The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, the Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's been years since I picked up an S.F. book; this was an impulse grab on my way out of the library a few weeks ago. What I remember of S.F. is lots of stories centered around men in space, with lots of ridiculous, unpronounceable names for things and goofy deus-ex-machina "technologies." Most of these stories have neither of those elements. They are considered, accessible contemporary fiction, some of the best being written in any "genre" in the world today. The excerpt from Matt Ruff's HOUSE OF SOULS excited me tremendously, and I'm now reading that book.

James Tiptree, Jr. was one of my favorite SF authors back when I first was reading SF as a kid. Since I mostly read older books from the library, I wasn't "in" on the "big secret"--that James Tiptree was really "James Tiptree" aka Alice Sheldon. An award named after the author's nom de plume was created a few years ago and this is the first volume to fete the winners. The award goes, it seems, to stories that explore gender roles. It is kind of a weird thing to build an award around, if you think about it. It isn't "stories that prominently feature women", for example: instead it is about stories in which gender or gender roles play a prominent part. The stories presented here are uniformly excellent (which you would expect: the award winners are not in chronological order, so you'd expect them to pick the very best for the first volume). The essays are less effective; a couple of them are familiar from other places (the Le Guin entry, for example, feels like pure filler--why didn't they just excerpt Disposessed for cryin' out loud?!?). The letter from Tiptree, reprinted here, is glorious, although, oddly it did make me wonder what she would have thought of the award. The introduction is slightly goofy. Suzy Charnas's essay is good, if a bit more inside baseball than I really needed. Still and all: you're unlikely to pick up a better anthology this year. And the broader, quirky scope of the award keeps the volume from being tedious: there are lots of interesting gender roles to explore in SF and there is nothing mawkishly politically correct about the award winners (which one might reasonably fear going in). Highly recommended.

The Tiptree Awards honor fiction which explore and expand gender - and the award winners chosen for this first anthology reflect such notable masters of the art as Tiptree herself, Joanna Russ, Ursula LeGuin and other notable writers of science fiction and fantasy. From boys stolen from their homes to lead new wild lives in a strange world to an anthropological account of a woman linguist on another world, anticipate involving, gender-breaking stories which always offer the unexpected in plot and twist of action.

The Tiptree Award is given to speculative fiction (fantasy and science fiction) that pushes the boundaries of gender. The award was named for a writer (James Tiptree, Jr.) extolled for masculine writing, who was later revealed to be a woman (Alice Sheldon). The Tiptree bake sales were created to be an ironic source of funding for the award. Hence the tag line of this subversive anthology: "Sex, the Future, and Chocolate Chip Cookies." In "Birth Days" by Geoff Ryman, a geneticist trying to cure homosexuality discovers reproductive freedom. It's a sweet, surpising and pointed story. Richard Calder's "The Catgirl Manifesto," is a faux-academic piece in which Lolita-like catgirls cause social havoc with their deadly allure -- sexy and creepy as hell. Ursula K. Le Guin weighs in with a characteristically wry essay, "Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love." She points out that Margaret Atwood's THE HANDMAID'S TALE is actually a science fiction novel, but that Atwood's publishers were terrified to bill it as such, given the reputation of the genre. In a clever juxtaposition, three versions of the "The Snow Queen" fairy tale are included, inlcuding the original Hans Christian Andersen version in a new translation (not at all as you remember it!); "Lady of the Ice Garden" by Kara Dalkey, set in feudal Japan; and Kelly Link's "Travels with the Ice Queen," which has a distinctly modern (ok, postmodern) spin, and may be one of the best fairy-tale retellings I've ever read. These excellent stories and essays are from the 2003 winner of the Tiptree Award (Matt Ruff for SET THIS HOUSE IN ORDER), and the short-listed selections (which are announced at the same time as the winner, and given almost equal billing). Other contributors include Karen Joy Fowler, Joanna Russ, Suzy McKee Charnas, and Pat Murphy. This is a thoughtful, entertaining, and frankly long-overdue anthology. If you like sexy, challeging, and utterly captivating writing, this is the book for you.