#Short Story: J. Tiptree jr. …but not her best work!
- Author: James Tiptree jr. 1915-1987
- Real name: Alice Sheldon
- Title: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (18 short stories)
- Published: 2004
- List of Challenges
- Monthly planning
- List of Short Stories read
19.02.2019 – READ – The Girl Who Was Plugged in
- This is a ‘Jekyll-and-Hyde story about a female monster.
- 17 yr ugly girl makes a Faustian bargain.
- She will be kept in a cabinet strapped with electrodes.
- She will animate the artifically grown body of a perfect girl
- …her dream..to be beautiful!.
- Tiptree submitted this story for publication
- …but is was REJECTED so many times
- …she shelved it.
Last thoughts:
- Now I know why it was refused….it was awful!
- The story lurches, stumbles is at times painful to read
- …because I know Tiptree can do better!
- I read that Alice Shelden (Tiptree)
- …was a longtime user of Dexedrine (speed).
- It feels like Tiptree let the drug
- …push her creative mind a bit too far for this reader!
- #MonsterOnSpeed
18.02.2019 – READ And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side
- Title: is from “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” by John Keats
- “Frame” POV: unnamed narrator (news reporter) tells the reader about
- a nameless station engineer at the Orion docking junction who
- is …telling his story about seductive aliens.
- Tone: is NOT sentimental….but erotic, lascivious
- Message: the man warns reporter that
- “Man is exogamous…one long drive to find and impregnate the stranger.”
- In this case…aliens: Procya, Lycran, Sirians, Sellice…
- This biological drive is where humans are most at risk
- At risk not from a monster from a star
- ….but a signal from the human brain stem.
- #Strange
9.04.2018 – READ The Last Flight of Doctor Ain: (1969)
- The story drifts between the past and present.
- Dr. Ain is on a mission to save the world for a “later race”.
- Allusions to W.H. Hudson’s novel Green Mansions and
- the “Gaea Gloriatric“….Gaia is the ancestral mother of all life…
- are the keys that will unlock the theme in the story.
- Dr Ain boards his last flight and
- …no one sees the moral insanity inside him.
- Note: After the first reading I was confused.
- It took a second reading and some note taking to
- finally appreciate this
- …classic short story by one of SF ‘grande dames’.
- #Readable
Last thoughts:
- I’ve reviewed 4 of James Tiptree jr.’s short stories.
- The Screwfly Solution….was very good,
- ..but I may have to read some ‘duds’ before I
- finished all the selections.
- I’ve included a Wikipedia link about Alice Sheldon’s life
- It was unconventional….and ended in double suicide.
- #ReadShortStories
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Interesting! Two years ago I picked up a used copy of _Warm Worlds and Otherwise_ by Tiptree and I was pretty impressed with most of the stories. The highlights were probably The Women Men Don’t See & Love Is the Plan, the Plan is Death. I have not read The Screwfly Solution though.
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Thanks for your comment! I have a whole list of short stories to read by Tiptree jr. She write so well….and her life, career are fascinating. She brings ‘a lot to the table’ with her backround!
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