James Nicoll Reviews

Home > Reviews > By Contributor

Reviews by Contributor: Krasnostein, Alisa (1)

Memento Mori

Letters to Tiptree

By Alisa Krasnostein & Alexandra Pierce  

23 Mar, 2016

Miscellaneous Reviews

0 comments

Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein’s 2015’s Letters to Tiptree delivers exactly what it promises in the title … and more!

While women have always written science fiction, their presence in the field grew phenomenally in the 1960s and 1970s. And many of these new writers were very talented. I remember looking at a stack of new SF novels I had just purchased and realizing that none of them had been written by men. 

But there was one major talent to whom the men could point, a male talent who proved that men were still players in the top leagues. To quote Ted Sturgeon1

nearly all of the top newer writers, with the exception of James Tiptree, Jr., were women.”

For those of you tuning in late, James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen-name of Alice Bradley Sheldon. But this book isn’t so much about Tiptree, exactly2. It’s about how she affected her friends and readers …which includes the readers who might have been her friends had she not shot herself on May 191987.

Read more ➤