Review: Star Songs of An Old Primate

Star Songs of An Old Primate by James Tiptree Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There wasn't a moment of reading this book where I wasn't engaged, excited, or delighted. Ursula Le Guin's excellent introduction was especially fun, as this collection came out very soon after Tiptree was revealed to be Alice Sheldon. Le Guin insists that saying Tiptree "doesn't exist" is absurd (after all, she's exchanged many letters with him) and urges the reader to think about how identity is formed, and how an author shapes our expectations. She also points out a tidbit I didn't know but thought was neat: Tiptree withdrew "The Women Men Don't See" from award consideration prior to being 'outed', because many lauded the story for Tiptree's ability to understand women despite being a man.

Anyway, this anthology is classic Tiptree. You can see Alice Sheldon's long government and research careers at work in "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats" and "Your Haploid Heart." Her interest in biology and gender come to the fore in "Haploid" as well as "A Momentary Taste of Being," "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "She Waits for All Men Born." "All Men Born" is a fantastically dark, optimistic end to the anthology, and feels very modern even today. As characteristic of Tiptree, many of the stories read like mysteries; something is hidden, just barely visible through the layers of the story, until a sudden reveal in the third act. And yet I didn't get tired of the format, even when re-reading "Houston" for the third time.

I have a major bone to pick with "A Momentary Taste of Being," though, because I wrote half that damn story and plotted out the rest of it. The central premise of the story and several of the big moments map on to a short story I drafted a year ago, though of course Tiptree's is eerier and she had a much better set-up and payoff. I had to put down the book halfway through that story and kick myself for not finishing my story earlier, because now I certainly couldn't write it without constant comparison to this one.

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