⋙ [PDF] Her Smoke Rose Up Forever SF Masterworks James Tiptree author 9781473203242 Books

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever SF Masterworks James Tiptree author 9781473203242 Books

Download As PDF : Her Smoke Rose Up Forever SF Masterworks James Tiptree author 9781473203242 Books

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever SF Masterworks James Tiptree author 9781473203242 Books

In this volume are some of the best short stories I've ever read. And it's deliberate that I don't say "some of the best _science fiction_ stories..." I'm a long-time SF fan, but I'm also a huge fan of literary fiction short stories -- Carver, Beattie, Moore, Chekhov, Hemingway, Mansfield, yadda yadda yadda. I love 'em all. I _enjoy_ SF, but when I find myself waxing ecstatic about a short story, it's most likely to be a piece of lit-fic I'm waxing about.

Not with this book. These are incredible stories; passionate, beautiful, painfully moving, lyrically written, exquisitely crafted. If you should ever happen across a literary fiction snob who thinks that science fiction just can't measure up in artistic terms to the best lit-fic, this is the book to raise high in both hands and bludgeon the snob over the head with.

Fair warning: On the last page of the last story in this collection, one character says to another, "You carry despair as your gift." Those words could stand as an epigraph to the whole of the book and to Tiptree/Sheldon's writing career. Despair and the dashing of hopes are a hallmark of these stories, so don't come to the book expecting sweetness and light, pretty butterflies and hopping bunnies. But in Tiptree's hands, despair is truly a gift. Take the fruits of that gift; read these stories, and be enriched.


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Her Smoke Rose Up Forever SF Masterworks James Tiptree author 9781473203242 Books Reviews

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I do remember as a kid ( 60's ) picking books from my parents library in the middle of a desert peninsula in Venezuelan Caribbean , inside a Shell Oil Refinery and reading Alexander Kazantsev The Destruction of Faena, Jules Verne and most of his known and unknown classics , the Bible and it's amazing human tales ; then moving to the Usa and discovering Assimov's Foundation , Frank Herbert's Dune , Kurt Vonnegut Jr's The Sirens of Titan ( after watching 20 or less times Slaughterhouse 5 ) and Galapagos , Aldous Huxley's Island and Door's of Perception , Gurdjiell's All and Everything ; then coming to the Mexican Caribbean and discovering Ann Rice and the Vampires , Daniel Quinn and his adventures of mind and spirit and James Tiptree Jr ( she spent the 70's in the now Rivera Maya ) . To bad i did not get to read her as a man , it does change some prespective , but the stories in these collection are Up there with the Classics ... Highly entertaining with provoking ideas that we have not been able to surpass as the slow learners we are as humans ...
Tiptree's classic work "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" is remarkably applicable to today. The stories are not only an exciting read but in a time when the welfare of women and children the world over is threatened more than ever, Tiptree's stories remind us that the struggle for human dignity has never ended. The bizarre story behind Tiptree's life is also amazing.
This is an amazing anthology. Five or six of these stories are so strong and so clear that they have changed me deeply. One story in particular, written under the pseudonym-of-a-pseudonym Racoona Sheldon, made me weep "Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!"
In 508 pages we get 18 short stories by James Tiptree, Jr. Original publication dates range from 1969 to 1981. Time has overtaken many of the tales in a strange way, that makes one wish Tiptree were still around to appreciate developments. For instance, in "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," the world breathlessly watches the real-time antics of young, beautiful wealthy girls... who are actually brainless synthetic creations animated by what amount to brains in jars in an underground lab. What would Tiptree make of the Parises, Nicoles, Lindsays and Brittanies of our own day, who appear to have no brains located anywhere?

Tiptree really got rolling in 1973, when she published her three best-known stories, "The Girl...," along with "Love is the plan the plan is death," and "The Women Men Don't See." Along with 1976's "Houston, Houston, do you read?" these are the quintessential Tiptree tales. "Love is the plan..." is my favorite science fiction short story, and one of the best short stories of any kind ever written. It has not a single human character, and depicts the unbearably touching efforts of a gigantic, heavily-armored, multi-limbed alien to tackle and solve three deadly problems faced by his species, two internal--- stemming from instinctively programmed behavior--- and one external, a global climate change. That he will fail, and why he will fail, is evident early on from many clues fairly planted within the narrative. But he does his level best, which is indeed far better than you and I could hope to do, and like most Tiptree aliens, he is totally charming and lovable throughout his hopeless task. Our own species is currently failing completely to deal with a global climate change, and we are neither charming nor lovable in our miserably conflicted efforts.

"A Momentary Taste of Being" is another quintessential Tiptree story; an expedition of interstellar exploration inadvertently discovers the true purpose of human existence... a purpose which reveals all human effort, achievement and aspiration to be utterly pointless and futile. "With Delicate Mad Hands" is a key story, from 1981, that catches Tiptree in transition from symbolic War of the Sexes tales to space-operatic adventure. Almost all her stories from 1981 to her death in 1987 were space adventures set in the distant future.

Several tales here were completely new to me, particularly "Slow Music," from 1980, in which a chance (?) encounter of the earth with some alien stream of disembodied consciousness has made suicide so irresistibly attractive that there are only a handful of living humans. This story seems to contain a sly self-portrait of Tiptree herself, as the dying ancient human wreck that the two main characters discover on their way to see "The River," as the stream is called.

There's not a bad or mediocre story in the volume. And, alas, this is probably the only collection of Tiptree fiction currently in print in the US. Get it while it's still available.
James Tiptree Jr. -- or should I say, Alice Sheldon -- is best described by 's category of "full of surprises". Indeed there are plenty of surprises in this book of stories about sex and death. In almost every story by Tiptree there is a sense of inevitability, as if all life -- human or alien -- was inherently doomed to self-destruct. Yet I find some measure of joy in some of the stories as well, as contradictory as it sounds. My favorite story in this collection is the one which feels the most alien "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death".
In this volume are some of the best short stories I've ever read. And it's deliberate that I don't say "some of the best _science fiction_ stories..." I'm a long-time SF fan, but I'm also a huge fan of literary fiction short stories -- Carver, Beattie, Moore, Chekhov, Hemingway, Mansfield, yadda yadda yadda. I love 'em all. I _enjoy_ SF, but when I find myself waxing ecstatic about a short story, it's most likely to be a piece of lit-fic I'm waxing about.

Not with this book. These are incredible stories; passionate, beautiful, painfully moving, lyrically written, exquisitely crafted. If you should ever happen across a literary fiction snob who thinks that science fiction just can't measure up in artistic terms to the best lit-fic, this is the book to raise high in both hands and bludgeon the snob over the head with.

Fair warning On the last page of the last story in this collection, one character says to another, "You carry despair as your gift." Those words could stand as an epigraph to the whole of the book and to Tiptree/Sheldon's writing career. Despair and the dashing of hopes are a hallmark of these stories, so don't come to the book expecting sweetness and light, pretty butterflies and hopping bunnies. But in Tiptree's hands, despair is truly a gift. Take the fruits of that gift; read these stories, and be enriched.