The novella first appeared in the anthology "", edited by Vonda N. McIntyre and Susan J. Anderson, published by Fawcett in May 1976. It was subsequently reprinted several times (amongst others in the James Tiptree collections "Star Songs of an Old Primate" in 1978 and "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" in 1990) and in 1989 was published in a Tor Doubles mass market paperback (number eleven in that series) with the flipside novella "Souls" by Joanna Russ (). It remains Tiptree's most famous and most reprinted story.