#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:

1. I’ve reviewed 4 of James Tiptree jr.’s short stories.
2. The Screwfly Solution….was very good,
3. ..but I may have to read some ‘duds’ before I
4. finished all the selections.
5. I’ve included a  Wikipedia link about Alice Sheldon’s life
6. It was unconventional….and ended in double suicide.
7. #ReadShortStories