And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees was originally published as a stand-alone novel by Harper & Row in March, 1976. The story lends takes its title from the poem “You, Andrew Marvell,” written by Archibald MacLeish, which also provided the title for Black Gate contributor Rich Horton’s blog. The poem is a look at the transience of empires, and Michael Bishop’s story follows suit.

In fact, published in the month following Vance’s The Last Castle and Silverberg’s Nightwings, And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees almost gives the feeling that the Tor Double series was a collection of stories about the collapse of civilization. In And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees, Michael Bishop describes and alien world which was settled by humans fleeing Earth six millennia before. By the time of the novella, they have split into warring factions and outright battle appears to be just over the horizon.

The war, however, remains in the background. Bishop’s focus is on Ingram Marley, a spy sent by Our Shathra Anna, to keep tabs on Gabriel Elk, an old man who has built a retreat called Stonelore, where plays are performed. In Bishop’s world, performing is antithetical to the culture of both the Atarites and the Pelagans, the two sides of the coming war, yet Elk’s plays are always well attended. To get around the prohibition, Elk’s actors are reanimated corpses that he and his son control from beneath the stage. Marley must determine if Elk is working for the Pelagans.

Bishop portrays a culture that feels that they are living in a cataclysmic period. Although the war looms and may lead to the end of their society, they are aware that every 2,000 years, their society has collapsed.  Originally settled from Earth six millennia earlier, they are at the end of a 2,000 year old cycle. The previous collapses are blamed on a mythical creature called a sloak, which lives under the sea and is believed to come onto land every two millennia to wipe out civilization, like a living ice age.

There is a strange lack of emotion in Bishop’s characters. Elk has arranged to purchase the corpse of Bronwen Lief and use her in his plays. Her parents attend the debut performance, mostly stoically watching their dead daughter perform. When Elk’s son, Gareth, is conscripted into the military to help defend against the Pelagans, Elk’s biggest concern is keeping his theatricals going and finding the help he needs to run them.

Elk’s productions are meant to reflect on their current world and its situations by using historical themes, which allows Bishop to reveal some of his world’s history. While this shows his ability as a world builder, it also creates a world in which most of their six thousand year history is known, perhaps not always perfectly, but in more detail than humans know their own history from six thousand years ago (the Uruk period in Mesopotamia, pre-dynastic Egypt, middle Jomon Japan). Meant to give detail to the novella, this serves to break the reader from the story.

By exploring this world through the lens of a creative activity which is both outside the norm, but enjoyed by the masses, Bishop is able to look at the way art can hold up a mirror to society, allowing it to consider what it doesn’t want to consider. Our Shathra Anna’s interest in the plays, and Marley’s mission to spy on them, dhows how the ruling elite may attempt to control the narrative, while Marley’s growing respect for Elk demonstrates the strength of ideas and thinking for oneself.

And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees has many interesting ideas, but lacks cohesion. Even as Bishop focuses on Marley and Elk, the references to the Atarite court and the distant battles detract from his story while adding an ill-defined depth to the world. Although the characters have friendships and even attachments, few of them are fully realized, playing roles, as if in one of Gabriel Elk’s plays, without an emotional foundation to their existence.

Bishop was ambitious in writing And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees and was only partially successful in writing a successful stories. The novel has so many ideas in it that he might have been better off expanding it to a full novel length to flesh out the war he discusses and provide more details of the Pelagans, who remain an elusive enemy, and the experiences of Elk’s son in the war as a juxtaposition to the relative safely in which Elk finds himself. Showing more of the ruling elite who are waging the war on both the Pelagans and Elk would also help make the novella feel more complete.

The Color of Neanderthal Eyes was originally published in F&SF in May, 1988. The Color of Neanderthal Eyes is the last of three Tiptree stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series and the only Tiptree story in the Tor Doubles series which was originally published after Tiptree’s death.

After the bleakness of the three preceding stories, The Color of Neanderthal Eyes feels almost optimistic. In many ways, it feels like a throwback to the exploratory fiction of an early period in science fiction, recalling some of the stories of Murray Leinster.

Tom Jared is a telepath and first contact specialist on an interstellar exploratory mission. Given the opportunity for R&R, he elects to be set down alone on an unexplored planet called Wet, due to the vast amount of water surface. Jared learns that the planet is inhabited when he finds a humanoid creature spying on him. One of the issues with first contact stories is finding a way to allow communications between the two races and Jared’s telepathy is Tiptree’s solution, for Kamir’s race is also gifted with telepathy.

Jared and Kamir strike up a friendship, which quickly turns romantic when Jared realizes that Kamir is female. Kamir teaches Jared about her planet and race and he names her race the Mnerrin, after their word for “wet.” Eventually, Kamir leads Jared to her community and begins to introduce him around. The world seems idyllic and Jared quickly bonds with the other Mnerrin.

The peace is broken when wounded Mnerrin begin to show up with tales of attacks by another, non-telepathic, race, known as the Goldskins, who appear to be natives of a distant island and who don’t acknowledge the sentience of the Mnerrin, viewing them as prey.

Despite merely wanting to live peacefully with the Mnerrin for the duration of his stay on the planet, Jared finds himself having to teach the peaceful race how to fight, not only helping them create and learn to use weapons, but how to plan strategy against the invaders. In doing so, Jared becomes a legendary figure to the Mnerrin, who follow his lead, quickly learning, through  the use of telepathy, how the defend themselves.

Tiptree depicts the Mnerrin as a society on the cusp of a major change. Some members of the Mnerrin can’t put aside their traditional ways and suffer for it. Others are welcoming of the knowledge Jared brings so they can defeat the Goldskins. Yet others fully embrace Jared’s lessons, indicating that the Mnerrin won’t be able to return to their status quo once Jared leaves. It is clear that these will be the leaders of the Mnerrin in the future.

Even as Jared is teaching the Mnerrin to defend themselves, he is learning about their culture, philosophy, and biology, as well as learning a little about the Goldskins, who appear to be attacking the Mnerrin because stronger tribes of Goldskins are pushing them from their ancestral homes. His compassion for the Mnerrin doesn’t leave him room for sympathy for the Goldskins and his friendship with the Mnerrin grows, even as he realizes that Kamir may not long survive his stay on their planet.

In the end, Jared must leave to rejoin his human companions. It is clear that he has impacted Mnerrin culture much more strongly than they changed him. He does leave with the plan and hope of returning to help guide the Mnerrin into their future, but Tiptree leaves open the possibility that he will continue with his life, his time with Kamir and the Mnerrin a pleasant memory.

Although The Color of Neanderthal Eyes is reminiscent of the sort of science fiction which would not have been out of place in if it had been written thirty years earlier, Tiptree does explore the idea of interspecies sex, describing the unique manner in which Kamir becomes impregnated. At her pregnancy progresses, Jared learns what that means for the Mnerrin, who have a low birth rate, and must also learn, with help from Kamir’s siblings, how to deal with the complications of birth.

The cover for And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees was painted by Brian Waugh. The cover for The Color of Neanderthal Eyes was painted by Dave Archer.

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Steven H Silver is a twenty-one-time Hugo Award nominee and was the publisher of the Hugo-nominated fanzine Argentus as well as the editor and publisher of ISFiC Press for eight years. He has also edited books for DAW, NESFA Press, and ZNB. His most recent anthology is Alternate Peace and his novel After Hastings was published in 2020. Steven has chaired the first Midwest Construction, Windycon three times, and the SFWA Nebula Conference numerous times. He was programming chair for Chicon 2000 and Vice Chair of Chicon 7.