Her Smoke Rose up Forever

by James Tiptree

[nannah]

Wow, I was definitely not prepared for this. Picking this up, all I knew about it was that the author used a male pseudonym (which was why it qualified for my reading challenge). That's literally it. I was in for one hell of a ride. :S

Book content warnings:
rape, noncon
incest
in-book misogyny
cissexism
racism
(violently graphic) murder
... and probably more :S
(many of the -isms are in-book but there are some occurrences where I'm just ... not sure)

Okay, short intro: Alice Sheldon is the woman behind the pseudonym, James Tiptree Jr., born in Chicago, 1915. Throughout her life, she traveled to many countries, including India, Switzerland, some in Central Africa, and some in Southeast Asia, which contributed to her short stories. In WWII she became America's first female photo-intelligence officer; she joined the CIA; she was a painter, an art critic, a graphic artist; she earned a Ph.D in experimental psychology; her sci-fi writings won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award (more than once), and the World Fantasy Award. And as a side note: she also had a literal river going through her house in which she had three desks set up to write as her three pseuds.

She was one heck of a person.

Oh, and relevant to me (a wlw) and relevant to many of her stories, which contain multiple sexualities, there's this:
"I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up."
- It's a nice thing to know, that her writings aren't necessarily fetishizing.

This collection contains eighteen of Alice Sheldon's game-changing short stories. Usually short story collections are a grab bag sort of deal: some are good, some aren't, and overall you're not sure how to feel about it.

This collection is a bit different. It felt as if it had been arranged in a way that warmed the reader up to her extreme ... creativity when it comes to sci-fi, I guess, for lack of a better phrasing. The first third is pretty tame (when it comes to sci-fi extremes), though I remember a lot of it went over my head. The middle third is where (I felt) the stories really peaked when it comes to a balance of sci-fi, beauty, storytelling, and a level of weirdness. These were my favorites, with "With Delicate Mad Hands" taking the top title. And then the last third of the collection ... is just weird (maybe not to more regular sci-fi readers). There's random incest, very intense sexual images, and more. I think I can do without these stories when I reread her stuff. I can definitely do without them, haha. But to each their own!

I think though, largely, I am very, very glad I read these stories, that I basically stumbled upon them. I'm so glad I go to learn about this woman. I think I can learn a lot about sci-fi, what the genre can mean beyond what I've ever read or imagined, and even about writing in general, through her.