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24 May 75
Dear Carol Emshwiller:
May a stranger make known
how much your book, JOY IN OUR CAUSE has been enjoyed? Weak
word, meant to include admired, goggled at, occasionally genuflected
to, been rivetted in entrancement by, and, not least, suffered
suicidal inferiority-convictions from.
But before I go on, please---do
not, I beg of you, feel that this letter must be acknowledged,
etc. etc.---I should hate to think that I had robbed your time.
I'm also a writer of minor sorts and I know what a curse unsolicited
communications can be. So just pop this in the round file and
know that the pleasure of expressing pleasure completes the
act. (It does, you know; strange thing this impulse to say,
how good, how good.)
I've come across your stories
before, of course, but in the awful manner of avid readers half
the time I hadn't connected the memory with the author's name.
Having them all together is precious. You would have been amused
to watch me rationing them like treats at one a day.
I suppose that in a letter
like this one should make some gesture towards evaluation, at
least to the extent of demonstrating that your reader and fan
is minimally conscious. Has anyway their buttons buttoned. But
it's hard. They are so much of a piece. If I were forced at
gunpoint, I guess I could mutter something about a slight preference
for those that build ---the ANIMAL, of course, and perhaps most
MR. MORRISON---Oh god. But then, Oh, I couldn't do without THE
ASSOCIATION. And the deliciously hideous Dr. Alexander Ostrander.
And Mr. Perlou on the stairs...No, no, we will not choose.
Lord what a thankless thing
it must be to produce such exquisiteness. How many aficionados
of the unexpected are there? Multitudes, I hope. But I doubt.
By the way, I think that is the culminating aspect of your work.
The sheer damned total implacable unexpectedness. Causing
reader who also writes to tear out the remaining hair.
Again by the way, I found
your address in our old SFWA directory. It's nice you see fit
to belong to us. That really is nice.
With every good wish,
James (Tip) Tiptree Jr.
PS. That was meant, about
not replying.
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Who
is Carol Emshwiller? 