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In James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, the main protagonist, Dr Aaron Kaye, experiences oceanic awareness, which in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the (revived) feeling of the symbiotic-semiotic oneness with the mother – that is, the imaginary return to paradise. This chapter examines the narrative viewpoint of Lory Kaye, Dr Aaron Kaye's younger sister, and analyses her submerged story in the interpretative framework of the apocalyptic imagination of science fiction. It discusses a variety of theoretical perspectives on the apocalyptic orientation of science fiction in relation to the particular, feminist apocalypse of the story. The chapter also considers possible revisions of the imagery of the Book of Revelation as well as the structure of apocalyptic imagination in the text.

This book has examined James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, and its strange spatio-temporal settings from an interstellar spaceship to the vastness of outer space and indefinite time. By reading Tiptree's narrative within the framework of a variety of theoretical discourses, heuristic images, and intertexts, it has uncovered a range of possible layers of the text, including the alien mother/daughter plot and the plots of Dr Aaron Kaye and his sister Lory. The book has also discussed the three salient issues of the text: the painful quest for female subjectivity, the figuration of the posthuman, and a multiple vision of the divine. This chapter further elaborates on female subjectivity, the posthuman, and the divine beyond the boundaries of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’. It considers the figuration of the posthuman in relation to negativity in the formation of (female) subjectivity and to the unfathomability of the alien.

James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, is divided into four parts, in which the events are chronologically narrated. Dr Aaron Kaye, resident psychiatrist of the spaceship Centaur, is the focalising agency throughout the story and is also the narrator, but only in the last part; the first three parts are told by an external narrator, an impersonal agency. This chapter examines Kaye's narrative viewpoint and the series of dreams that haunt him. It considers the kind of masculinity that Kaye represents and how it relates to the overall tenor of the text. In particular, the chapter looks at what visions of sexuality and reproduction emerge from the text when Kaye's perspective is followed. It also analyses the concept of the grotesque and the model of entropy/dissipation, before concluding with a discussion of the pervasive – predominantly phallic – sexual imagery of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’.

In her book The Mother/Daughter Plot, Marianne Hirsch investigates the divergent versions of the family romance that surface in female-authored novels by focusing on the relation between mothers and daughters. This chapter examines James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, as a mother/daughter narrative in the guise of science fiction. More specifically, it reads the text as a choric fantasy; the chora, a notion derived from Julia Kristeva, refers to the maternally connoted dimension of the construction of the subject, which stands in a dialogical relation to the paternally connoted symbolic. By reading Tiptree's text in light of Kristeva's theory, the chapter analyses the narrative text and the feminist reception of Kristeva's theory of the maternal. It also argues that mother/daughter plots in science fiction may be expressed in rather unusual and sometimes opaque terms, such as in the case of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’.

In James Tiptree Jr's ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, a story about alien encounter, the main protagonist, Dr Aaron Kaye, senses that his sister and the alien are in some way ‘in league’ with one another. The story's posthuman setting accommodates a choric fantasy, an ambivalent fantasy of a union with the mother that is desirable but also terrifying. This chapter examines the collapse of the patriarchal-phallic order and the emergence of the maternally connoted alien in ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’. It shows that the alien in the story points not only to the maternal but also to the divine. The chapter turns to the Bible as well as to Julia Kristeva's views on the so-called archaic mother to gain insight into particular fantasies that appear in the story, focusing on the Wirkungsgeschichte of biblical mythology. Finally, it discusses Kristeva's theory of abjection, and how it relates to the history of Judaism and Christianity.

Within the science fiction community, the work of James Tiptree Jr, whose real name was Alice Sheldon-Bradley, is generally acknowledged to be among the best of the genre. During the 1970s, Tiptree had won Hugo, Nebula, and Jupiter Awards for science fiction writing. Recently, the importance of her work for the development of feminist science fiction has been acknowledged by authors. This book examines Tiptree's 1975 text, ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, which radically transformed the conventional figure of the alien encounter. In particular, it considers the ways in which the story may interact with feminist and other critical theories on the issues of female subjectivity and the meaning of the divine in a postmodern context. This introduction provides an overview of the life and work of Tiptree, and a synopsis of ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’, followed by an explanation of the central figure of the text – the alien.

Feminist theologians generally express a desire to be more interdisciplinary. According to Corinne Squire, feminist psychology and science fiction are intertwined, and the latter is either ignored or assimilated into the literary canon. Squire further asserts that the struggle of a new or less powerful field to enter into ‘interdisciplinarity’ with an established field always problematises the latter, potentially giving rise to ‘a frail but autonomous new discipline’. This chapter examines James Tiptree Jr's text about alien encounter, ‘A Momentary Taste of Being’ in the intersecting contexts of theology, literature, culture and philosophy. It discusses the feminist transformation of science fiction and looks at the views of Robin Roberts on feminism and science (fiction).