Alice Sheldon's first published (?) Raccoona Sheldon story ran in the July-August 1974 issue (No. 173: Volume 22, No. 6) of If Magazine (Worlds of If) illustrated by Freff. Ironically, Freff's name was featured on the cover; Sheldon's was not! Running about 10,000 words (21 pages) it is arguably a novelette, but in structure is basically a short story. Rumor says that the author was unable to sell a Raccoona Sheldon story until she accompanied it with a note of praise—from James Tiptree! Maybe so, but this Raccoona story must have been as delightful to editor Jim Baen (though he may have inherited the story from departing editor Ejler Jakobssen) as it was to readers. A title illo by the beloved (and hilarious) Freff was a perfect lead-in to the story, a humorous treatment of an idea Sheldon treated more grimly in a later story, The Screwfly Solution. Both stories, and two other Raccoona tales, are included in the James Tiptree, Jr. collection, Out of the Everywhere. The story? Oh, a little alien lands who has a little something that just might make things a little easier for the good guys of the world.