"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"

1976 [Sheldon, Alice Bradley] (1915-87). “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” By James Tiptree, Jr. [pseud.]. Aurora: Beyond Equality. Ed. Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-2019) and Susan Janice Anderson (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Books, 1976), 36-98. Rpt. in Star Songs of an Old Primate (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), 164-226; in The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels. Comp. Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg (New York: Arbor House, 1980), 582-632; under the title of the story New York: Tor, 1989 as part of Tor Double Novel # 11 bound with Joanna Russ’s Souls; and in her Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ([Sauk City, WI:] Arkham House, 1990), 168-222. PSt

Feminist eutopia composed only of women, mostly clones but with a few new genotypes still being created, confronts men returning from a long space voyage. The eutopia came because an epidemic caused widespread infertility and no male babies were born. It has a small population and is without hierarchy or government and, while it has space travel, it is based more on agriculture than technology. The three men include an extreme chauvinist, a Christian who believes that God established a patriarchal system, and one man who struggles to understand and accept the situation. Female author.