Review: Souls/Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

Souls/Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by Joanna Russ
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wasn't planning to read this yet, but I shouldn't be surprised that I picked it up and read it out of order, since it's the first book I've actually purchased in quite a long time (support your local library, folks!). I liked the idea of a neat pair of double-bound novellas. They're printed upside down and backward to each other. So cute, and such an excellent pairing of novellas and authors. Both won the Hugo and Houston additionally won the Nebula.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr. starts with three male astronauts attempting to reach Houston. Instead, they make contact with an unexpected ship full of young women. The main character, Lorimer, is a man who is very aware of his lack of masculinity, and juxtapoxing that insecurity between the competent young women and the very masculine men on his ship provides some beautiful (if slightly unsettling) meaning and character development. I won't go into the plot here, but this is the best of Tiptree's stories that I've read so far and deserves any award that you could throw at it.

Souls by Joanna Russ features a sharp-minded Abbess in Germanic England who is faced with a Viking invasion. Again, with such a short story I won't go into the plot, but I'm slightly disappointed that the vague plot summary on the cover is not really what happens in the story. It's compellingly written - not quite the masterpiece that Houston is - and a quick but fascinating read.

View all my reviews