Thumbs up for Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree, Jr. Science fiction.
Years ago I read another collection of Triptree stories (Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home) and I don’t remember much about them except that her characters skittered away from me any time I made a move in their direction. As I generally read for character, this did not make me a Tiptree fan. Now, older and better-read, I more appreciate Tiptree’s artistic genius. I am, however, still not her proper audience. She is earthy and clever and snappy and sometimes very funny, but in the end, I find her stories about as heartening as licking the inside of your freezer. Inevitably (I make no bones about my own predictable taste) I like the specifically comedic one the best:
At the time of our story the only aliens in permanent residence were a small evangelical mession near Strangled Otter, Wis., and four crazy firemice from the planet Dirty who were speculating in New York real estate on the premise that the air would soon be oxygen-free. There was also a rumor of something or somebody holed out in the central Australian plateau.
–from “All the Kinds of Yes”
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