Up the Walls of the World was published by Berkley/Putnam in 1978, Tiptree’s first novel after a decade of acclaimed short fiction. The novel was eagerly anticipated — could the intensity that Tiptree achieved in short form be sustained across three hundred pages? — and the answer was largely yes, though the novel is more conventional in structure than the short stories.
The narrative alternates between three strands: a group of human psychics being studied (and used) by the military; a race of wind-riding aliens on a gas giant planet whose world is about to be destroyed; and a vast cosmic entity — the Destroyer — that consumes entire worlds. The three strands converge when the humans and aliens make telepathic contact, leading to a body-swap that allows both species to survive.
The wind-riders — called the Tyree — are one of Tiptree’s most successful alien creations: genuinely non-human in their biology and psychology, yet rendered with enough emotional specificity that the reader can empathize with their situation. Their world (the planet Tyree, a gas giant where the inhabitants fly through atmospheric layers of different densities) is imagined with hard-SF rigor and poetic beauty.
The human sections explore Tiptree’s familiar themes: the military’s exploitation of the vulnerable, the gendered dynamics of institutional power, and the way that psychic sensitivity (read: emotional openness) is simultaneously valued and weaponized.
Collecting Up the Walls of the World
First edition (Berkley/Putnam, New York, 1978): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$60
- Without jacket: $8–$20
- First UK edition (Gollancz, 1978): $20–$50