The SF Site: Featured Reviews Archive

The reviews are sorted alphabetically by authors' last name -- one or more pages for each letter (plus one for Mc). All but some recent reviews are listed here. Links to those reviews appear on the Recent Feature Review Page.

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The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin and Jeffrey D. Smith
reviewed by Jakob Schmidt
The James Tiptree Award Anthology has been accompanying the annual Tiptree Award for two years now, collecting a wide range of fantastic short fiction and essays held together by their common focus on gender issues. The nine pieces of short fiction range from magical realism to space opera -- on first glance, a rather eclectic mixture. Yet, most of the fiction is connected by a common interest in the question of how the idea of beauty is negotiated culturally and technologically.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith
reviewed by Paul Kincaid
The James Tiptree Award is probably the most idiosyncratic award in science fiction. While all other awards aim at recognising some version of the 'best' in the genre, the Tiptree Award goes to fiction 'that explores and expands our notion of gender.' While other awards announce a short list and then draw their winner from it, the Tiptree Award chooses a winner and then publishes a short list. While other awards separate out novel, novella, novelette and short story (if they consider the shorter forms at all), the Tiptree Award has recognised, without fear or favour, novels, short stories and collections. And no other award finances itself by bake sales, cook books and auctions -- or would even dream of doing so.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith
reviewed by Kit O'Connell
The best thing about this anthology is "The Snow Queen," a fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson newly translated by Diana Crone Frank and Jeffrey Frank. It is followed by two modern, Tiptree award-winning retellings of the story. "The Lady of the Ice Garden," by Kara Dalkey, is a Japanese retelling of the fable and Kelly Link's "Travels with the Snow Queen," a clever, post-modernist interpretation that uses the fable as a metaphor for the emotional upheaval of relationships and breakups.

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. and The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
While certainly any James Tiptree, Jr. devotee might quibble with the selection of stories, this is undoubtedly the best introduction to Tiptree's work that exists, and has long deserved an affordable paperback reprint In his original introduction of the Arkham House edition, John Clute called the book "one of the two or three most significant collections of short science fiction ever published." The passage of time has not rendered this judgment any less accurate.

The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, Jeffrey D. Smith
reviewed by Steven H Silver
For years, a woman writes using a man's name and nobody twigs to her real identity. In a major collection of her work, an expert announces that there is something ineluctably masculine about the stories. Such was the early science fiction career of Alice B. Sheldon, better known to the science fiction reading masses as James Tiptree, Jr. Following Sheldon's tragic death, a cadre of admirers founded an award to honor the exploration and expansion of the use of gender.

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