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From: karl@dartvax.UUCP (Karl Berry.)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Silverberg, Tiptree, and author's sex.
Message-ID: <3533@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Aug-85 18:41:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.3533
Posted: Sat Aug 31 18:41:02 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 2-Sep-85 03:45:29 EDT
References: <1804@reed.UUCP> <23400001@ISM780B.UUCP>
Reply-To: karl@dartvax.UUCP (Karl Berry.)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 35
Summary: 


In the copyy of Warm Worlds and Otherwise that I have, Silverberg added a
postscript ( it's a new edition. ) to the fact that he was, indeed, humbled
by learning Tiptree is female, as Jim Balter ( ima!jim ) suggests.
   On the other hand, regarding his other comment about her writing:
I read everything by Tiptree I could get my hands on before I learned that
she was Alice Sheldon, and found no reason to take ``James Tiptree'' as
anything other than an extremely fine male writer. I think it is extremely
easy to point out after the fact ``well, of COURSE Tiptree was female, look
at this story, and this one, and this one!''
   Writing is writing. Silverberg was probably rash to go out on such a thin
limb about being able to tell males' writing from females'; he may be
correct, however, in postulating that some fiction writers, he named
Hemingway and Austen, write fiction that simply could not be written by
someone of the opposite sex. I don't think this is the case with
Tiptree/Sheldon, and, in fact, since she was able to write as a male for
many years without a great hue and cry ( even in the small sf community. )
it seems that it couldn't be.
   I think Mr. Balter does an injustice to male writers when he says they
mostly concentrate on war and mechanics, in two ways. First, by implying --
at least to me -- that female sf writers concentrate on the ``meaning of
love, beauty, and other emotional themes'', when, as I peruse some of the
non-emotional books  in the sf section at the local library, proportionately
just as many are written by females as males. ( C.J. Cherryh comes to mind
immediately as a prolific writer of war and mechanics. Wait -- C.J. Cherryh
is female, isn't she? ) Second, that the ``vast majority'' of male sf
writers aren't concerned with that, either. Gene Wolfe, Harlan Ellison,
Stephen Donaldson are all, at least to me, concerned with love and beauty,
not to mention hate and ugliness, without which love and beauty wouldn't
exist, at least as much as, say, James Tiptree, Jr.
   Or Alice Sheldon.

karl@dartvax.uucp                  karl@dartmouth.csnet