Book Review: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.

 

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
by James Tiptree Jr.
Paperback, 508 pages
Published November  2004 by Tachyon Publications (first published  1990)
Locus Award Nominee for Best Collection (1991)

For any other author, this life story would be the case of truth being stronger than fiction, but in the case of Uncle Tip, AKA James Tiptree Jr., AKA Alice Sheldon the fiction is really fucking strange. The truth about this writing life is strange for sure. She led an interesting life that is often misunderstood. Let’s get one thing clear, Alice Sheldon didn’t choose a man’s name to get published in the 60s and 70s science fiction community.

While there is evidence of DC AKA Dorothy Fontana had done this to sell western scripts in TV at the time, the science fiction community had several active female voices at the time. Judith Merrill, Joanna Russ, and Ursala K Leguin were just some of the giants in the field at the time. When Lisa Yasek collected stories for the Library of America’s The Future is Female there was no shortage of stories and authors to choose from. Sure Judith Merrill may have needed to make party part bets to break John W. Campbell’s personal glass ceiling, but since we have agreed to his need to retroactively fuck off let's remember women were publishing in Sci-fi, and Tiptree was a pen name for other reasons.

No, Alice Sheldon was an intelligence officer for the Air Force and later with the CIA and that is the reason she created a  pen name, and the idea of making a man’s personality that could trade letters just seemed away to hide her identity even better. "A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation."

She grew up in Chicago and first read Weird Tales in 1924, her parents were University of Chicago academics who brought her traveling around the world. The ingredients that make her special as a writer are all there. The fierce intelligence, the mind opened to other cultures, and young readership of the fantastic. The final piece was her time as a spy, in the Air Force and eventually the CIA. It appears she analyzed photos and did not overthrow countries. None the less it gave the stories another edge of knowledge and experience as well.

Tiptree stories started appearing in the late 60s and while the author was not active in the scene beyond letters the stories were popular and the work celebrated. For good reason, a Tiptree story is one of powerful ideas and artfully composed prose. To me, the greatest strength found across the board depth of these stories is the power of the concepts and themes. Some genre writers who come up with powerful themes fail to overlook the human element. Not Alice Sheldon.

The characters are so rich that forty years later people are still laughing at Robert Silverberg for insisting that these stories had to be written by a man. Once the truth was revealed Ursula Leguin had it correct when she said "[Tiptree's work is] proof of what she said, that men and women can and do speak both to and for one another if they have bothered to learn how."

This collection is serious business, and if there is an actual canon of 20th century speculative or weird fiction this volume should be in it. Beyond it having absolute classics of the genre like The Nebula award-winning “Screwfly Solution” and Hugo winning stories like the robot tale “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” it is a high watermark of quality.

These eighteen stories balance Sheldon’s skill for the high concept with her very unflinching eye for the brutally cold universe. The best moments of Sheldon’s stories have a cosmic horror level of species self-reflection and intellectual misanthropy from a woman who was not fucking around. She was willing in more than one fictional journey to put this whole species on trial including this book’s opening shot. "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain" is a short and bitter-sweet fictional trial for humanity’s mistreatment of the one and only planet we depend on. The ending is harsh but earned.

“Screwfly Solution” is the best story in the collection and probably her ultimate classic. To me this is a top ten horror fiction story of all time, it one I realized I had read before collected elsewhere. This is one of two stories in this collection that explores the loss of one of our two genders. In this case, men are compelled to murder in what becomes global femicide. Although the ending twist is hidden in plain sight, a title that goes over the head of most readers. This story hits lots of end of the world tropes but all very well done. There are some very creepy moments with the young girl trying to pass as a boy. This story is an absolute masterpiece.

While that story is easily the best, my favorite is “Houston, Houston Do You Read?” Which is a great flip of that story with post-men earth. It is done in a space-based story, that has some interesting if not slightly out-of-date space science. Time warps, planetary motion, and astronauts doing fuel calculation were all fun stuff before we get to the gender issues. I loved it.

Sheldon always tackled deeper themes. Also, sexuality beyond gender, what drives our species. Tiptree stories were intelligent and written to make you think.

When I say she was not fucking around. All these harsh and brutal judgments in her stories ended when the author of this book killed herself and her husband in a suicide pact. I think that has important meaning to how you can and should read these stories. Alice Sheldon judged this species, and she was not above that judgment. She wasn’t some softie whose motivation was impressing the cool kids at Worldcon.

“It’s an overreaction, my dear. History goes by swings. People overreact and pass harsh unrealistic laws which attempt to stamp out an essential social process. When this happens, the people who understand have to carry on as best they can until the pendulum swings back.”

I don’t want to sound like Tiptree was writing nothing but dour sad stories. This is not poetry written by some goth edge lord. These are serious pieces of work by a serious thinker. James Tiptree AKA Alice Sheldon is one of the best this genre produced. Essential reading period.

“Hope is a terrible thing, it brings fear that the hope won’t be realized. Suppress the fear and it surfaces as symbol.”