James Tiptree Jr The Starry Rift

Ineluctably masculine.

No, but seriously there are a remarkable number of dead women in this book.

This has been sitting on my bookshelf unread for years, because there isn't going to be any more Tiptree. I decided to read it, because what's the point of keeping it unread forever? Also I wanted some new Tiptree, after being unsatisfied by Philips literary criticism.

It's three linked novellas -- linked by some aliens getting them out of the library. (I am not kidding!) The first, "The Only Neat Thing To Do" is the best -- a girl given a spaceship to buzz about her local area instead takes off exploring and finds very alien aliens. The middle one concerns a man whose psychological memory erasure has wiped out his first love, he meets her again, and also her cloned granddaughter. The third is about first contact and is very peculiar.

I couldn't figure out the way time worked at the tech level. They didn't have FTL or ansibles, they needed cold sleep to go between stars, but it was perfectly ordinary to have one-person coupe STL spaceships as graduation presents but have your parents worry if you were away for a while? This gets especially worrying in the third one.

Apart from that, well, they couldn't possibly live up to being the last unread Tiptree and having been on the shelf for all this time, they're not as good as her very best work -- it seems to me she was one of those people naturally best at short length -- but very enjoyable.

If you haven't read any Tiptree, start with one of the collections.