FACT SF Reading Group

August 2001

August 7: Meet Me at Infinity by James Tiptree, Jr.

Thirteen people attended this discussion, including one first-time participant. Also, one person submitted comments by email. The book under consideration was a recent collection of short stories and essays by James Tiptree, Jr. Only one person at the meeting was able to finish the book.

For those unfamiliar with the author, a brief introduction is in order. James Tiptree, Jr. was one of the major SF writers of the 60s and 70s, writing such award-winning stories as "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "The Women Men Don't See." Tiptree was a recluse who never appeared in public, and no in the SF community knew anything about the author. Finally it was revealed that Tiptree was the pseudonym of Dr. Alice Sheldon, a psychologist who worked for the CIA. Shortly after her death in the 80s, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for gender-bending SF was established. Presented annually at WisCon, this award has gone to several excellent works including The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh.

Since Meet Me At Infinity was published several years after the author's death and it came out from a major publisher, we expected it to be a "best of" Tiptree. Unfortunately this book turned out to contain the "uncollected Tiptree". This means that most of the stories were minor works. Several stories contain interesting ideas, but none of the stories are completely successful. These stories simply give us no idea of the quality Tiptree achieved in her best work. We spent a large portion of the meeting naming our favorite Tiptree stories ("The Screwfly Solution", etc.) and wishing they were included in this book.

The nonfiction portions of the book were better. Tiptree's essays discussing her work were interesting, but it was frustrating that none of the famous stories she mentioned were available in this book. The interviews and letters to fanzines were fun to read, but Tiptree's attempts to maintain the false male persona prevented much real personal information from getting through.

Overall we found Meet Me at Infinity to be an unsatisfying book. It is only appropriate for Tiptree completists, who have read all of her famous work and want to get their hands on every word she wrote. Readers wishing to try Tiptree's work for the first time should find one of her other books, which unfortunately are all out of print. After the meeting many of us had a nice dinner at The Spaghetti Warehouse.

August 21: Sidhe Devil by Aaron Allston

Twelve people attended this meeting, and two submitted comments by email. One of the email participants was a person in Tennessee who has never attended one of our meetings in person, but who was a personal friend of one of our group's regulars. Sidhe Devil is an action-packed fantasy novel that takes place mostly in a fairy world that greatly resembles Earth in the early 20^th century. The heroic Doc Sidhe and his band of competent assistants travel to an international sports competition to foil a fiendish supernatural plot. All ten of us who started this book finished it.

We had a lot of fun with this book. It has characters we quickly grew to like, gripping action, and an intriguing setting. Several people compared this book's urban fantasy world with the world in Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams. The plot was firmly in the pulp fiction tradition of such classic characters as the Shadow and Doc Savage. There was a lot of good humor. The rules of magic were well established in this book, and the author followed them consistently. Lots of things blew up in this book. Doc's vehicles (particularly the outrigger balloon) were cool. The family of small-time criminals reminded many of us of Disney's Beagle Boys. The events in the athletic competition were clever and vicious variants of familiar sports. Despite this being the second book in a series, no one had any trouble following what was going on.

We had only minor criticisms. Some people felt that Doc Sidhe was not in enough of the foreground action. Two of the women in the group felt that this was a "guy book". A couple of people felt the martial arts fighting scenes were too long.

Overall we found Sidhe Devil to be a delightful summertime read. We think Allston achieved his goals admirably. Many of us wanted to rush out and read (or reread) Doc Sidhe, the earlier book in this series. After the meeting we had a nice dinner at Brick Oven Pizza.

August 27: Dinner With Aaron Allston

We took local author Aaron Allston, author of Sidhe Devil, out to dinner on August 27. Eleven of us gathered for a nice meal at Tien Hong. Since Aaron was formerly a member of our Reading Group and still reads a lot, we discussed books we'd read recently. It turned out that Aaron also liked The Club Dumas. Aaron talked about his experiences writing Star Wars novels, several of which had been on bestseller lists. He mentioned that despite his success, a reader had only recognized him in public once. He said that he started writing Sidhe Devil over three years ago, and that his editor at Baen was ArmadilloCon 23 Editor Guest Toni Weisskopf. We all had a nice evening, and we appreciated Aaron giving us the opportunity to visit with him.

-- A. T. Campbell, III