Customer Reviews

Warm Worlds and Otherwise

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the Tiptree 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.

I read this in college in the 70's. I passed the tattered copy around to my friends until it literally fell apart. On a magical backpack trip above Yosemite, a friend & I read it outloud to each other by campfire light. I've been looking for it (& that feeling) for years!

I recently read the new biography of Alice Sheldon, whose nom de plume was James Tiptree, Jr., and so I went back and re-read this book. Harlan Ellison once said something about "the healing art of razor blade fiction" and that's what Warm Worlds & Otherwise is -- razor blade fiction. No, my friends, it's just a fact that The Universe is not a friendly place and the long run plans of DNA may not include "mankind." James Tiptree, Jr., knew this, well, and got it across, written in blood. Don't miss this book.

**

This collection is rather disappointing in comparison with The Starry Rift. I found this a grab-bag mix of reasonably good stories and absolutely terrible ones.

01. All the Kinds of Yes - When an alien unpacks his/her hidden identity after a long space flight and sex with earthlings, s/he jeopardizes the future of Earth. I found this-first and foremost-a bit confusing in the very first few pages. After I got into it, though, it started to make sense, although I didn't really enjoy the subject-I'm not exactly fond of equating sex with love-however, the concept was really intriguing: it's kind of neat to consider packing identities away for a long space flight. Overall, though, the fiction didn't really focus much on that; it was only a few pages long and mostly about the sex.

02. The Milk of Paradise - This is another one I didn't particular enjoy reading. It opens with a sex scene featuring a man who can't finish the dirty job because he's disgusted by humans. He has this concept of a beautiful alien nation on a world called Paradise, where he was raised, that has since died when he was "rescued". Partner him in a new job with a slightly insane man bent on finding Paradise, and there's your plot. I liked bits and pieces of it-namely the descriptions of Paradise, which were stunning-but otherwise I was kind of indifferent.

03. And I Have Come upon this Place by Lost Ways - This story helps redeem the collection a bit; this is the type of story I'm accustomed to seeing from Tiptree. A man with the heart of a scientist in an age where science isn't for humans yearns to go ashore a new planet and discover the secret of the Mountain of Leaving. In a desperate attempt to find it, he leaves his ship and is abandoned on the alien world, and climbs the mountain alone. This story is thought-provoking-bringing up the questions of computers and their place in society-and touching-focusing on the man's deep need to know for the wonderful sake of knowing.

04. The Last Flight of Dr. Ain - This is one I also enjoyed, though not quite as much as the previous story. Dr. Ain is crazy with his love for a woman who has died. In his madness, he has created a super-disease. The story traces his flight across the world in the way you might try to remember when something has gone wrong. The style of the story as well as the subject makes it stirring, and the end is beautiful.

05. Amberjack - Amberjack set out to confuse me in some places, which it did, but it's one of those cases where I think I understand it but I'm not quite sure. Maybe I just need to read it again. It's a tragic love story of two people afraid to call what they have love... and I'm not really sure what's happened by the end. It's written beautifully, though.

06. Through a Lass Darkly - A girl from the future makes an accidental stop in an advice columnist's office. This story is just a little dialogue which shows glimpses at a corrupt future-where it's more of a sin to be single than belong to a harem.

07. The Girl Who was Plugged in - Since I had this novella as part of a different collection, I wrote it up as its own review here.

08. The Night-Blooming Saurian - A science crew has invented a time machine. For more government funding, they bribe a politician to help them by tricking him into believing he has hunted and killed a dinosaur they've brought back from the past. This is a very interesting story told in first-person in a meeting with an old friend, which I find to be something of a cop-out that detracts from the story. The core is very unique, though: a humorous attempt to examine the creation of time machines rather than on what to do with one once a time machine is built.

09. The Women Men Don't See - Two men and two women survive a plane crash on a personal airplane. In the wilderness of South America, they work together to stay alive-all of them unnaturally calm. The main character takes one of the women to fetch fresh water and they encounter aliens. This is a very strange type of fiction, but it brings up some of the social fears of women who were still overcoming sexism. I was kind of neutral on this one-it was more survival story than science fiction, but it was engaging to read for the most part.

10. Fault - This is probably my favorite of the collection. A man offends an alien race by accidentally mutilating someone and is taken to a local court of law, where he receives a high punishment for his act. He seems fine at first, but later it's discovered he's been cut out of the temporal plane and now his time is running slower than everyone else's-making him no more than a ghost.

11. Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death - This is the most well-written of the stories, or at least the most creatively written. It's about an alien race who can do no more than follow the Plan; when the winter comes, they lose their ability to reason and control themselves, so they consequently go mad. Two aliens in love want to rise above the Plan and take special cautions to survive the winter and nearly seem to make it... but "the winters always grow".

12. On the Last Afternoon - I really enjoyed this story, as well. A man plagued by illness with only days left to live looks out with an alien who only he can hear at the colony he has made when he was stranded on a foreign planet. Ultimately, he has to make a choice-immortality among the stars, free forever from the bond of species, or to save his children and everything they have made in the colony and die for his disease.