First published after her death, in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (in 1988), I was pleased to add one of the last works from Tiptree in this Tor Double. I've read the Bishop story, and it's probably the best match that TOR was going to come up with, but I almost wish that they'd just chosen some other Tiptree Novella instead.

Michael's work is good on its own, and I recommend both of these.

(After looking at the sad state of the author page for the many versions of Michael Bishop, I may go over and attempt to clean it up. Man, it is a BAD thing to have a common name as an author.) ( )

Haven't read the Tiptree story but here are my notes from Bishops: Cool, good writing, a test civilization that is wiped out every 2000 years when they get too technologically advanced. ( )

Let’s face it, the concept of “Double Novels” is strange to start with. There are lots of different reasons given for why they are a good thing - they allow unknown authors to be partnered with popular ones, they allow older classics to be reprinted, they allow the repurposing of some printed material. And, there are some successes out there. (As an example, see my review of the Ellison Ace Double “A Touch of Infinity” and “The Man With Nine Lives”. This pairing of a short novel and short collection of short stories comes together nicely.) But, most times the pairings do not ring true. Never was this more evident than in this pairing.

On the one hand, there is Bishop’s novel And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees which has the weird tone that one only finds in science fiction - the marrying of far future with medieval tropes. This is a somewhat interesting tale of a people who have no real art (or rather, they do not allow art.) So, with no actors, corpses are reanimated to put on stage plays. At the root of this lack of art is that the people have been designed (I don’t have a better word for it) to avoid conflict - and art is conflict. Of course, the second half of the story is about them being forced into conflict and their need to turn to the artist to develop new (horrible) weapons of war. It is a nice enough story, but the telling is stilted (suffering some from its 1970’s roots) and the revelations are far from profound.

On the other hand, there is Tiptree’s novel (actually, a novella) The Color of Neanderthal Eyes. A space explorer finds a race of aquatic creatures that have no concept of war, fighting, etc. He falls in love and is soon “with“ a female. (Nothing points out the huge differences between these two works as the fact that, within the first few pages we have a description of inter-species mating..) All is wonderful, until another species on the world begins attacking the peaceful creatures. The explorer has to teach them how to fight and how wage war. While this contains many concepts and themes that will be familiar to Tiptree’s readers, this is far from her best attempt at the subject

What ties these two “novels” together is the exploration of people who believe in peace (whether, as with Bishop’s story, the pacifism is understood to be bread into them or, as with Tiptree’s, it is literally their nature). And comparing these explorations can be of some value/use/entertainment. But the differences between these two works are far too broad to be brought together by something as elegant as theme. And neither is strong enough to warrant the time. ( )