The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3: Subversive Stories about Sex and…

This compilation of short stories and articles reminds me of what science fiction should be - an exploration of the possibilities of life. I wanted to say that my favorite story was Dearth by Aimee Bender about a single woman's surprise gift of potatoes. It was both matter of fact and poignant. I've just discovered Bender and plan to read all of her I can.

Then I need to say that Little Faces by Vonda McIntyre is my favorite in all the ways it explores gender possibilities - adults are women (or ships) and their companions, males with their little effective penises and gnashing teeth, live within them.

But it could be that Eleanor Arnason's Knapsack Poems is the favorite. A person, one of the goxhat, is composed of both intertwined and interacting bodies, some separated physically but all acting as one person. The main character, an itinerant poet is composed of male, female and neuter parts though some other goxhat are all female or all male after their differing sexes die or are killed. She shows that the persons who are all one sex tend to be vicious from lack of balance. And there's a baby.

Liking What you See: A Documentary by Ted Chiang explores the possibility of a device that disables one's ability to judge whether or not a person is good looking and its development during the time that advertisers have managed to amplify the desirability of their spokes people.

James Tiptree Jr.'s The Girl Who Was Plugged In follows a poor, ugly woman as she becomes a virtual Lindsay Lohan. It's the powerful linchpin of the whole series.

The non fiction articles are Shame by Pam Noles which explores race in science fiction and The Future of Female: Octavia Butler by Dorothy Allison in which Allison takes Butler to task for her continuing presentation of female characters who chose to give up their own freedom in order to promote the welfare of children. It just shows you how harsh Allison (Bastard Out of Carolina) can be if she points out the "softness" of Octavia Butler, one of the most pessimistic science fictions writers I've read.

Lastly L. Timmel Duchamp's letter to Alice Sheldon shows that Sheldon enjoyed writing as Tiptree and how she missed her anonymity when her sex became known. She worried that when people found out she was a woman they would care less about her writing in itself and more about the personality of the woman who wrote it.

I wish all science fiction could be so illuminating. ( )

This anthology has some very good stories and some forgettable stories. I know the Tiptree Awards are about rethinking gender but I must confess there were some stories that I didn't understand how gender fit in.

I liked Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman, which is apparently the first chapter in a longer work. The section included in the book suggests the novel is about the Internet reaching the farthest corners of the earth so that everyone is connected and how that would affect previou...more This anthology has some very good stories and some forgettable stories. I know the Tiptree Awards are about rethinking gender but I must confess there were some stories that I didn't understand how gender fit in.

I liked Have Not Have by Geoff Ryman, which is apparently the first chapter in a longer work. The section included in the book suggests the novel is about the Internet reaching the farthest corners of the earth so that everyone is connected and how that would affect previously isolated peoples and communities. I've put the full book on my reading list.

Liking What You See by Ted Chiang posited a world where technology makes it possible to prevent people from recognizing a face as beautiful. It was interesting, but I couldn't help thinking it was rather pointless. If you take away beauty people will just find something else to use to put people into hierarchies. Clothes, eye color, hair color, etc. And it did nothing about body image. It also focused on faces and I think a bigger issue is fitness and weight, which weren't mentioned at all.

There was some discussion as to whether using technology to blind people to a face's physical beauty was a good idea, but I would have liked more. And there was little recognition of the fact that if people don't use beauty they would use some other standard.

Another interesting question might be whether beauty is a valid standard. People go to pretty amazing lengths to be beautiful, cosmetic surgery, lengthening bones, etc.

But is intelligence any better? Everyone is born with a certain level of both intelligence and beauty but there's only so much a person can do to raise those levels.

The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree, Jr. was an interesting tale about subversive advertising but I'm not sure what it had to do with gender.

Little Faces by Vonda N. McIntyre was strange. It's full of women, but they have male companions living inside them. However, there's nothing particularly feminine about the women (they actually felt asexual to me). The male companions inside them are mostly depicted as hungry and attention starved. They apparently have personalities, but I didn't get a real sense of that and they felt asexual too.

Shame by Pam Noles is an interesting essay on the fiction of Ursula K. LeGuin and what it means to be a fan of color. I liked it a lot, but it's another piece where I didn't see how it was related to gender.

The Future of the Female by Dorothy Allison is an essay on Octavia Butler's fiction that confirms my opinion that Butler is most definitely not for me. It sounds too much like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, all about raising kids.

There were other stories and essays, but those were the ones that stood out to me. ( )

The non-fiction is superb as always. Among the fiction, the stories that stand out are "Wooden Bride" (which is both funny and poignant), "The Glass Bottle Trick" (a modern take on Blue Beard), "Liking What You See: A Documentary", Tiptree's own "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" (Where do I find more Tiptree?!), and parts of "Little Faces"; and Ursula K. LeGuin's "Mountain Ways" of course, but I'd read that elsewhere before. Looking forward to more Tiptree anthologies. ( )