Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" is a novella by James Tiptree, Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon). It won a Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1976 and a Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1977.

The novella first appeared in the anthology "Aurora: Beyond Equality", edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan J. Anderson, published by Fawcett in May 1976. It was subsequently reprinted several times and in 1989 was published in a Tor Double mass market paperback (number eleven in that series) with the flipside novella "Souls" by Joanna Russ (ISBN 0-8125-5962-2). It remains Tiptree's most famous and most reprinted story.

Plot summary

The story portrays a crew of three male astronauts launched in the author's near future (i.e., within a few decades of the story's publication date; hence, presumably late 20th or early 21st Century) on a circumsolar mission in the spaceship "Sunbird". A large solar flare leaves their craft damaged and their position in space uncertain. They make repeated attempts to contact NASA in Houston, to no avail. Soon, however, they begin to pick up strange communications on their radios.

They are puzzled by the fact that most of the voices are female, and a strong Australian accent predominates. They overhear odd conversations about personal matters (including the birth of a cow back home) as well as slang terms and references unknown to them. Various theories are discussed by the perplexed astronauts: hallucinations? A hoax? A hostile power trying to trick them? They record and playback the conversations over and over, trying to ascertain their source. Soon, they realize that these unknown people are aware of them and their craft and are offering to help.

At first, the "Sunbird's" commander, an authoritarian Christian fundamentalist, refuses to communicate with them, remaining suspicious of their origin and motives. As they continue to plead with the astronauts to accept their rescue offer, the three men are chilled to hear their mission referred to in historical terms. Gradually, they come to realize that they have not merely been thrown off-course in space, but in "time" as well, and that their flight was presumed lost centuries ago. They are given bare details of an Earth that is very different from the one they left: an undefined cataclysm has reduced the human population to a mere few million. NASA and Houston no longer exist. Eventually, the "Sunbird" agrees to rendezvous with the spaceship "Gloria" to allow the three astronauts to spacewalk to safety.

The "Gloria" is an enigma to the three astronauts. Besides having an almost all-female crew, the ship seems to be very haphazard and cluttered, with plants and even animals on board. None of the technology on board seems very advanced from what they left behind in their own time, and some of the ship's functions are even powered by crew members riding stationary bikes. Their culture shock is compounded by the very cryptic and incomplete answers they are given by the "Gloria's" crew concerning the fate that has befallen Earth.

Little by little, the three men start to gather clues from both observations and slips of the tongue. They note that while crew members often refer to their "sisters," there is never any talk of husbands, boyfriends, or families back on Earth. There are two twins on board (both oddly named Judy), yet one seems older than the other. The one male on board, named Andy, seems strangely unmasculine. Technology, and science and culture in general, seems to be relatively unadvanced considering the long period of time that has elapsed. Even while playing chess with the "Gloria's" senior member, it is noted that only one new opening has been developed in 300 years.

Eventually, the truth is reluctantly shared with them. A plague wiped out most human life, including all the males. Only about 11,000 people survived, mostly concentrated in Australasia and a few other areas of the planet. They reproduce by cloning, and all living humans are clones of the original 11,000 genotypes. Babies are raised communally in crèches, and all members of each genotype are encouraged to add their story to a book that is passed on for the inspiration and education of future "sisters." Certain genotypes are given early androgen treatments (hence, the pseudo-male crew member's name) to increase bulk and strength for heavy physical tasks. The resulting almost communal maleless society has settled into a peaceful, yet strangely moribund pattern -- without major conflict, seemingly happy, yet more or less marching in place, with very little advancement.

The "Sunbird's" crew members react to these revelations in different and bizarre ways. The fundamentalist commander considers this to be a great tragedy, and believes himself chosen by God to lead these females back into proper order and growth, with men as family heads and leaders. Another drools at the prospect of millions of women who have not known a man's physical love, and fancies himself as being the object of desire for them all when he returns.

It is then uncovered by the third crew member that his fellow crewmates have been given a drug by the women -- one that causes their behavior to represent their "true selves". He realizes that they are most certainly not headed home, and the crew of the "Gloria" do not intend for them to survive. They are perfectly happy living without men, and the astronauts are merely being studied, pressed for any useful information, and (in the case of the overamorous astronaut) used to obtain sperm samples, presumably to introduce fresh genetic material and create new genotypes.

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