Her Smoke Rose Up Forever was published by Arkham House in 1990 (three years after Sheldon’s death), collecting eighteen stories that represent the essential Tiptree. The collection was planned by Sheldon herself before her death in 1987, and it serves as both a career retrospective and a definitive edition — the single volume that anyone wanting to understand Tiptree’s achievement should read.
The stories span from 1969 to 1981 and include virtually all of the major works: “The Women Men Don’t See,” “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” (Hugo and Nebula winner), “The Screwfly Solution” (written as Raccoona Sheldon), “Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,” “A Momentary Taste of Being,” “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” and “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side.”
Read together, the stories reveal Tiptree’s obsessive themes: the violence of sexual desire, the alienation of women in male-dominated society, the possibility (and impossibility) of genuine contact with the truly alien, and the ultimate futility of human endeavor against cosmic indifference. These are not comfortable stories — they are often bleak, sometimes savage, and always honest about the darkness in human nature. But they are also brilliant: formally innovative, emotionally devastating, and intellectually rigorous in ways that transcend genre classification.
The Arkham House edition, with its limited print run, has become highly collectible.
Collecting Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
First edition (Arkham House, Sauk City, WI, 1990): Cloth binding, dust jacket. Limited print run.
Market values:
- First Arkham House edition in jacket: $100–$300
- Without jacket: $30–$80
- Tachyon Publications reprint (2004): $15–$30