12) Star Songs of an Old Primate, by James Tiptree Jr
With all the buzz about Julie Phillips’ new biography of Alice Sheldon, I realised that I am not as familiar with the works of James Tiptree as I would like to be. This pulls together just eight stories in 270 pages, including two which I had already read (“Your Haploid Heart” and the Hugo and Nebula winner “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?”). With the exception of the shortest story, a five page stream-of-consciousness vignette, I found them all not only enjoyable but also thought-provoking. Tiptree was really good at not so much subverting the genre’s conventions but more putting subversive material into the framework while none the less respecting it. Will try and find more of her stuff before launching myself on the biography.
I don’t want to retain a hereditary element either, but I don’t think Russell’s presence in the Lords is any more ridiculous than that of any of the other hereditary peers: the law entitled him to a presumption of legitimacy (and rightly so, in my view, to discourage malicious meddling in matters that should remain private.) If we’re going to have hereditary peers at all, it has to be right that inheritance is judged by legal relationships rather than biological ones.