Space invaders

Jill Roberts, the managing editor of San Francisco's indie science fiction press, Tachyon Publications, throws open the door to the Potrero Hill Victorian that houses the upstart operation. "We have a security system in the form of a German shepherd," she half-warns, half-laughs, and I half-imagine, just for a moment, that perhaps the dog is a robot? But no, a picture taped to a filing cabinet in the sky-blue office shows a big-eared, flesh ÕnÕ blood shepherd, its sneaker-size tongue rolling out of its mouth. I plan on tripping zero alarms during my afternoon visit to Tachyon.

Roberts wears glasses and a shirt with an enthusiastic-looking hot pink monster on it, and she's got lots of energy for science fiction. Tachyon's publisher, Jacob Weisman, is more subdued, but then the guy got back from the World Science Fiction Conference in Glasgow only yesterday, and he's got to be pooped. Clad in a T-shirt, his salt-and-pepper beard neatly trimmed, he lets me grill him on the workings of his decade-old press.

"I was going to be a science fiction writer and had to put that on the back burner." Choosing instead to pursue journalism, Weisman did sports reporting until desktop publishing arrived, changing everything. "You didn't have to move to New York, become an editor, and work your way up the chain for 20 years before getting to do what you want to do," he sighs gratefully. He decided to take a chance and launched Tachyon by reprinting a spate of worthy genre classics that had fallen out of print, beginning with Wayne Wightman's Ganglion.

Tachyon continues to locate beloved, overlooked works for republishing, as well as solicit new works by contemporary authors. The press's short-story collections include the annual anthology of stories honored with and short-listed for the Tiptree Award. Named after the accomplished, elusive science fiction author James Tiptree Jr., the award honors sci-fi literature that explores or expands concepts of gender. Past honorees include Nicola Griffith, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Kelly Link. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1, subtitled Sex, the Future, and Chocolate Chip Cookies, announces its intentions in a bold introduction.

"The judges don't look for work that falls into some narrow definition of political correctness," cofounder Pat Murphy says. "Instead they seek out work that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and perhaps even infuriating."

In keeping with the Tiptree's self-identification as an "award with attitude," the tales in the debut anthology include Ruth Nestvold's story about a female xenolinguist's visit to a planet where females speak their own language, an excerpt from Ursula K. LeGuin's talk on the limits of "genre" Ñ a word she likens to "a good screwdriver that's all bent out of shape because some dork tried to pry paving stones apart with it" Ñ and Carol Emshwiller's creepy, militaristic "Boys."

Also included are short pieces by the award's namesake, whose biography is the stuff fantasy and gossip are fashioned from. "In the late Õ60s, early Õ70s, there was a writer, James Tiptree Jr., who very quickly won all the major science fiction awards," Roberts begins. "But no one knew who he was. They knew he'd grown up in Africa, that he had a doctorate in experimental psychology. After about 10 years of protecting the identity, it turns out James Tiptree is actually a woman named Alice Sheldon."

"There was one story that was nominated for a Hugo, science fiction's top award," Weisman says. The award was being offered based on Tiptree's uncanny ability to portray the fairer sex. "She declined the award because of that," he continues. "And that led to the discovery of who she really was."

Although Sheldon's identity turned out to be a great ha-ha on sexist scholars Ñ who, due to the masculinity of the prose, had poo-poo'ed the possibility that the great man was a woman Ñ her life held scant future laughs. "She committed suicide," Roberts informs me. "Her husband was terminally ill, and she shot him and herself." Tachyon has gone on to reprint the Tiptree collection The Smoke Rises Up Forever. "For me, reprinting this book was a huge deal because I love Tiptree's work," she says. "The stories Tiptree writes turn out to be about biology, gender, and sex."

Such subjects are the stuff much of Tachyon's list is made of. Also ahead for the award-winning press is its first comic book, Stephen Notley's latest Bob the Angry Flower collection, Dogkiller. Tachyon celebrates its 10th year in business with a blowout at Borderlands Books, in the Mission, and will continue producing, as its motto promises, "science fiction for grown-ups."

"I think that a lot of people who are really bright discover science fiction at a point in their life when they're most socially vulnerable," Roberts muses. "It's intellectual and stimulating in a way real life is not, because real life is painful and awkward. Plus, the sheer imagination is incredible. There aren't limits. I like that. I don't like being told what we can't do," she says with a bright laugh. "We're all a bunch of rebellious nonconformists."<\!s>v

Celebrate Tachyon's 10th anniversary Sept. 24., 2Ð<\d>6 p.m., Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia, SF. Guests include Terry Bisson and Peter Beagle.