Neat Sheets: The Poetry of James Tiptree, Jr.

Recently discovered early poetry by this Hugo and Nebula-award winning author.

Tiptree was one of the most original writers ever in a field that values originality above all things. These early poems are intriguing, suggestive, and essential to all serious fans of her work. – Michael Swanwick James Tiptree was one of the best short story writers of the last half of the twentieth century. – Gardner Dozois The Poetry has a heightened sense of emotionalism, a clear message of isolationism and loneliness, a disappointed romanticism, and the occasional lash of a sharp wit. – from the introduction by Karen Joy Fowler . . . phrases such as “I am burned to a fine white bone of truth” and “‘Life ‘ is just another name for agony” speak of pure Sheldonian anguish. Read and weep. – Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine Some of the poems are powerful and lucid. Others probably had private meaning. They form a footnote to a significant career. – Aboriginal Science Fiction Alice Sheldon was one of the most charming and involving people to grace the science fiction field with their presence in modern times. She was enchanting both in person and in her fiction. She won, and deserved to win, the Nebula and the Hugo for short fiction and was many times a nominee, producing a body of work in the 1970s that is unexcelled in range, variety, and depth. She invented cyberpunk in “The Girl Who Was Plugged In. ” She wrote “The Women Men Don’t See, ” which is arguably the greatest feminist science fiction story. She had the respect and admiration of her peers and the love of her readers, and yet she never rested on her laurels, always teaching herself new techniques, working for years to write in persons and verb tenses other than third and past to achieve her effects. – David Hartwell