"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" | |
---|---|
Short story by James Tiptree, Jr. | |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | Science fiction |
Publication | |
Published in | The Alien Condition |
Publication type | Anthology |
Publisher | Ballantine Books |
Media type | |
Publication date | April 1973 |
"Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death" is a short story by James Tiptree, Jr., a pen name used by American writer Alice Sheldon. It won a Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1974. It first appeared in the anthology The Alien Condition, edited by Stephen Goldin, published by Ballantine Books in April 1973. [1]
The story is told in the first person by Moggadeet, a self-aware male of a species which appears to be the apex predator of its environment. This possibly anthropoid species is apparently cold-blooded, with various features that come into play in battle, nurturing the young (for females), and sex. Unusually Moggadeet's mother and an older male have supplemented his instincts by making him aware of the Plan, i.e., the normal life-cycle of his species. The element of this Plan he most resists is the cannibalism of other members of his own species.
Moggadeet narrates his life from the moment he meets his mate in the spring of his second year, including his memories of his first year. After a while he remembers what his mate said at various points, expressing fears and concerns. By the end it becomes clear that Moggadeet is telling this story to his mate while she is eating him; he assumes she agrees with his recollections.
"Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" has appeared in the following collections: [2]
"Love is the Plan the Plan Is Death" won the 1974 Nebula Award for Best Short Story and was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, and was ranked 3rd in the Locus Magazine poll for Best Short Fiction.
Kirkus Reviews called it "highly lauded." [3] The Washington Post considered that the "image (of) an intelligent species whose biological imperatives compel females to devour their mates (...) is dramatized with the directness of an arrow striking a bullseye". [4]
Alice Bradley Sheldon was an American science fiction and fantasy author better known as James Tiptree Jr., a pen name she used from 1967 until her death. It was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. From 1974 to 1985, she also occasionally used the pen name Raccoona Sheldon. Tiptree was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2012.
Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was the founding editor of The Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies (1984–2018) and was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (1986–2004), garnering multiple Hugo and Locus Awards for those works almost every year. He also won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story twice. He was inducted to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame on June 25, 2011.
Again, Dangerous Visions (1972) is a science fiction short story anthology, edited by American author Harlan Ellison. It is the follow-up to Dangerous Visions (1967), also edited by Ellison. Cover art and interior illustrations are by Ed Emshwiller.
Esther Mona Friesner-Stutzman, née Friesner is an American science fiction and fantasy author. She is also a poet and playwright. She is best known for her humorous style of writing, both in the titles and the works themselves. This humor allows her to discuss with broader audiences issues like gender equality and social justice.
Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions is a short story collection by American writer James Tiptree, Jr, first published in 1981 as a Del Rey Books paperback original. All but two of the stories had been previously published, four of them under the pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon.
Warm Worlds and Otherwise is a short story collection by American writer Alice Sheldon, first published in 1975 under her pen name James Tiptree Jr. In its introduction, "Who is Tiptree, What is He?", fellow science fiction author Robert Silverberg wrote that he found the theory that Tiptree was female "absurd", and that the author of these stories could only be a man. After Sheldon wrote him that Tiptree was a pseudonym she assumed, Silverberg added a postscript to his introduction in the second edition of the book, published in 1979. According to David Pringle, the collection contains:
Twelve furiously imaginative, occasionally explosive SF stories, the best of which are quite brilliant
Kelley Eskridge is an American writer of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Her work is generally regarded as speculative fiction and is associated with the more literary edge of the category, as well as with the category of slipstream fiction.
Tales of the Quintana Roo is a collection of fantasy stories by American author Alice Sheldon, writing as James Tiptree Jr. It was released in 1986 and was the author's first book published by Arkham House. It was published in an edition of 3,673 copies. The stories originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and are set in the easternmost shore of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. In addition to winning the world fantasy award for best collection in 1987, each of the stories was nominated or won genre awards, and "What Came Ashore at Lirios" was included in the Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories.
Nisi Shawl is an African American writer, editor, and journalist. They are best known as an author of science fiction and fantasy short stories who writes and teaches about how fantastic fiction might reflect real-world diversity of gender, sexual orientation, race, physical ability, age, and other sociocultural factors.
Nebula Winners Twelve is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Gordon R. Dickson. It was first published in hardcover by Harper & Row in February 1978, and reprinted in December of the same year. A paperback edition followed from Bantam Books in April 1979.
The 1979 Annual World's Best SF is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, the eighth volume in a series of nineteen. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in May 1979. It was reissued by DAW in 1984 under the variant title Wollheim's World's Best SF: Series Eight, this time with cover art by Olivero Berni.
The 1988 Annual World's Best SF is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, the seventeenth volume in a series of nineteen. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1988, followed by a hardcover edition issued in August of the same year by the same publisher as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club. For the hardcover edition the original cover art by Blair Wilkins was replaced by a new cover painting by Richard Powers.
The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Terry Carr, the third volume in a series of sixteen. It was first published in paperback by Ballantine Books in July 1974, and reissued in July 1976.
"The Women Men Don't See" is a science fiction novelette by American writer Alice Bradley Sheldon, published under the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr.
The Alien Condition is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by American writer Stephen Goldin and published in 1973 by Ballantine Books.
The Starry Rift is a linked science fiction short story collection by James Tiptree, Jr first published in 1986 by Tor Books. It takes place in the same universe as several other works by Tiptree, most notably her 1985 novel Brightness Falls from the Air.
"And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" is a science fiction short story by American author James Tiptree, Jr. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the short story has been republished in several anthologies.
"Souls" is a 1982 science fiction novella by Joanna Russ. It was first published in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in January 1982, and subsequently republished in Terry Carr's The Best Science Fiction of the Year 12, in Russ's 1984 collection Extra(ordinary) People, as well as in the first volume of the Isaac Asimov/Martin H. Greenberg-edited anthology The New Hugo Winners, and in 1989 as half of a Tor Double Novel.
Nebula Award Stories 9 is an anthology of award winning science fiction short works edited by Kate Wilhelm. It was first published in the United Kingdom in hardcover by Gollancz in November 1974. The first American edition was published by Harper & Row in January 1975. Paperback editions followed from Corgi Books in the U.K. in November 1976, and Bantam Books in the U.S. in July 1978. The American editions bore the variant title Nebula Award Stories Nine. The book has also been published in German.
New Dimensions II: Eleven Original Science Fiction Stories is an anthology of original science fiction short stories edited by American writer Robert Silverberg, the second in a series of twelve. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in December 1972, with a paperback edition under the variant title New Dimensions 2 following from Avon Books in December 1974.