“What are James Tiptree Jr.’s Best Books?” We looked at all of James Tiptree Jr.’s authored bibliography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question!

We took all of the books written by James Tiptree Jr. and looked at their Goodreads, Amazon, and LibraryThing scores, ranking them against one another to see which books came out on top. The books are ranked in our list below based on which titles have the highest overall score between all 3 review sites in comparison with all of the other books by the same author. The process isn’t super scientific and in reality, most books aren’t “better” than other books as much as they are just different. That being said, we do enjoy seeing where our favorites landed, and if you aren’t familiar with the author at all, the rankings can help you see what books might be best to start with.

The full ranking chart is also included below the countdown on the bottom of the page.

Happy Scrolling!

The Top Book’s Of James Tiptree Jr.

13 ) Brightness Falls from the Air

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 10
• LibraryThing: 13

The arrival of an odd assortment of suspicious tourists on the planet Damiem parallels the final moves in a twenty-year-old interplanetary war that ends in the destruction of a star

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12 ) Neat Sheets: The Poetry of James Tiptree Jr.

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 10
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 12

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11 ) The Starry Rift (linked stories)

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 11
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 10

This novel set in the far-future and filled with action, extraordinary characters, and visionary speculation, chronicles the human exploration of alien planets with strange and mysterious life forms

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10 ) Byte Beautiful: Eight Science Fiction Stories

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 12
• LibraryThing: 8

Short stories by an award-winning science fiction writer include adventures in outer space and the world of the future

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8 ) Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 6
• Amazon: 11
• LibraryThing: 5

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8 ) Up the Walls of the World

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 7
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 11

A huge interstellar being intent on destroying whole solar systems gains control of alien creatures from a distant planet and of the telepathic earthlings into whose minds they have inadvertently projected themselves

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7 ) Tales of the Quintana Roo (linked stories)

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 12
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 8

Three stories deal with a realm of dead souls, a time warp that leads back to the Mayan past, and a mysterious world beneath the sea

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6 ) Meet Me at Infinity

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 9
• Amazon: 4
• LibraryThing: 7

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon(1915-1987), in whose honor the Tiptree Awards are given annually. She wrote some of the best short SF ever, winning two Hugos and three Nebulas. This book brings together stories previously uncollected-including an early one published under her own name in The New Yorker-and many of her colorful non-fiction pieces, mainly autobiographical, published under the Tiptree name (1970-1987). What shines through in this book is the magnetic and charming personality of the author, one of the most influential SF personalities of her era.

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5 ) Crown of Stars

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 5
• Amazon: 8
• LibraryThing: 6

The best of the late author’s recent and unpublished fiction is offered in this collection of science fiction tales, along with some earlier uncollected pieces

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4 ) Star Songs of an Old Primate

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 3
• Amazon: 7
• LibraryThing: 2

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2 ) Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 2
• Amazon: 6
• LibraryThing: 1

Tales tell of an alien landing on Earth, a mysterious courier, an epidemic of femicide, an apocalyptic vision, and a hijacked spaceship

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2 ) Warm Worlds and Otherwise

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 4
• Amazon: 1
• LibraryThing: 4

First collection of Tiptree’s stories, many of which won or were nominated for major awards.

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1 ) Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (omnibus collection)

Review Website Ranks:

• Goodreads: 1
• Amazon: 3
• LibraryThing: 3

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever collects eighteen brilliant short stories from a luminary of the science-fiction genre, James Tiptree, Jr. This updated edition is the quintessential Tiptree collection and contains revisions from the author’s original notes. Tiptree’s fiction reflects the darkly complex world its author inhabited: exploring the alien among us; the unreliability of perception; love, sex, and death; and humanity’s place in a vast, cold universe.

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James Tiptree Jr.’s Best Books

James Tiptree Jr. Review Website Bibliography Rankings