But something on Page 6 nearly made me put the book down for good. It's a bold and bald statement: "Tiptree now stands alongside Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin as one of the twentieth century's most important and exciting writers of fantastic literature in America."

Important? Sure. Exciting? Sure, too. I've read quite a lot of all three of them over the years...enjoyed a lot of it, too.

But the most important and exciting? None of them even make my top ten of top 20th Century writers. In some ways, they stand thoroughly outside what I look at as "the field."