Themes in Tiptree

Major Themes in Tiptree’s Writing,

Including Various Critics

·      EXOGAMY -- human need to mate/merge with/ know/ impregnate the Other (see Siegel 18)

·      BIOLOGICAL FATALISM -- inevitable destructiveness of biological urges  (“trapped within a certain set of biological paradoxes and limitations” (Siegel 12)

·      PARADOX OF DESIRE --what you want/need the most will kill you, sometimes after a few moments of transcendent joy (see Siegel on paradox as “man’s most essential characteristic” 13)

·      VULNERABILITY OF THE SUBORDINATE -- usually women, but whoever lives ‘in the chinks of the world machine.”  Often in a position to quietly undermine power structure, or at least opt out of it

·      SEARCH FOR HOME --  (Michel Bishop; Siegel quotes Dozois on this, 23) ”man’s transcendent longing for lost homes, no matter how self-destructive or futile that longing may be”)

·      ALIENATION -- many of main characters are alienated, cut off from “normal” social norms, by being women, by being ugly, small, or otherwise de-formed, and often by being called or having a cosmic vision of another possible reality

·      DOUBLE-SOULEDNESS/ DOUBLE-WORLDNESS -- specific form of alienation in wh main character lives in a reality different from the norm, sometimes a form of schizophrenia induced by trauma as in “Sisters” or “Vivyan”

·      ENTROPY -- as ultimate evil; “neg-entropy”: “complexity, organization, high bit-rate information” are good.  … Consensus and democracy are more highly organized forms than tyranny and Nazism” Siegel 14)  NB in this she is quite similar to PKD: empathy vs entropy

·      LOVE-- need for connection/ communication

·      ETHICAL CHOICES/ RESPONSIBILITY

·      COMPLEXITY OF CULTURAL INTERACTION

·      DANGER OF FALSE ANALOGIES