Study Guide Questions on Tiptree

“Mama Come Home” was published first, in 1968; “Houston” and “Screwfly” published in 1976 and 1977.  Can you see any evolution in her ideas and concerns?   
  • What do these three stories have in common in terms of theme and structure?
    • oppressiveness of partriarchy
    • switching gender roles
    • the sense of power by force or dominance can always be reversed when something bigger comes along
    • our biology constantly threatens and underminds our rationality
  • If you had read these stories when they were published under the pseudonym James Tiptree, would you have thought they were written by a man?  Why or why not?
  • Are these stories feminist in any traditional sense?
  • How do these stories fit into, play upon, and twist conventions and cliches of traditional SF?

"Mama Come Home"
  • What is the main point of this story?  --> Bigger is not necessarily better. Those in power tend to exploit it.  The problem isn't MEN, it's bullies.
  • How does she play with gender and genre expectations?  -->story is a reversal of the cliched, aliens want to steal our women story.  Here the aliens want to steal our men. Men who squirm at the image of a vacuum cleaner in musth should think of how disturbing the many images of women being raped by aliens are.
  • “Mama” was published the same year as Left hand of Darkness, just as the feminist movement was beginning.  Do you see any similarities between these stories?
  • How does the reversal of gender roles in this story demonstrate the working of power in our own society?

How does the story show social construction of gender?  

"The Screwfly Solution"
  • What is the main point? [the association between sex and violence is the weak link in our reproductive cycle; if we don't work to get rid of it, it may destroy our species}.

  • What are the ecological implications of this story?

"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"
  • How does this story mirror and revise Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman?
  • Can you make any comparisons between Lorimer, Bud, and Captain Dave in Tiptree's story and Jeff the romantic, Terry the macho man, and Van the sociologist in Gilman's?
  • Does Tiptree share some of Gilman's essentialist ideas about the differences between men and women?  What do both authors see as common female and male traits?
  • How is Tiptree's story different from Gilman's?  What issues have changed on the gender horizon?

How do the dichotomies that Tiptree sets up relate to Left Hand?  Especially to the differences between Karhide and Orgoreyn?


Although i am now retired I remain active in Virginia Woolf scholarship, regularly publishing (mostly on flowers and gardens), presenting at conferences, and frequently participating in various on-line zoom seminars. I run the Virginia Woolf list serv. Most recently I have been writing essays on each of the flowers mentioned by Woolf in her fiction or essays. These can be found in my Virginia Woolf Herbarium. I have also written extensively on connections between Virginia Woolf and Georgia O'Keeffe. When I am not writing, I am a printmaker, specializing in color-reduction woodcut and encaustic monotype.

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