FABClub (Female Authors Book Club) discussion

Discussion thread for James Tiptree JR

September is almost over! I can't believe it. Time to get going on this :)

I just started this today and I'm really enjoying it. It's much richer and more involving than I expected.

For those of you who haven't started this yet, I'm telling you it is so, so, so much more than I expected! Perhaps I had super low expectations, but really, I figured, how much is there to say about the life of a science fiction writer, no matter how good her stories were? What it actually is, is a multi-layered look at the role gender played in the lives of women over the last century. Fascinating!

I am working on this one finally, and Alexa you are right it is so much more involved than I expected. There is a huge amount of information on Alice's personal struggles with her gender and sexuality, and the writing style is very captivating.

Yes, I had simply thought of her as a woman writing under a male pseudonym; instead she actually took on a male persona, and corresponded extensively for years with some of science fiction's greatest writers, both male and female, as a man, and none of them suspected. It raises fascinating questions about masculinity vs. femininity.