Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home: Review

Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973) was James Tiptree, Jr's (Alice Sheldon) first published book. As a first short story collection, it contains some quite brilliant work as well as a few weaker entries. But overall, Sheldon exhibits an imagination and dark humor that rivals Harlan Ellison's. Her stories reflect her interests as a psychologist--ranging from the alien among us (whether an actual alien or a human who feels out of place among his peers) to women's roles to love, death, and humanity's place among the stars.

The best stories are also the most poignant and include "The Man Who Walked Home" and "Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket." Each of these deal with time travel and, unfortunately, neither has what the reader might call a happy ending. But they are all the more powerful for that. There are also two complementary stories, "Mama Come Home" and "Help" (aka "Pupa Knows Best"), that give us a slightly different take on humanity's first contact with an alien race. Laced with humor, Sheldon questions how our fairly primitive (on a universal scale) society might behave when faced with the unknown. Especially an unknown that looks an awful lot like us.

This volume of stories has been sitting on my TBR shelves since 1988--back when I was in the midst of my heavy-duty SF phase. My first contact with Sheldon's work was her very beautiful novel Brightness Falls from the Air. I adored that novel as a teenager and snatched up this book of short stories when I found it....and then ignored it for about thirty years. Shame on me.

A good introduction to Sheldon's work. If you enjoy her best stories here, then I would definitely suggest moving on to Brightness. ★★★ and 1/2.