you thought this was Cinderella transistorized

"the girl who was plugged in," james tiptree jr

Raphael Köhler via Wikimedia Commons

I recently went on a trip to see a new doctor, and while I never love flying (particularly in this era of Stuff Dropping Off The Planes), I do always end up reading a lot because I refuse to pay for the internet. Something you always have to confront on these trips is the degree to which it’s really true that ready access to the internet is ruining your ability to do anything else, a lesson that is promptly forgotten the moment you get to land and can browse stupid subreddits to your heart’s content. So I read in whole or in part eight books on my trip. Now I’m back to my old ways. Ah well.

Anyway—one of the books I read was Julie Phillips’s great biography of James Tiptree Jr, The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon,¹ which I’d read pieces of before but never just read straight through. It’s definitely a book to read if you have any interest in science fiction. (She’s writing a biography of Ursula LeGuin, I believe…)

Anyway… I mention all of this as prolo…