Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" | |
---|---|
Short story by James Tiptree Jr. | |
Cover of the 1989 Tor Double mass market paperback | |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | Aurora: Beyond Equality |
Publication type | Anthology |
Publisher | Fawcett |
Media type | |
Publication date | May 1976 |
Houston, Houston, Do You Read? is a novella by James Tiptree Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon). It won a Nebula Award for Best Novella and a Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1977.[1]
The novella first appeared in the anthology Aurora: Beyond Equality, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan J. Anderson, published by Fawcett in May 1976.[2] It was subsequently reprinted several times (amongst others in the James Tiptree collections Star Songs of an Old Primate in 1978 and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever in 1990) and in 1989 was published in a Tor Doubles mass market paperback (number eleven in that series) with the flipside novella "Souls" by Joanna Russ.
Plot summary
The story is narrated in the third person from the point of view of Dr. Orren Lorimer, the science officer of the spaceship Sunbird, which is sent on a circumsolar mission at some time in the last two decades of the twentieth century. It is a three-man mission, the other two men being the commander, Major Norman Davis ("Dave") and Captain Bernhard Geirr ("Bud"); they have shared tight quarters, boring prepackaged food, and barely adequate life support systems for over a year. Having sustained considerable damage from a solar flare, they have passed around the Sun and look forward to returning to their families on Earth.
When they try to contact Mission Control in Houston, the only radio sources they can find are women, who gradually convince them that the solar flare has sent the Sunbird about three hundred years into the future. The women are from Earth, they have a lunar base and spaceships, and they rescue the Sunbird's crew. Their ship, the Gloria, turns out to be very large; the four women, with the help of "Andy", maintain an ecosystem and enjoy fresh food, comfortable sleep, and exercise. The Sunbird men (especially Dave, the mission leader) are dismayed to learn that they have no ranks or hierarchy, either on the ships or on Earth. Lorimer learns that the one man, Andy, is actually a woman on male hormones. In fact, no Y chromosomes at all have survived into the present time on Earth, due to an epidemic. The women reproduce by cloning 11,000 survivors of a disaster that wiped out all the rest of humanity. Each of the 11,000 women has produced a lineage of cloned sisters/daughters who develop great self-knowledge through these relationships.
The crew of the Gloria test the three men using a truth drug. Bud, the second in command, tries to rape one of the women, all the while insulting her, and hits Andy when the latter tries to interfere. Lorimer watches Bud's activities, always admiring the masculinity of violent men. Dave, when he learns the truth, pulls a gun and crucifix and starts giving everyone orders; Lorimer helps the women disarm him, accepting the women's decision that men pose too great a threat to their society, and must be killed. Although Lorimer is "more human" (as one woman says) than the other two, he, like Bud and Dave, finds a life without a patriarchal hierarchy unthinkable.
Adaptations and influences
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" was adapted as a radio drama for the National Public Radio series Sci-Fi Radio. It originally aired as two half-hour shows, February 4 & 11, 1990.
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" is referenced in the dialogue of the first issue of the post-apocalyptic comic Y: The Last Man, which also depicts a plague that kills off all men, three astronauts who survived the plague in orbit, and a new female society that survives by cloning.
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Clute, John and Peter Nicholls. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York City: St. Martin's Griffin, 1993 (2nd edition 1995). ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
- Murphy, Graham J. Considering Her Ways: In(ter)secting Matriarchal Utopias. Science Fiction Studies, 00917729, July 2008, Vol. 35, Issue 2, Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). In this work Murphy looks at the way utopian/dystopian literature blends humanity, society, nature, and technology. Murphy notes how Triptree, as well, combined these notions and took an almost "insect"-like approach to humanity, in which the mother is the primary care-taker of young and the males serve little to no purpose beyond providing DNA for reproduction.
- Pearson, C. (1977). Women's Fantasies and Feminist Utopias. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 2(3), 50-61. doi:10.2307/3346349. In this article, Pearson notes how women authors perceive utopias. They, like Triptree, envision a world where male violence and sexual inequalities are not existent. In Triptree's case, she created a world in which men do not exist at all.
- Phillips, Julie. James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2006. ISBN 0-312-20385-3. A thorough biography, with insight into Sheldon's life and work. Extensive quotation from her correspondence, journals, and other papers. Times Literary Supplement review [1]
External links
- Houston, Houston, Do You Read? title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
- "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (Selection 17) from the NPR series Sci-Fi Radio (20 & 21), February 4 & 11, 1990 (55:32)
- v
- t
- e
- Who Goes There? by Don A. Stuart (1939)
- If This Goes On— by Robert A. Heinlein (1941)
- Waldo by Robert A. Heinlein (1943)
- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1944)
- Killdozer! by Theodore Sturgeon (1945)
- Animal Farm by George Orwell (1946)
- The Man Who Sold the Moon by Robert A. Heinlein (1951)
- A Case of Conscience by James Blish (1954)
- Riders of the Purple Wage by Philip José Farmer /Weyr Search by Anne McCaffrey (1968)
- Nightwings by Robert Silverberg (1969)
- Ship of Shadows by Fritz Leiber (1970)
- Ill Met in Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber (1971)
- The Queen of Air and Darkness by Poul Anderson (1972)
- The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)
- The Girl Who Was Plugged In by James Tiptree Jr. (1974)
- A Song for Lya by George R. R. Martin (1975)
- Home Is the Hangman by Roger Zelazny (1976)
- By Any Other Name by Spider Robinson / Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree Jr. (1977)
- Stardance by Spider Robinson and Jeanne Robinson (1978)
- The Persistence of Vision by John Varley (1979)
- Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear (1980)
- Lost Dorsai by Gordon R. Dickson (1981)
- The Saturn Game by Poul Anderson (1982)
- Souls by Joanna Russ (1983)
- Cascade Point by Timothy Zahn (1984)
- Press Enter by John Varley (1985)
- 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai by Roger Zelazny (1986)
- Gilgamesh in the Outback by Robert Silverberg (1987)
- Eye for Eye by Orson Scott Card (1988)
- The Last of the Winnebagos by Connie Willis (1989)
- The Mountains of Mourning by Lois McMaster Bujold (1990)
- The Hemingway Hoax by Joe Haldeman (1991)
- Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress (1992)
- Barnacle Bill the Spacer by Lucius Shepard (1993)
- Down in the Bottomlands by Harry Turtledove (1994)
- Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge by Mike Resnick (1995)
- The Death of Captain Future by Allen Steele (1996)
- Blood of the Dragon by George R. R. Martin (1997)
- ...Where Angels Fear to Tread by Allen Steele (1998)
- Oceanic by Greg Egan (1999)
- The Winds of Marble Arch by Connie Willis (2000)
- The Ultimate Earth by Jack Williamson (2001)
- Fast Times at Fairmont High by Vernor Vinge (2002)
- Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2003)
- The Cookie Monster by Vernor Vinge (2004)
- The Concrete Jungle by Charles Stross (2005)
- Inside Job by Connie Willis (2006)
- A Billion Eves by Robert Reed (2007)
- All Seated on the Ground by Connie Willis (2008)
- The Erdmann Nexus by Nancy Kress (2009)
- Palimpsest by Charles Stross (2010)
- The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang (2011)
- The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson (2012)
- The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson (2013)
- Equoid by Charles Stross (2014)
- (No award given) (2015)
- Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (2016)
- Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (2017)
- All Systems Red by Martha Wells (2018)
- Artificial Condition by Martha Wells (2019)
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (2020)
- The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (2021)
- A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (2022)
- Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire (2023)