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6/5

It's a pity I cannot rate it higher than the maximum allowed - it is astonishing that Tiptree, in this short story achieves so much. I liken her to Vonnegut, who could pull your guts out in a matter of minutes with stories that take usually barely half-an-hour to read.

The present story is rich in terms of ideas - it anticipates cyberpunk, rather, feminist cyberpunk - the process of jacking in, and taking up the issues of representing women's bodies in a genre that was indifferent to anyone apart from white loner males. The undertones of the story are overwhelmingly dark and sharpened further by satire.

The thinly veiled attack on consumerist culture, driven by profits with little concern for humans, the ugly side of successful businesses and the ethical conflict presented by P. Burke and Delphi - what begins as emancipation for Burke ends in tragedy for Delphi, Burke and Paul - is so well-portrayed.

The narrative in present continuous is so hard-hitting, the author-as-narrator works so well at stabbing the reader at appropriate times, for instance, the references to Cinderella and the ugly duckling. It intensifies the grim, mocking, sharp tone of the story.

It is absolutely befuddling to believe this story was written so many years ago, yet it refuses to become outdated. And it is infinitely better written than most of the so-called SF/cyberpunk today is churned out.

This is not only SF - it is classic literature, and it is a serious loss to English literature that Tiptree is remembered only as an indispensable SF writer.