James Tiptree Jr. tells a fascinating tale of bizarre aliens and flawed humans in the novel "Up the Walls of the World". On Earth, a burned-out doctor leads a government project to test a group of higly dysfunctional human telepaths. On the wind-world of Tyree, a group of aliens try to stave off the destruction of their sun by a creature know as the Destroyer. To save themselves, they could jump into the minds of the human psychics, but should they? Should they sacrifice the lives of a few people to save their own race from destruction? Such moral questions lie at the heart of Tiptree's work. Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) does a fantastic job of portraying the pain and pathos of the humans, and the society and culture of the Tyree, all with the intense, poetic prose that she is so well known for. A deep and beautiful work.
