User Profile

My first encounter with James Tiptree Jr. (aka Raccoona Sheldon, real name Alice Sheldon) was many years ago, in a short story collection a friend was reading for a university course. The story, "The Screwfly Solution," stuck with me. It was brutal, laying bare the potential within men for violence against women, and the way they'll use religion to justify it.

It wasn't until many years later that the internet revealed the story's title and author — those details having long faded from my mind.

I bought "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" a few years ago, but only just got around to reading it.

I do recommend it. Sheldon was a ferociously talented writer and storyteller. I loved most of the stories in here. I was surprised to find that The Screwfly Solution had a bit of an old-fashioned feel to it. It felt like something from the fifties or sixties, but was written in the early 70's. I was also surprised to discover that apparently Sheldon invented the cyberpunk genre, with "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," written in 1973. The key elements of cyberpunk — a dystopian future with a sharp divide between the rich and poor, people glued to screens, inhabiting bodies remotely, tech jargon, a breathless narration style — are there. I'm not sure why she's not given credit as the inventor of the genre.

It's a BIG book. The longest story is really a novella. It took me two months to get through the whole damn thing, with a long spell where it seemed I would never reach the end of the novella. It's good, but I tired of it. Sheldon can be very brutal, and her view of the relations between men and woman can be (although isn't always) bleak. It was partly that that slowed me down.

I'd recommend this as a book to read not all at once, but in installments. Read other books, and between them read one or two of the stories from here. It'll be well worth it, because this is excellent science fiction.

Sonny and Me is told from the perspective of a smart kid called Billy, although he is almost universally referred to by his family name, Daughter, and his friend Sonny, who is not the sharpest tool in the box. The two are 4th years at a high school in Stirling, Scotland, and are prone to misadventures, which include stumbling into a (potential) murder mystery that they hope to solve.

This is a hugely enjoyable read. The banter is hilarious and clever. The friendship between the two boys is touching. The cast is pretty diverse, with characters who are gay or bi, a disabled dad, and an Asian love interest. Sonny himself obviously has something going on intellectually.

There was one point (the arrival of missives from Sair Throat) where I thought I'd maybe skipped a page accidentally. Suddenly the plot veered in a new direction, and although I expected that there would be a flashback to fill in the gap, that never happened. That was a little jarring, but otherwise the plot unfolds well.

I liked that not everything works out in the end. Daughter's favourite teacher doesn't get to come back to the school. He doesn't get the girl. But the plot comes to a satisfactory conclusion. I hope Sayers writes more about these two bampots and their adventures. In the meantime I have one of his later novels to read, somewhere down the line. And I'm looking forward to that immensely.