This Short Story was in the Anthology DINOSAURS! (1990) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois published by Ace ISBN044114883-2
Digging into the sub-genre of Time Travel, rich idiots hunting Dinosaur stories we have James Tiptree Jr’s The Night Blooming Saurian. If you didn’t know James Tiptree was the pseudo name for Psychologist Alice Sheldon, who used a pseudo name to protect her academic status, and also disliked the idea sticking out within a field. She was a fascinating person and excelled in Art had multiple degrees and was even recruited by the CIA at one point. She started writing Science fiction in 1967 and wanted to write the Science Fition she was interested in. Robert Silverberg famously in an introduction to an anthology of her short stories stated that there was no way James Tiptree could be a woman as the writing was definitely from a man. Years later when her identity was known he did apologise stating “you didn’t fool me: I fooled myself, and so be it’
“Inflamed by Tiptree’s obstinate insistence on personal obscurity, science-fictionists have indulged themselves in the wildest sort of speculation about him. His real name, it is often said, is something other than Tiptree, though no one knows what it might be. (That “Tiptree” is a pseudonym is plausible enough, but I rather hope it isn’t so. I like the name and want it to belong by birthright to the man who uses it on these stories.) It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.”
“Who is Tiptree, What is He?” Introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise Robert Silverberg
This is the paragraph that is always quoted, it though is very interesting to read the whole thing in context as he obviously loves her work and is praising the work. I’ve posted the full essay in a post and it’s well worth a read.
The Night-Blooming Saurian was first published in 1970 in the May/June issue of worlds of if. I read it in the Dinosaurs anthology I picked up a few years back edited by Gardner Dozoia. Onto the synopsis a group of scientists are using time travel to study the origin of humans in the Rift Valley. The story is told from the point of view of the scientists retelling it as an amusing episode. As with a lot of science their funding is an issue, the funding is just about to dry up and any more is dependant on one Senator. One of the team has access to the Senator and it comes to light that he is a hunter and has been promised to hunt a dinosaur (A brontosaurus to be exact). Slight problem, they’re studying a period that is a few million years after Dinosaurs became extinct! Among them all they devisea scheme to try and convince the senator that he has hunted a brontosaurus, but how do you do this?
This is a story like others in the sub-genre that shows how entitled and vain humans can be. Unlike Bradbury’s A Sound of Thunder no paradox’s created and no one is eaten. There is however a lot of Poo, just think how much a brontosaurus would create? In some ways the story shows the ridiculousness people will go through just to do their jobs, It’s a well written fun story that I enjoyed and a look forward to dipping into her work more. As well as some more Dino shorts from this collection, we all love a good dino story here at Donkey towers.