Something Odd: a Sentimental Science Fiction Story by James Tiptree, Jr

To call a story "sentimental" can be a valid reaction while remaining invalid as criticism. It says nothing about the merits of a story's craft; it can only describe the subjective impact on one reader. And so, when I reject "With Delicate Mad Hands," by James Tiptree Jr (Alice Bradley Sheldon) as a "sentimental" story, I keep in mind that this reaction is personal, and that it says more about me than it does about the story itself.

What I mean by "sentimental" is that the story tries to provoke an emotional response without earning it. Where this attempt falls apart is in the story's presentation of a character who kills twice in cold blood, and yet is apparently expected to remain sympathetic. This could have been achieved had the killings been justified by the story, but while I suppose that one of the murders could be considered "appropriate," the other is committed for nothing more than personal gain. Neither death has much impact on the character's thoughts or moods.

As a method in contrast, I think of SILENT RUNNING. The protagonist of that film considered his murders justified, yet he not only felt remorse afterwards, he suffered a mental breakdown. The film remained "on his side" while never forgetting that murders are terrible, and come with psychological costs. This point is overlooked completely in "With Delicate Mad Hands." Even if Tiptree calls her protagonist "insane," this mental state offers neither personal awareness of her actions, nor any sense that she has done something wrong.

This makes the Love Love Love ending of the story hard for me to chew. Even without a murderous, insane protagonist, that ending would have seemed unearned to me, but with her, it seems downright perverse. Even more, it seems unhuman.

I have noticed this bizarre tone in many science fiction stories: an emotional imbalance, an almost split-personality dissonance, in aspects of human behaviour and in the apparent expectations of response to this behaviour. Assumptions about people and about things done by people are presented as if they were not unusual, as if they would not be questioned as "abnormal" by most readers.

It makes me wonder about the mental states, not of the characters in stories, but of the writers. Am I leaping to conclusions? Am I being unfair?

I have to wonder. In many stories, the bizarre mental states of the characters are presented as clearly unusual, as clearly the point, and the writers appear willing to trust a reader's down-to-Earth experience and perceptions, but in certain science fiction stories, the writers appear to be (and I emphasize, appear to be) unaware of just how strange the characters are in thoughts and behaviour. The issue goes beyond the strangeness we might expect from alien minds or from future human beings; in such cases, the strangeness was intended, a matter of "What if?" But here, I can find little justification for it. Something seems amiss....