From Booklist
The late James Tiptree Jr. was well known for producing some of the most imaginative, gender-bending sf of the 1970s and 1980s. Tiptree also had a reputation for J. D. Salinger-like reclusiveness and astounded everyone when a presumed masculine identity dissolved to reveal the author's given name, Alice Sheldon. The award bearing her pseudonym honors stories and novels that "explore and expand gender roles in speculative fiction." This first collection of Tiptree Award-related material samples the winning stories since the first awards in 1991 and includes informative essays and snippets from a few of the winning novels. Geoff Ryman opens the volume with an inventive tale about the first homosexual male to give birth, and Kelly Link closes it with a modern variation on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen." In between, such stellar figures as Ursula K. LeGuin and Joanna Russ weigh in with discourses on femininity, and Tiptree herself gives an account of her "identity crisis." A superior array of creative and thoughtful writing for both genders. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Really worth the ducats...important in the speculative fiction field." —Bookslut.com
"Hold[s] several interesting gems." —SFCrowsnest
"The overall quality of individual fictions is high." —Strange Horizons
Book Description
This debut anthology features short fiction, novel excerpts, and essays that have won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Created in 1991 to honor the innovative fiction of Alice Bradley Sheldon (who wrote under the pen name James Tiptree), the Tiptree Award is presented to speculative fiction that explores and expands gender roles—and in the process touches on the most fundamental of human desires: the need for sex, for love, and for acceptance. This collection includes thought-provoking essays by Suzy McKee Charnas, Karen Joy Fowler, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Murphy, and Joanna Russ.
About the Author
Karen Joy Fowler is the author of The Jane Austen Book Club, Sarah Canary, Sister Noon, and the short story collection Black Glass, which won the World Fantasy Award in 1999. She lives in Davis, California. Pat Murphy is the author of Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell and two Nebula Award–winning titles: The Falling Woman and Rachel in Love. She lives in San Francisco, California. Debbie Notkin is an editor for Tor Books and Prima Publishing. She lives in Berkeley, California. Jeffrey D. Smith is the literary trustee of James Tiptree, Jr.'s estate. He is the editor of Women in Science Fiction and Meet Me at Infinity, a posthumous collection of Tiptree's stories and essays. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
