Who Goes There?

The latter half of the ’60s didn’t see too many outstanding new voices in science fiction; a lot of the supposed fresh meat had actually debuted a decade earlier, including Harlan Ellison, Kate Wilhelm, Richard Wilson, Robert Silverberg, and Anne McAffrey. One of the true highlights to emerge from this period was James Tiptree, Jr., real name Alice Sheldon. Tiptree came to the field very late, already being in her fifties when she debuted in 1968, after many years across different jobs, including a stint in the CIA when it was newfangled. That Tiptree was actually a thoroughly middle-aged woman did not occur to anyone at the time, in part because her real identity was kept a tight secret, and also because nobody wrote like Tiptree when she was on the ball. You read Tiptree and you’re bound to get something that’s energized, highly colloquial, and pitch-black. Reading Tiptree is not a great idea if you don’t wanna feel like garbage.

Although Tiptree died in 1987 (in a murder-suicide with her husband), she’s considered one of the quintessential ’70s SF writers, remaining fresh even when the New Wave was on its deathbed. The early ’70s were especially a fruitful period for her, with such classics like “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and “Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death” winning her awards. I’m gonna be talking about a more obscure story from this period, and despite being published in Fantastic it really is science fiction, as Ted White all but admits in the introductory blurb.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the August 1972 issue of Fantastic, which is on the Archive. “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket” was soon reprinted in Tiptree’s first collection, One Thousand Light-Years from Home, which luckily is still in print and even got a spiffy new edition from Penguin. For anthology appearances the only recent-ish one is The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time (ed. Barry N. Malzberg).

Enhancing Image

Dov Rapelle is a 22-year-old “nice person” (he is Canadian, after all) and burgeoning scientist-to-be who lives in the snowy mountains of Calgary, Alberta. “Calgary has the tallest water-tower on the continent, you know, and all that tetra-wheat and snow sports money.” It’s Christmastime, and things have been going pretty well until Dov gets a weird call from a girl who acts like she already knows who he is, despite the two never having met before—or at least Dov is sure he’s never met this girl before. Another call later with this girl and it’s the same thing. Dov is nice, but he’s not very smart and it doesn’t occur to him that something beyond his understanding may be afoot just yet. Shit’s about to get much weirder.

Before our romantic duo even see each other in person I’m gripped, mostly due to Tiptree’s conversational style that sneaks humor into what would normally be vanilla expositional passages. Reading a Tiptree story is often like listening to someone talk, and I have to wonder what her writing process was such that her writings tend to read like they were dictated—which I mean as a compliment, of course. This would go only so far if the pace was slow, but quite the contrary this is a lightning-fast narrative and there’s a fair bit of ground to cover, what with the time travel and all.

The girl in question is Loolie Aerovulpa, a bratty 16-year-old who is fed up with being kept on a tight leash by her rich dad. Somehow she managed to take a helicopter (no, she didn’t fly it) out to Dov’s cabin, as if knowing where he was in advance. Here she is, a pretty girl Dov’s never seen before, and not only does she act like she knows him, she wants to FUCK. Badly. The consent here is a little questionable, for one because Loolie is so young and also because she is rather pushy with Dov, although the latter gives in quickly enough. (Yes, I was a little distracted by the fact that Dov sleeps with a teenager, but unfortunately if you read enough ’70s SF you have to get used to that sort of thing.) Calling it “love at first sight” may be misusing the phrase. It’s unclear how much Dov comes to feel genuine affection for Loolie, but for reasons given later this may well be part of the tragedy. Like Romeo and Juliet their affection is too strong (at least on one side) to last, and Loolie is about to fail in a noble fashion.

You may be reading the story and thinking, “I know where this is going,” and you’re probably right. This is not the most unpredictable thing ever. I went in expecting a stable time loop and that is what I got—for the most part. Tiptree has a couple little tricks up her sleeve. And again, it’s easy to get wrapped up in her style of narrating even when you’re stroking your chin, confident you know how it’s gonna end. It also helps that while we’ll get our recommended dose of tragedy at the end, the world of the story is also not a hellscape like in a lot of Tiptree stories; but then again, it is set in Canada in the ’70s, albeit with allusions to the future.

Thing is, Loolie did not travel back in time, strictly speaking, although her consciousness did. It’s okay, if you lie on your side and put beer goggles on, that Dov has sex with a 16-year-old because actually that teenager’s consciousness had been momentarily swapped with that of her 75-year-old self. So Dov has sex with an old lady who happens to be in a teenager’s body. I still don’t entirely know what to make of this. It doesn’t help that Old!Loolie tries to tell Dov something important before getting cut off and replaced with her younger self (the reason for this sudden breaking-off is never given), and of course Young!Loolie has no fucking clue what happened. Is this consensual? What does getting bodysnatched by your older self and having sex (and losing your virginity in the process, for what that’s worth) with a guy you’ve never seen before count as? This can’t be right.

Not enough time to think.

Despite what’s happened to her, Loolie grows fond of Dov in a matter of literally minutes, for a reason that’ll be given later but which for now is totally beyond Dov’s understanding. And to make matters worse, the cavalry has arrived. Loolie’s uncle (actually much older cousin) and his enforcer come down in a helicopter as well, “one small hysterical man and one large hairless man” respectively. They were supposed to get Loolie under control before she went off and did a certain something her father had anticipated, as if it were a prophecy, but it’s too late. For better or worse (it’s gonna be for worse), Loolie and Dov are tied together by fate now—a tie that will prove to be both their downfalls, albeit in different ways.

Thinking about it now, it seems that Tiptree wasn’t a big believer in the power of love. True, she married multiple times, admitted to loving both men and women (being the messiest bisexual), and seemed to think the world of her late husband despite what she did to him; but romance, particularly between the sexes, does not thrive in her fiction. More often than not it’s a non-starter. The primary reason is that, for one reason or another, women either live in fear of violence at the hands of the men in their lives or have to suffer it directly. The most stark example of this might be in her novella “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?,” which, without spoiling that story, has what has to be one of the bleakest speculations on the future between men and women in the history of fiction. In the case of “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket” the man and woman might be happy together, but something at the core of their relationship dooms them both.

There Be Spoilers Here

Loolie had been conditioned by her father and psychologist to find sex repulsive, as a sort of mental chastity belt. The only way to break the conditioning, as it turns out, is to bite the big toe of the man she’s with, which will not only break the conditioning but slingshot into a sort of love potion effect whereby she’ll be smitten with said man all the rest of her life. Old!Loolie bit Dov’s big toe after they had sex (which weirded him out, but again, nice guy), therefore Young!Loolie got back into her body with the urge to stay with Dov until the end of her days. Dov ultimately can’t complain about this arrangement, marrying a pretty girl from a rich family. He might even come to love her, if given time; unfortunately he will not be. Time-jumping is supposed to be safe, but there’s nothing protecting you from dying in the body of your 62-year-old self. Dov dies, as both a 22-year-old and a 62-year-old at the same time… somehow.

Loolie must be wracked with grief, naturally, but at some point she asks the same question the reader must be asking: “How the fuck did he die now if he doesn’t die for another forty years?” But the time travel experts don’t have an answer, or at least a good one. Even though time-jumping is reserved for the rich and thus only a tiny fraction of people have access to it, time paradoxes have been popping up. The easiest explanation might be that every time someone jumps they enter a different timeline, but this is just speculation, and anyway Loolie eventually goes back in time to her past self to restart the cycle. So it’s a stable time loop—sort of. Loolie knew how to break her past self’s conditioning because she remembers what her psychologist said about the trigger… because she had gone back in time when she already knew what the trigger was… which she only knew because she already had her conditioning broken…

It’s this chicken-and-egg shit that always makes time travel narratives at least entertaining for me. Nothing to get the gears in your head turning like a time loop with no apparent beginning or end.

A Step Farther Out

Well that wass… dark; although by Tiptree standards I would call it bittersweet, if putting more emphasis on the bitter. She takes what’s really a simple premise and adds her own spice to it. “Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket” could’ve been translated to the ’50s or possibly earlier, but you would have to remove the eroticism, the language, and of course Tiptree’s of-its-time street-smart narration which often shrouds her fiction. The ending still hit me in a way, even if the general aura of tragedy is telegraphed well in advance. It’s not revolutionary, but I would say it’s an accessible entry-point for getting to know Tiptree without jumping straight into her most caustic material—which is a mistake a lot of people make.

See you next time.