{"id":25076,"date":"2026-04-22T21:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=25076"},"modified":"2026-04-22T21:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T11:33:16","slug":"top-tens-fantasy-sf-top-10-sf-books-special-mention-9-james-tiptree-jr-the-screwfly-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/?p=25076","title":{"rendered":"Top Tens – Fantasy & SF: Top 10 SF Books (Special Mention) (9) James Tiptree Jr – “The Screwfly Solution”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Cover of James Tiptree Jr story anthology Her Smoke Rose Up Forever including the title story and “The Screwfly Solution”, by Tachyon Publications in 2004, paperback edition – the edition I own<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(9) JAMES TIPTREE JR –<\/p>\n

“THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION”<\/p>\n

James Tiptree Jr was actually the pen name for Alice Bradley Sheldon, one of my favorite writers of science fiction stories, with her own distinctive voice.<\/p>\n

She also had some of the most evocative and lyrical titles for her short stories \u2013 \u201cAnd I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill\u2019s Side\u201d (although technically she borrowed her title from John Keats\u2019 La Belle Dame Sans Merci) and \u201cYour Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!\u201d are two of my favorite titles as well as stories.<\/p>\n

However, the title of my favorite Tiptree story is not so lyrical \u2013 with its prosaic title of \u201cThe Screwfly Solution\u201d \u2013 but is as evocative and haunting as any of her more lyrically titled stories. Its subject is also not so lyrical, that recurring SF trope of alien invasion. As I have said elsewhere, SF is still all Morlocks and Martians to me, with the latter evidenced by my soft spot for alien invasion stories. Of course, in the most realistic alien invasion stories, spacefaring aliens would have such technological advantages over us that they would wipe the floor with us, metaphorically speaking \u2013 to such extent that we may not even perceive the invasion, as in this story.<\/p>\n

The title references the sterile insect technique, a technique of eradicating the population of screwflies by the release of sterilized males that compete with fertile males to reduce the population \u2013 a reference made clearer by one of its characters, Alan, a scientist working on parasite eradication. However, in this story, we\u2019re the screwflies, but with a much more violent distortion of human sexuality \u2013 as an epidemic of murderous male violence against women starts to spread across the globe. Some scientists suspect a biological cause, but their voices are not heard amidst political inaction, or worse, elaborate misogynistic rationalizations for the violence. One such rationalization is a new religious movement that is spreading along with the murders \u2013 the Sons of Adam, who believe that all women are evil and that removing them will return the world to paradise, when angels shall return to earth.Alan realizes that the epidemic causes male sexual impulses to instead become violent homicidal impulses and he too is infected. His wife Anne flees to the Canadian wilderness where, in the end, pursued by an entire society bent on femicide, she sees one of the \u2018angels\u2019 that will inherit the Earth.<\/p>\n

There is also an annual James Tiptree Jr Award for works of fantasy or science fiction in a similar vein to her stories.<\/p>\n

RATING:
\nA-TIER (TOP TIER)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    (9) JAMES TIPTREE JR – “THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION” James Tiptree Jr was actually the pen name for Alice Bradley Sheldon, one of my favorite writers of science fiction stories, with her own distinctive voice. She also had some of the most evocative and lyrical titles for her short stories \u2013 \u201cAnd I Awoke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[849],"tags":[729,24,141,235],"class_list":["post-25076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-top-tens","tag-books","tag-sf","tag-top-10","tag-top-10-sf-books"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65BRB-6ws","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25078,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25076\/revisions\/25078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkafterdarkonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}