the other side. Sadly, she suffered so much in her life, that she took her own life.

"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", 5 stars
A wonderful story, my fantasy come true. An Earth where an epidemic came and made all the men sterile. When they died off, peace reigned.

A group of astronauts, from Earth circa the 1970s, have made a trip around the Sun and are headed back to earth. But something happened to them on the way back, they passed through an anomaly, or a prick of a black hole, it's never explained, but it jumps them into the future. They're in great denial at first, but eventually they have to accept what has happened, that they have jumped 300 plus years into the future.
On their communications line, they begin receiving messages from another spacecraft:
" 'judy?' Luna Central or whoever it is says. 'They don't answer. You want to try? But listen, we've been thinking. If these people really are from the past this must be very traumatic for them. They could be just realizing they'll never see their world again. Myda says these males had children and women they stayed with, they'll miss them terribly. This is exciting for us but it may seem awful to them. They could be too shocked to answer. They could be frightened, maybe they think we're aliens or hallucinations even. See?'
5 seconds later the nearby girl says, 'da, margo, we were into that too. Dinko. Ah, Sunbird? Major Davis of Sunbird, are you there? This is Judy Paris in the ship Gloria, we're only about a million kay from you, we see you on our screen.' She sounds young and excited. 'Luna Central has been trying to reach you, I think you're in trouble and we want to help. Please don't be frightened. We're people just like you. We think you're way off course if you want to reach Earth. Are you in trouble? Can we help? If your radio is out can you make any sort of signal? Do you know Old Morse? You'll be off our screen soon, we're truly worried about you. Please reply somehow if you possibly can, Sunbird, come in!'
Dave sits impassive. Bud glances at him, at the Port window, gazes stolidly at the speaker, his face blank. LoriMer has exhausted surprise, he wants only to reply to the voices. He can manage a rough signal by heterodyning the probe beam. But what then, with them both against him?"

Finally accepting the truth, the astronauts accept help from the women. They will have to travel close enough to be able to go outside of their spaceship and jetpack over to theirs. They have some time, while they travel towards the women's ship:
" 'Earth is making up a history for you, Sunbird,' the Margo voice says. 'We know you don't want to waste power asking, so we thought we'd send you a few main points right now.' She laughs. 'It's much harder than we thought, nobody here does history.'
.. .'Let's see, probably the most important is that there aren't as many people as you had, we're just over 2 million. There was a world epidemic not long after your time. It didn't kill people but it reduced the population. I mean there weren't any babies in most of the world. Ah, sterility. The country called Australia was affected least.' Bud holds up a finger.
'and North Canada wasn't too bad. So the survivors all got together in the South part of the American states where they could grow food and the best communications and factories were. Nobody lives in the rest of the world but we travel there sometimes. We have five main activities, was industries the word? Food, that's farming and fishing. Communications, transport, and space -- that's us. And the factories they need. We live a lot simpler than you did, I think. We see your things all over, we're very grateful to you. Oh, you'll be interested to know we use zeppelins just like you did, we have six big ones. And our fifth thing is the children. Babies. Does that help? I'm using a children's book we have here.'
The men had Frozen during this recital: LoriMer is holding a cooling bag of hash. Bud starts chewing again and chokes."

The men find out that the epidemic made men sterile.
" 'is it still dangerous, Doc?' Dave asks. 'What happens to us when we get back home?'
'they can't say. The birth rate is normal now, about 2% and rising. But the present population may be resistant. They never achieved a vaccine.'
'only one way to tell,' Bud says gravely. 'I volunteer.'
Dave merely glances at him. Extraordinary how he still commands. Not submission, for Pete's sake. A team.
The history also mentions the riots and fighting which swept the world when humanity found itself sterile. Cities bombed, and burned, massacres, panics, mass rapes and kidnapping of women, marauding armies of biologically desperate men, bloody cults. The crazies. But it is all so briefly told, so long ago. List of honored names. 'We must always be grateful to the brave people who held the Denver Medical Laboratories -' and then on to the drama of building up the helium supply for the dirigibles.
In three centuries it's all dust, he thinks. What do I know of the hideous 30 Years War that was three centuries back for me? Fighting devastated Europe for two generations. Not even names."

Lorimer tries to defend the mess that men had made of the world in the past:
"...'I'm a man. By God yes, I'm angry. I have a right. We gave you all this, we made it all. We built your precious civilization and your knowledge and comfort and medicines and your dreams. All of it. We protected you, we worked our balls off keeping you and your kids. It was hard. It was a fight, a bloody fight all the way. We're tough. We had to be, can't you understand? Can't you for Christ's sake understand that?'
another silence.
'We're trying,' Lady Blue says. "'We are trying, Dr Lorimer. Of course we enjoy your inventions and we do appreciate your evolutionary role. But you must see there's a problem. As I understand it, what you protected people from was largely other males, wasn't it? We've just had an extraordinary demonstration in that. [Bud tries to rape one of the Judys.] You have brought history to life for us.' Her wrinkled brown eyes smile at him; a small tea-colored matron holding an obsolete artifact.
'but the fighting is long over. It ended when you did, I believe. We can hardly turn you loose on earth, and we simply have no facilities for people with your emotional problems.'
'besides, we don't think you'd be very happy,' Judy Dakar adds earnestly.
'We could clone them,' says Connie. 'I know there's people who would volunteer to mother. The young ones might be all right, we could try.' "

The reader can figure out what happens to the antique spacemen. 🤣

[Ryandake · Rating 3 out of 5]

tiptree and russ literally back-to-back... awesome.

back in the day they were some of the best writers of feminist sf--russ most in-your-facedly--and it's kind of hard to discover that i am no longer in the least shocked by it. i liked being shocked by it--by using her work to push out the boundaries of my cage.

it reminds me how much of the cage has been dismantled in the intervening years. that's all to the good, of course. but i miss that feeling of sudden stretch, of finding i can move in a way i had not even imagined before.

so! nostalgia for chauvinist piggery aside--

russ' half of this book is all about who that astonishingly brave abbess confronting the raping, pillaging viking is. it's a kind of squirm-inducing read, absorbing how a woman must placate, divert, deflect, amuse, flatter a man who arrives bristling with weaponry. i am unspeakably glad this is no part of my life at present, but i am also dishearteningly sure that this degrading two-step is still the norm for uncountable women worldwide.

tiptree's half feels like a more polished story. it's about the changes a bunch of chauvinist pigs must go through when they find themselves uprooted to to a remarkably feminine future. the structure of it follows a drugged man wandering in and out of lucidity, conflating the past and present. tiptree did an amazing job of that--it's a hard trick to pull off, and she does it without slipping up. alas, her speculations on what a feminist future might look like feel a little dated. only to be expected, i suppose.

of the two, it's not surprising that russ can still deliver a gut-punch, and that tiptree's sheer craft still shines.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up because I wanted to read another Tiptree story. (I read a biography of "him" before ever having read any of his works.) I enjoyed that story, even though the male characters were very flat. I flipped the book over to read the other story only with reluctance. I've long thought I should read something by Russ, but I had no enthusiasm for reading yet another medieval fantasy. I sure am glad I did, though. It isn't the typical fantasy. The story basically boils down to the interaction between two people: a highly-intelligent abbess using the only tools at her disposal, her intelligence and charm, to try to save herself and her people from a man who is used to settling everything through physical force. Neither gets quite what they want. That dynamic plays out over and over all over the world all through history, but it isn't always so well told.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Houston, Houston, Do You Read - James Tiptree Jr. - 4.5/5 - Excellent novella about an early space ship with 3 men who are heading back to Earth after they did a mission to slingshot around the sun. Their ship experienced some damage, and while trying to contact mission control they discover the world is no longer how they knew it

Souls - Joanna Russ - 4.5/5 - A tale of historical fiction where some Norse vikings land on the coast of an Irish town with intentions of rape and plunder. An Abbess, who is one of the leaders of the community and somewhat experienced in their culture, does everything she can to both outwit them and keep violence to a minimum. It’s a great story that's let down a bit by a small twist that turns the story into a complete fantasy or science fiction story (it’s somewhat vague and can be interpreted in two different ways). It by no means ruined the story but I felt it would have been better without it

[Jake McCrary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice packaging of two short books. I was really only interested in reading "Houston, Houston, Do You Read" but since "Souls" was there I read it as well.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read is really good. It puts the reader into an interesting world.

Souls is alright. It wasn't entirely my jam.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read: 4 stars

Souls: 3 start

[Wenjing Fan · Rating 5 out of 5]

【有剧透！！！】完全符合我心中所想的纯女社会vs父权社会时候的状态，几乎每个设定我都很喜欢+几乎每个设定都是“如果我写一个纯女社会我也会这样设定”，剧情推进和结局也都符合逻辑。在故事里读出了第二波女权运动中激进女权主义的影子，比如很显然的分离主义（及姐妹的具像化）、比如共产主义社会、比如一些早期生态女权的想法（慢节奏的生活、发展、共处等）。但还是要给即将阅读的人避雷一下文本中有令人不适的性描写，从我目前的审美来看有点反感这部分。//Joanna Russ的这篇Soul没看懂。

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Both Novellas are good, but I really liked Houston, Houston...; an interesting contrast to just completed Swastika Night ( a 1937 male dystopia).. Tiptree shows, rather than tells.

[Jenni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read the Tiptree story before, so this rating is for Souls by itself. This story just reaffirms one thing for me: I need to read more Joanna Russ. Asap.

[Erik Wennermark · Rating 4 out of 5]

souls only: 5 stars for the first 3/4, lost me a bit at the end, but overall very enjoyable. great character. great setting.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What do you call yourselves? Women's World? Liberation? Amazonia?"
"Why, we call ourselves human beings."

[Corbin Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5 /10
Loved the writing styles of both authors but I’ll give the edge to Joanna. Interesting character development in souls

[Adam Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as sophisticated in its feminism as Russ, Tiptree nevertheless delivers a vicious polemic on men.

[Debbie J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and Souls are two science fiction novellas published together as a paperback in the 1980s. Both deal with feminism although they approach the concept in quite different ways.

HHDYR? provides a frank portrayal of what must’ve been the deeply misogynistic nature of the NASA program in its early years. A time warp puts a trio of astronauts into a parallel universe where women handle everything and men no longer exist (supposedly). Their fear and disbelief cause their base sexist attitudes to come to the fore. Only one man decides to manage his anxiety by acting “woke” and aligned with the women.

I found the story more than a tad dated and rather extreme on trying to hit certain points. It left me wondering how readers of either gender reacted when it was first issued.

Souls struck me as a somewhat labored depiction of feminist power wrapped in a religion inside a fantasy. The Church seemingly referenced is male-dominant yet fronted by mostly female symbols. And, from an atheist's viewpoint, it centers largely on mythology anyway. I guess the tale questions which sex’s myths and legends will rule at any given moment.

I’m unsure I got the point. Rah, rah, the woman goddess or spirit or whatever defeated the bad men though it cost her her bodily form. And? In this reader’s opinion, Souls = Women: Taking the Rap for Men Since the Garden of Eden.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This. This is what an award winning SF story is. "Houston, Houston" is the novella that won a Nebula in 1976 and the Hugo and Locus awards in 1977. Take a US spaceship, the Sunbird, on a circumsolar mission which on emergence from the "back" of the sun attempting to contact Houston. Add a nearby spaceship, which shouldn't be there, make radio contact instead. Sunbird is off course and will go out into space and the three astronauts will be lost. Instead the 3 men from Sunbird fly from their ship to the other ship where they're astounded to find only women. And one man, Andy. They are welcomed, but carefully. All three men are aware that they are not in their own time, but 300 years in the future, and an epidemic caused sterility. But it's the scientist Lorimer who eventually realizes the 3 of them have been drugged, who realizes the women are clones, that Andy is actually an hormone enhanced woman, and that they are the only three men in existence. This is a short book, but it contains so much! In the end it is an indictment of men (and patriarchy) as the men, each in his own way, react to new world order (much as Earth's men reacted with war and violence and rape to the effects of the epidemic). Before he goes to sleep - is put to sleep - Lorimer asks what they call themselves. The answer: the human race. James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice S. Bradley; the Tiptree Award celebrates SF & F that expands or explores our understanding of gender. I read this for my 2016 Reading Challenge "read a feminist SF novel" (Bustle Reads).

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't planning to read this yet, but I shouldn't be surprised that I picked it up and read it out of order, since it's the first book I've actually purchased in quite a long time (support your local library, folks!). I liked the idea of a neat pair of double-bound novellas. They're printed upside down and backward to each other. So cute, and such an excellent pairing of novellas and authors. Both won the Hugo and Houston additionally won the Nebula.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr. starts with three male astronauts attempting to reach Houston. Instead, they make contact with an unexpected ship full of young women. The main character, Lorimer, is a man who is very aware of his lack of masculinity, and juxtapoxing that insecurity between the competent young women and the very masculine men on his ship provides some beautiful (if slightly unsettling) meaning and character development. I won't go into the plot here, but this is the best of Tiptree's stories that I've read so far and deserves any award that you could throw at it.

Souls by Joanna Russ features a sharp-minded Abbess in Germanic England who is faced with a Viking invasion. Again, with such a short story I won't go into the plot, but I'm slightly disappointed that the vague plot summary on the cover is not really what happens in the story. It's compellingly written - not quite the masterpiece that Houston is - and a quick but fascinating read.

[Jake Casella Brookins · Rating 2 out of 5]

(Review for "Souls", not "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?")

Interesting short, far more interesting for the conversational judo before the supernatural/science-fictional elements come in.

Think Galactic discussion notes: http://positronchicago.blogspot.com/2...

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up after reading James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon earlier in the year. Holy cow! Tiptree's Houston is super-sexual and even more titillating knowing that its author was a 1960s Northern Virginia "housewife" working full-time as a male sci-fi author. The story is a biting commentary on the state of the patriarchy in the US that's valid to this very day.

Souls was the first story I'd read from Russ and I very much enjoyed it. The Abbess is our ruthless protagonist who gives some savage vikings the what-for. Really love the ending passage.

A fun couple of reads.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up at my local used bookstore a month or two ago because Tiptree *and* Russ in one volume! I read it to prep for an upcoming Galactic Suburbia podcast where they're going to discuss "Houston, Houston Do You Read" as part of a podcast to mark Sheldon's 100th birth anniversary. I loved both stories in this book. It actually felt heavier when I was done than when it started because both of the stories are so weighty and thought provoking. Well done!

[JJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. It was two novellas packed into one volume. Souls by Joanna Russ and Houston Houston Do You Read by Timothy Tiptree, Jr. Houston. Souls was okay but I really didn't like Houston.

[Gremlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are two well-written novellas from two very different time periods that discuss themes of masculinity, religion, violence, and humanity (from an outsider perspective). Immersive and enjoyable, without requiring a serious commitment. A fun read for our bookgroup!

[Justin Howe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Tor double from James Tiptree, JR and Joanna Russ. Both are award winning novellas. The Russ features a bad ass medieval abbess dealing with a viking raid. Nicely done.

[Jerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly this was okay as a very strange view into the seventies.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

***** Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976) • James Tiptree, Jr.
***** Souls (1982) • Joanna Russ

[Keith Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A flipbook pairing of stories from two of Science Fiction's best feminist writers.

[Evert Eliasson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Souls.