I cried a lot finishing this and I'm feeling sad and a bit emotionally overwhelmed by this story. By this amazing person. An amazing but quite tortureI cried a lot finishing this and I'm feeling sad and a bit emotionally overwhelmed by this story. By this amazing person. An amazing but quite tortured person who couldn't find her way out of all the ways society wants us to comply.
I may not agree with all of Julie Phillips' analyses of Tiptree work - and I do feel it's sometimes strange and a bit biased of what she chooses to comment on and what she leaves there just as fact (mostly overtly political issues) -, but this is a great, compelling portrait of one of my favorite writers ever. It leaves you with a lot of questions, but that's the beauty of it. Like, what is gender actually, what is queerness? Was Alli trans or lesbian or bisexual or non-binary as we understand these terms today? What does it mean to write in a masculine way? And many many others, this is such a rich layered real-life story, I will be pondering it for many many years.
I struggled a bit through the first part of the biography, until Alli 'became' Tiptree (Not that the CIA bits and the sort of problematic African bits and the PHD in psychology and everything wasn't interesting, plus a very maddening and rage-inducing mother-daughter relationship. Also, I can't fucking believe how many psychiatrists prescribed her SPEED. I would venture to say she might have had ADHD, there are definitely some markers there I recognized fully).
But then, when the correspondence drama starts, this was amazing! I came out of this with a massive crush on Joanna Russ. And if there are multiple universes, I think there might be an infinite number of ones where Alli did accept meeting Joanna and Joanna kissed her, just like she promised and they lived a complicated (maybe volatile) sort of happiness. I can't express enough how I wish Alli would have been able to unpack her internalized sexism and figured out her queerness. But that would have been a totally different story, I think, and she did what she could with the resources she had. She was not perfect, not at all, she was complicated and messy and had really dark sides to her, but I will always love her.
Also loved reading about this slice of science fiction history, the Tip gossiping to Ursula Le Guin about Russ, the flirting / lovely relationship between Tip and Ursula (and the details and textures from Ursula's letters kind of confirmed my theory for me about why I don't connect with Ursula's earlier work, because she was unable to connect to her womanhood, which lead to a disconnect / distance / neutrality that I can't resonate with until Tehanu, where it all comes exploding out).
Also fun, to get more of a bird's eye view of the science-fiction landscape of the 70s. Strange that Marge Piercy was never mentioned, but fun that my crush Samuel R. Delany is - and there's a lot of context to the Symposium of Women in Science Fiction that Delany has an essay about in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw.
Yeah, maybe I'll add more to this, but for now I want to say how much I appreciate having a lot of context for reading her stories, so many of them twisted for me in interesting ways and I might have to re-read some soon!
My deities, what a journey this was! I tried to read one story a day, but my mental health was not on board with that, so I ended up binging these weiMy deities, what a journey this was! I tried to read one story a day, but my mental health was not on board with that, so I ended up binging these weird, dark, full of rage, depression, sex, etc etc stories. They felt cathartic but also took a lot out of me. Not all of them were bangers, but I have to say, even if I didn't 'get it', I still really loved the weird vibe and the atmosphere of despair and dread, as thick as black smoke.
I cannot understand how people actually thought Tiptree Jr. was a man for such a long time, because these stories are so absolutely preoccupied with exploring gender and sexuality in such original ways (most straight men I know IRL have no clue what to say when I ask them 'so what's your relationship to your gender?'). The biographical note at the end of the book says that some stories are about 'good men' and I'm like, a man wrote that, because the male main characters in general are more like Nice Guys TM (aka not nice at all) and have a complicated relationship with what they see as their 'beta male' status. Tiptree Jr. is so confident and incisive and fucking angry at the treatment of women at the hands of men, I just really adore her and feel like she was ahead of her time.
These stories have all of the possible content warnings you could imagine, though. Proceed with caution.
The Last Flight of Doctor Ain: This was a re-read. (Some of them I would have read in Warm Worlds and Otherwise, aka my first ever book club, what a life-changer! Getting wistful in here). And yeah, it's super great, it's haunting, and having lived through a pandemic, it hits pretty hard.
The Screwfly Solution: What a tale! It drops you right into the thick of it (as a lot of Tiptree Jr. stories tend to do) and then has you crawling through the creeping dread until it escalates. A story about men forming cults and starting to kill women because of weird religious reasons, also about... *checks notes* real estate?!
And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side: I just love Tiptree Jr.'s long titles for stories, they're beautiful! Anyway, this is a fucking kick-ass story about a world where humans get to meet aliens and they kind of go crazy from wanting to fuck them (which isn't always possible) and now they don't feel like fucking other humans anymore because aliens exist. I think it's brilliant and I'm buying it!
The Girl Who Was Plugged In: 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 inbuilt viewer feedback. (...) That started as a thingie to give the public more influence on content.
Possibly the first cyberpunk story, a re-read, a total absolute banger!
The Man Who Walked Home: Can't say I completely followed this, but this is one of those vibe reads, where it was just fucking good to experience. And a cool take on time travel. Like all of these stories, the worldbuilding is on point.
And I Have Come Upon This Place By Lost Ways: (really love the long titles). Re-read, reviewed in the Warm Worlds review.
The Women Men Don't See: Another absolute banger of a re-read. Wrote about it already. Just want to say that after 1.5 years, I still think about it often and it's my best example of what it means to have a great distinction between 'character voice' and 'narrative voice' in a piece of fiction.
Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Full of Light!: this had big Woman on the Edge of Time vibes and how can I not love that? It comments on women's lib, why female cops are bastards, internalized sexism, imagining a future world, the treatment of non-compliant women and so on.
Loved this commentary on marriage: Imagine when people had to sell their sex organs to the men just to eat.
I'd read this in concert with The Yellow Wallpaper and a bunch of Shirley Jackson stories.
Houston, Houston, Do You Read?: this also had some Woman on the Edge of Time vibes, from another POV. It has the great line, spoken to a man: What you protected people from was largely other males. And ain't that the truth? My notes are quite silly, I don't know what else to comment, I hated the 'beta' POV character, but I get why and I think she deconstructs his mindset in interesting ways, and loved everything else.
With Delicate Mad Hands: This one was a huge surprise, because it started in maybe the darkest of places and then had such a shocking (explicitly!!!) queer romantic turn, while also kind of commenting upon romantic dynamics and what's healthy and what's not in a cool way. But wow, did the beginning hurt! The ending hurt in a completely different way. I love how Tiptree Jr.'s stories hurt me in different ways, with her and Butler and Piercy, they all hurt me good, and I love it!
This one, I realized, features a totally queer paradise of a planet, because there is really no norm to observe. There is no dominant alien race - everyone is mutated and looks completely different and I loved that image of queerness.
A Momentary Taste of Being: This is a story that begins with a sort of planet testicle pushing a monster penis toward the stars and it's about as jizzy as you might think it is (If you don't think it's extremely jizzy, you need to imagine more jizz). But that might make it sound shlocky, when it's actually quite clever in what it's doing, it's just that Tiptree Jr. really approaches themes that other people leave on the table and she twists them around in fascinating ways. This was a bit too long though, did quite love it in the end.
We Who Stole the Dream: Another heartbreaking one, that calls to mind colonialism and how the very existence of an Empire (the fucking cruel true-to-life human empire) can change other people.
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever: Didn't fully get this, but it was once again pleasantly weird and possibly time-travelly? I ended up stopping myself from critiquing and just letting these weird tales wash over me and that was great.
Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death: Wrote about it in the other post. (A banger, if you ask me)
On the Last Afternoon: Already reviewed.
She Waits for All Men Born: This felt like a take on 'the Earth is tired of our human shit' trope and I really loved the vibes and the sort of unresolved feeling I had at the end. I really enjoy the mystery of it.
Slow Music: Did not get it, but loved it, just for the eeriness of it, that feeling of watching the end of the world unfold slowly and all of the things we know now are strange and absurd and off-kilter. Would definitely re-read this one to try to understand it better.
And Soon, And Soon: Did not get this very well, but it's probably the shortest one, will revisit....more
Okay, this is... complicated. It's a really beautifully written work, with a different sort of structure that is, in its way, linear or at least chronOkay, this is... complicated. It's a really beautifully written work, with a different sort of structure that is, in its way, linear or at least chronological - chapters about the main character Zhang/ Rafael alternating with chapters from other POV's, distinct characters with the narrative, tangentially related. If I were to describe the structure, I would use the word 'system' - so a system-like structure -, because the concept of systems is thematically relevant and is the specialization of Zhang in engineering.
Aaaaaanyway, getting back on track. The writing just flows and the characterization is beautiful, so is a lot of the plot. I am positively in love with some of the chapters (Baffin Island, Homework) and they show such wonderful, human, painful but touching and *real* moments. People huddling around someone suffering from 'winter depression' and holding them emotionally. The first real fight of a marriage, happening in the center of a kitchen filled with goats! Gorgeous stuff.
At the same time, this book has a bit of an ass - which I would describe as 'released in 1992' - and it shows a bunch of times. In the third paragraph of the book we get the C-slur a couple of times, from the first person perspective of our main character, an ABC - American Born Chinese. That felt jarring and leads me to a wider point: this book about a half-Chinese, half-Latino gay man is written by a white woman and I'm in none of those groups, so I don't know how to look at the representation (I will for sure seek out reviews from these groups).
I can say that I absolutely despised the Three Fragrances chapter, the next to last one. (view spoiler)[The one in which 'ugly' political girl San-Xiang is raped, after she prettifies herself via surgery. I'd really loved the character in the first chapter, but this one seems to exist to show that she is so naive and when she gets pretty, she gets raped. It is such a reductive view of sexual assault that I can't even. Ffs, sexual assaults are not about beauty, they're about power. I find it hard to believe that a political woman such as San-Xiang would be that naive (hide spoiler)]. This event and chapter fails to connect to other parts of the story, there is a distinct lack of gender commentary in the book, it feels like gender equality has been achieved (at least on some fronts, the fact that prettiness matters is a signal that it has not) and there are plenty of women in positions of power, so I genuinely don't understand this choice or what it brought to the narrative.
There is also a 'bury your gays' moment, and I can understand this choice better in the narrative, but at the same time I'm uncomfortable with it being in a book not written by a gay man, since a lot of straight writers (especially in the past) tend to exploit the tragedies of gay people.
Beyond the book, there's a blurb from a review at the end that says Good science fiction has never been predictable and politically correct. and this feels very head-scratchy to me. I still don't know what to make of this book, politically, the first chapters seemed to talk about the importance of being political and how even if you claim to not be political, the choices you make are, which feels undermined by (view spoiler)[having your overtly political character raped with apparently her not understanding any feminist theory about gender dynamics??? (hide spoiler)] and then the book ends with (view spoiler)[the main character becoming an entrepreneur and starting a small business and I was like wtf?? (hide spoiler)].
And then you have an interesting chapter about overt political action, aka getting involved in political life and that failing and then deciding to solve a problem via marriage thus revealing how marriage is in and of itself a political choice, whether intentional or not! (view spoiler)[Which once again, kinda gets undermined when Martine and Alexi were already into each other and then fall in love while married. (hide spoiler)]
So I am hugely conflicted about this one, I am so glad I get to talk about this at book club and maybe have more clarity. If that happens, I'll amend my review!...more
Creation is always perilous, for it gives true life to what has been inchoate and voice to what has been dumb. It makes known what has been unknown, tCreation is always perilous, for it gives true life to what has been inchoate and voice to what has been dumb. It makes known what has been unknown, that perhaps we were more comfortable not knowing. The new is necessarily dangerous. You, too, must come to accept that of your nature, Yod, for you are truly new under the sun.
What a fucking trip! This is the kind of book that seems written specifically for me and my specs (hah), it's light on the action (and a bit slow going!), but heavy & rich on characterization and relationship details, exploring themes of autonomy & agency, for women *and* cyborgs/ golems! It made me feel happy with its density of loving details in this world and the connections between the people. And it also made me very happy from a political & emotional standpoint.
I know I've only read two books by her (this and Woman on the Edge of Time), but I am ready to call it: Marge Piercy has become a favorite author for me. Sadly, she doesn't have a lot more speculative novels, but I will be reading her historical fiction/ poetry and everything else, probably.
This book is a sort of near future (2059) retelling of the Golem of Prague story, with a more clear-cut retelling of the golem story within the pages. I loved how the two timelines (past Prague and future Tikva - somewhere near Boston-ish) are in dialogue with each other but they're not a full 1-to-1 mirroring. It is a book deeply and lovingly immersed in Jewish culture that features five amazing women characters. Six if we count the House AI, who is very salty, love her!
Shira, arguably the main character, is the most conventional of them (and that is remarked upon in the book and it's intentional), but ends up being transformed by her relationships with most of the other ones - except Chava, who is part of the Prague timeline). She is the kind of woman defined by her relationships with men, her teen love Gadi (fuck that guy, honestly), her ex-husband Josh, who at the beginning of the novel has just gained custody of their son, Ari, and of course the cyborg Yod (whom I also really loved).
The relationship between Shira and Yod is very interestingly exploring the themes of agency and autonomy - Yod is man-made, which means he is controlled by the patriarchy in similar ways to how women have been controlled during the course of history. He is othered by his creator and the heavily cyberpunky corporation-controlled world, but also he doesn't understand gender roles and steps outside of them quite frequently. Also, the two have sex and it's great! For character development and the themes explored, but also hot!
And then we have Malkah, Shira's grandmother, and Riva and Nili. I don't want to spoil Riva and Nili, but I want to take a moment to simply gush about Malkah. I was chuffed to realize that she is a bisexual Milliennial (born in '87) - no wonder I completely fell for her passion, her spirit, her resilience and sense of humor. Also, her deep empathy and pragmatism. What a freaking character!
As for the political content... This book comments in a very subtle way on the nuclear family, sexual orientation, gender roles, motherhood, labor rights and so on. There is more overt not-so-subtle commentary on relationships between women and men. But it's also not heteronormative at all, this book aims to subvert expectations. There are a thousand little shiny moments that gave me pure jolts of happiness while reading. I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to spoil them, but everything related to Nili is gold!
Just as an example, take this bit about Chava in the Prague ghetto:
She admires women who descend into the necessary factories of the body and the home and make daily life happen. But as a midwife, she has enough of the flesh and the wet red pain of living. She is an excellent midwife. If a mother can be brought through safely, she brings her through. By law, a mother is preferred to an unborn child. No child is deemed fully human till born and until welcomed into the community, named. But if she can save the baby, she saves the baby too.
Just the use of language in framing the body and the home as necessary factories, Piercy calls to attention the notion of reproductive labor - pregnancy, birth, motherhood, taking care of a home and so on is necessary work, and work that has been devalued. Chava does not hate this work, she is a midwife by choice, and she is also a brilliant scholar, and yet her community does not understand why she constantly refuses the proposals of men and why she prefers to stand on her own.
At the same time, Tikva, the small techie town, manages to become such a vivid, lived-in community (pretty anarcho-communist, related to the Mattapoisett of Woman on the Edge of Time), with council meetings and parks and parties and children. Where people snitch on you if you appear to be violating labor rules for your assistant! (I think that these kinds of snitches shouldn't get stitches). Where you are very much encouraged to participate in the governing process. Where people integrate 'The Net' into their spiritual practice, with little rituals before logging on.
The one thing I didn't find fully believable about this is the fact that the characters drink a lot of coffee. Idk, they're very sustainable types and I imagine it's very expensive to buy. But yeah, that's my nitpick.
Since I'm on critiques now, there's also a couple of instances where the word 'autistic' is used very improperly, and also a couple of instances of the R-slur. Ugh, the 90s! Also, Gadi is exiled to Tikva by the multi (entertainment corporation) he works for because of committing statutory rape, and I felt like the narrative let him get away with it (this is not a major spoiler, I thought it was important to mention & criticize, though).
Anyway, I could go on and on, because so many more things I really loved! But a lot of them are spoilery and I don't see the point in just listing them with spoiler tags. I am very happy to have read this and excited to be re-reading 'Woman on the Edge of Time' next month, for the other book club. Also, Marge Piercy has a blog and it's very cute! She is 87 and still writing!...more
A very close call - finished this 77 minutes before book club. And I feel very mixed about it. I didn't know how I felt about it, but I do enjoy feeliA very close call - finished this 77 minutes before book club. And I feel very mixed about it. I didn't know how I felt about it, but I do enjoy feeling challenged as a reader and in that, the book club picks are spot on. I really struggled with this. I was almost panicking (yes, I take book club that seriously!!) because the night before book club I was barely a third of the way through, after four days of trying. I did manage to finish it, happily.
And, even though I would not call this feminist-utopia-becomes-slow-painful-genocide-of-a peaceful-people a success as a novel. There are a million little worldbuilding tidbits that are fascinating and worth exploring - but then again, the worldbuilding is way too dense and the first 100 pages are a slog in trying to process and understand the world.
Examples of fascinating tidbits: an ocean moon that has no dry land, where humanoid 100% women called the Shora live in a sort of anarcho-communist paradise, where nobody goes hungry and everyone is cared for, emotionally or otherwise. The girls become women when they decide to selfname, which means they take a sort of nickname that represents the character trait that they will try to transcend for the rest of their lives (one of the main characters is Merwen the Impatient One and she is pretty cool, there's also The Deceiver, The Impulsive and so on). The science-fiction aspect is pretty tantalizing as well - the Shora basically fear anything that's inorganic, and that's why their laboratory equipment and medicine implements (like IVs and such) are all plant parts genetically modified to be containers for substances or chemistry sets and so on. There are clickflies, insects that can be used as long-distance communication among the rafts that are made of wood still growing (on which the Shora live as a community), but also can hold all kinds of information in their chromosomes.
And then, of course... the empire du jour arrives.
I particularly liked the verbs and other language aspects of this culture. Merwen is a wordweaver (sort of diplomat/ politician, she is good with words and convincing people of things), then their partners are lovesharers. Sharing (like learn-sharing as well) is a big part of this world. It acknowledges this mutuality between persons or a person and an object that we tend to reduce to a framing of subject vs object.
“What the devil is ‘word-sharing’? Does the word for ‘speak’ mean ‘listen’ just as well? If I said, ‘Listen to me!’ you might talk, instead.” “What use is the one without the other? It took me a long time to see this distinction in Valan speech.” Spinel thought over the list of “share-forms”: learnsharing, work-sharing, lovesharing. “Do you say ‘hitsharing,’ too? If I hit a rock with a chisel, does the rock hit me?” “I would think so. Don’t you feel it in your arm?”
Unfortunately, these elements of worldbuilding and the whole utopia and conflict between the pacifist Shora and the imperialist forces are not fully explored in a nuanced sort of realistic way. It tries to make points on civil disobedience, dehumanizing the other & rehumanizing yourself in the eyes of others, empathy & understanding, but it never really goes anywhere with them and the conflict stalls for a while, because neither side is really really truly trying to understand each other. So we have the two sides keeping their positions with only the punishments escalating in truly painful ways.
At the same time, you can feel that the author is a scientist but doesn't have a lot of experience as a writer. The worldbuilding and scientific ideas are there, but the characters are inconsistent and are doing forever what the plot needs them to do. There is also a whole lot of headhopping in the same chapter, we just jump from close perspective to close perspective and still there isn't much to be said about the interiority of the characters. A lot of trauma happens but it is not really processed and the healing process feels like something we're gliding over as soon as possible.
One of the reviews calls this book gender-reductive and says that the women are associated with body and feeling, but not intellect and logic, but I would have to disagree with all of that. The male characters are built on a broad spectrum of masculinity (Spinel, the Seer, Siderite and Raelgar, just to mention the most important), and also the Shora are really not a monolith (we have like 30 Shora characters and they are distinct), Usha is quite a brilliant scientist, Merwen is the diplomat/ charismatic leader, we have engineers (not in the human way though, they engineer mostly organic matter, since that's the Shora spiel) and the population has a very deep understanding of how the ecosystem of the planet works and because of that it works with the planet to keep the balance alive - that is a very pragmatic, wise choice, even though it is not a choice that our supposedly rational world is making right now. And the fuck? What is wrong with feelings and being connected to your own body? Are us women to become intellectual machines because that's what the establishment considers to be intellectual? It feels like there are layers upon layers of preconceptions and faulty premises that the statement I'm ranting against contains.
I would maybe read some more Joan Slonczewski, curious if the actual writing of her scifi has developed further. ...more
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 nevRead 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....more
Yeah, wow, look. I think this is a masterpiece of womanly RAGE and it's strange and fragmented and not for everyone, but it felt quite cathartic for mYeah, wow, look. I think this is a masterpiece of womanly RAGE and it's strange and fragmented and not for everyone, but it felt quite cathartic for me. It was a tough read, but I GOT IT. It GOT ME.
Still need to process quite a bit of it though. More review later. ...more
Ruxandra Grrr
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Books:
older-feminist-sff
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