| Alice B. Sheldon | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 24, 1915 Chicago, Illinois, USA |
| Died | May 19, 1987 (age 71) McLean, Virginia, USA |
| Education |
Baccalaureate, American University |
| Occupation | Artist, Intelligence Analyst, Research Psychologist, Writer |
| Spouse | William Davey (1934–1941) Huntington D. Sheldon (1945–1987) |
| Parents | Mary Hastings Bradley Herbert Edwin Bradley |
James Tiptree, Jr. (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987) was the pen name of American science fiction author Alice Bradley Sheldon, used from 1967 to her death. She also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon (1974–77). Tiptree/Sheldon was most notable for breaking down the barriers between writing perceived as inherently "male" or "female" — it was not publicly known until 1977 that James Tiptree, Jr. was a woman.
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Bradley came from a family in the intellectual enclave of Hyde Park, a university neighborhood in Chicago.[1] Her father was Herbert Bradley, a lawyer and naturalist, and her mother was Mary Hastings Bradley, a prolific writer of fiction and travel books. She travelled the world with her parents from an early age. In 1921-22, the Bradleys made their first trip to central Africa, which later contributed to Sheldon’s short story, “The Women Men Don’t See.” She was a graphic artist and a painter, and—under the name "Alice Bradley Davey"[2]—an art critic for the Chicago Sun between 1941 and 1942. She was married to William Davey from 1934 to 1941. She met and married her first husband at age 19 because she felt as if it was her duty as a daughter.
In 1942 she joined the United States Army Air Forces and worked in the Army Air Forces photointelligence group. She later was promoted to major, a high rank for women. In the army, she “felt she was among free women for the first time.” In 1945 she married her second husband, Huntington D Sheldon,at the close of the war on her assignment in Paris and she was discharged from the military in 1946, at which time she set up a small business in partnership with her husband. The same year her first story ("The Lucky Ones") was published in the November 16, 1946 issue of The New Yorker, and credited to "Alice Bradley" in the magazine itself, but to "Alice Bradley Sheldon" in the magazine's DVD index. In 1952 she and her husband were invited to join the CIA. She resigned in 1955 to return to college.
She studied for her Bachelor of Arts degree at American University (1957–59), going on to achieve a doctorate at George Washington University in Experimental Psychology in 1967. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the responses of animals to novel stimuli in differing environments. After receiving her doctorate in experimental psychology in 1967, she submitted a few science fiction stories under the name James Tiptree Jr. to protect her academic reputation.[3]
Sheldon had a complex relationship with her sexual orientation, putting different terms to use over the years. "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up." [4][5]
Unsure what to do with her new degrees and her new/old careers, Sheldon began to write science fiction. She adopted the pseudonym of James Tiptree Jr. in 1967. The name "Tiptree" came from a branded jar of marmalade, and the "Jr." was her husband's idea. In an interview, she said: "A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation."[6]
The pseudonym was successfully maintained until the late 1970s. This is partly due to the fact that though it was widely known that "Tiptree" was a pseudonym, it was generally understood that its use was intended to protect the professional reputation of an intelligence community official. Readers, editors and correspondents were permitted to assume gender, and generally, but not invariably, they assumed "male." There was speculation, based partially on the themes in her stories, that Tiptree might be female.
"Tiptree" never made any public appearances, but she did correspond regularly with fans and other science fiction authors through the mail. When asked for biographical details, Tiptree/Sheldon was forthcoming in everything but gender. Many of the details given above (the Air Force career, the Ph.D.) were mentioned in letters "Tiptree" wrote, and also appeared in official author biographies.
After the death of Mary Hastings Bradley in 1976, "Tiptree" mentioned in a letter that his mother, also a writer, had died in Chicago — details that led inquiring fans to find the obituary, with its reference to Alice Sheldon; soon all was revealed. Several prominent science fiction writers suffered some embarrassment. Robert Silverberg had written an introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise, arguing on the basis of selections from stories in the collection, that Tiptree could not possibly be a woman. And in an introduction to Tiptree's story in his Again, Dangerous Visions anthology, Harlan Ellison opined that "[Kate] Wilhelm is the woman to beat this year, but Tiptree is the man." Silverberg's article in particular, by taking one side, makes it clear that the gender of Tiptree was a topic of some debate.
The revelation of her gender had less adverse impact on people's opinions of her talent than she had feared; her final Nebula Award (for "The Screwfly Solution", published under her other occasional pseudonym, Raccoona Sheldon) was awarded in 1977.
Up the Walls of the World published in 1978 was her first full length novel, up until then she worked and built a reputation only in the field of short stories.
James Tiptree Jr., Alice Hastings Bradley, Alice Davey, Ann Terry, Mrs. Huntington D. Sheldon, are all names that Alice B. Sheldon has used to identify herself. All of these different names allowed her to explore the different selves hidden within her. One well-known name, Tiptree, has assisted Sheldon in conveying feministic themes and beliefs to her audience. The male persona of Tiptree granted Sheldon the ability to write things that Sheldon herself could not. The problem was not that Sheldon had the inability to write what she wanted to write, it was mostly because Sheldon was a woman. The audience tends to read writings from an author who is well respected and has high authority. When comparing authority, the name James Tiptree Jr. has more authority than Alice B. Sheldon due to the fact that male authors were more respected during Sheldon’s era.[7]
Tiptree/Sheldon was an eclectic writer who worked in a variety of styles and subgenres, often combining the technological focus and hard-edged style of "hard" science fiction with the sociological and psychological concerns of "soft" SF, and some of the stylistic experimentation of the New Wave movement.
After writing several stories in more conventional modes, she produced her first work to draw widespread acclaim, "The Last Flight of Doctor Ain", in 1969. One of her shortest stories, "Ain" is a sympathetic portrait of a scientist whose concern for Earth's ecological suffering leads him to destroy the entire human race.
Many of her stories have a milieu reminiscent of the space opera and pulp tales she read in her youth, but typically with a much darker tone: the cosmic journeys of her characters are often linked to a drastic spiritual alienation, and/or a transcendent experience which brings fulfillment but also death. John Clute, noting Tiptree's "inconsolable complexities of vision", concluded that "It is very rarely that a James Tiptree story does not both deal directly with death and end with a death of the spirit, or of all hope, or of the race". Notable stories of this type include "Painwise", in which a space explorer has been altered to be immune to pain but finds such an existence intolerable, and "A Momentary Taste of Being", in which the true purpose of humanity, found on a distant planet, renders individual human life entirely pointless.
Another major theme is the tension between free will and biological determinism, or reason and sexual desire. "Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death", one of the rare SF stories in which no humans appear, describes an alien creature's romantic rationalizations for the brutal instincts that drive its life cycle. "The Screwfly Solution" suggests that humans might similarly rationalize a plague of murderous sexual insanity. Sex in Tiptree's writing is frankly portrayed, a sometimes playful but more often threatening force.
Before the revelation of Sheldon's identity, Tiptree was often referred to as an unusually macho male (see, e.g., Robert Silverberg's commentaries) as well as an unusually feminist science fiction writer (for a male) — particularly for "The Women Men Don't See", a story of two women who go looking for aliens to escape from male-dominated society on Earth. However, Sheldon's view of sexual politics could be ambiguous, as in the ending of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?," where a society of female clones must deal with three time-traveling male astronauts.
One of the themes prevalent throughout most of Sheldon’s work is feminism. In “The Women Men Don’t See,” Sheldon gives a feminist story a unique spin by making the narrator, Don Fenton, a male. Fenton judges the Parsons based on their attractiveness and is agitated when they do not “fulfil stereotypical female roles,” as author Anne Cranny-Francis describes it (Feminist Science Fiction, 30). In addition, Fenton’s inability to understand both the plight of woman and Ruth Parson’s feelings of alienation further illustrate the differences of men and women in society. The theme of feminism is emphasized by “the feminist ideology espoused by Ruth Parsons and the contrasting sexism of Fenton” (33). The title of the short story itself reflects the idea that women are invisible during Sheldon’s time. As Francis states, “‘The Women Men Don’t See’ is an outstanding example…of the subversive use of genre fiction to produce an unconventional discursive position, the feminist subject” (38). [8]
Sheldon's two novels, produced toward the end of her career, were not as critically well-received as her best-known stories but continued to explore similar themes. Some of her best-regarded work can be found in the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, available in paperback as of 2004.
Sheldon continued writing under the Tiptree pen name for another decade. On May 19, 1987, at age 71, Sheldon took the life of her 84-year-old, nearly-blind husband and then took her own. They were found dead, hand-in-hand in bed, in their Virginia home.[5] According to biographer Julie Phillips, the suicide note Sheldon left was written years earlier, and saved until needed. In an interview with Charles Platt in the early 1980s Sheldon spoke of her emotional problems and previous suicide attempts. Much of her work contains dark and pessimistic elements, which in retrospect can be seen as reflective of her troubled emotions.[9]
Award winning science fiction authors, Karen Joy Fowler and Pat Murphy, created the James Tiptree, Jr. award in honor of Alice B. Sheldon on February 1991. Sheldon influenced this award through her use of a masculine pseudonym, James Tiptree, Jr., demonstrating that there is no distinction in works of science fiction when written by either gender. This award also coincides with her main theme, feminism. The criteria for winning this award would be for authors who focus their stories on the exploration of science fiction and gender. Novels such as "Half Life" by Shelley Jackson and "Light" by M. John Harrison have received the James Tiptree, Jr. award for incorporating themes of fantasy and sexuality. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is given in her honor each year for a work of science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender; funds for the award are raised in part by bake sales
| Story | Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973) | Warm Worlds and Otherwise (1975) | Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978) | Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981) | Byte Beautiful: Eight Science Fiction Stories (1985) | Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986) (linked stories) | The Starry Rift (1986) (linked stories) | Crown of Stars (1988) | Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (omnibus collection) (1990) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1968 | |||||||||
| 'The Mother Ship' (later retitled 'Mamma Come Home') (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Pupa Knows Best' (later retitled 'Help') (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Birth of a Salesman' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Fault' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1969 | |||||||||
| 'Beam Us Home' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Your Haploid Heart' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Snows Are Melted, The Snows Are Gone' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Parimutuel Planet' (later retitled 'Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion') (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1970 | |||||||||
| 'Last Night and Every Night' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Man Doors Said Hello To' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'I’m Too Big But I Love to Play' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Nightblooming Saurian' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1971 | |||||||||
| 'The Peacefulness of Vivyan' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'I’ll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool Is Empty' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'And So On, And So On' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Mother in the Sky with Diamonds' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1972 | |||||||||
| 'The Man Who Walked Home' (short story) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| 'And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways' (novelette) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'On the Last Afternoon' (novella) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Painwise' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien' (later retitled 'All the Kinds of Yes') (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Milk of Paradise' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Amberjack' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Through a Lass Darkly' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1973 | |||||||||
| 'Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death' (short story) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| 'The Women Men Don’t See' (novelette) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'The Girl Who Was Plugged In' (novelette) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 1974 | |||||||||
| 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' (novelette) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Angel Fix' (novelette, under the name 'Raccoona Sheldon') | Yes | ||||||||
| 1975 | |||||||||
| 'A Momentary Taste of Being' (novella) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 1976 | |||||||||
| 'Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light!' (short story, under the name Raccoona Sheldon) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| 'Beaver Tears' (short story, under the name Raccoona Sheldon) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'She Waits for All Men Born' (short story) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Houston, Houston, Do You Read?' (novella) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1977 | |||||||||
| 'The Screwfly Solution' (novelette, under the name Raccoona Sheldon) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Time-Sharing Angel' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1978 | |||||||||
| 'We Who Stole the Dream' (novelette) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'Up the Walls of the World' (novel) | |||||||||
| 1980 | |||||||||
| 'Slow Music' (novella) | Yes | Yes | |||||||
| 'A Source of Innocent Merriment' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1981 | |||||||||
| 'Excursion Fare' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo' (later retitled 'What Came Ashore at Lirios') (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Out of the Everywhere' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'With Delicate Mad Hands' (novella) | Yes | Yes | Yes | ||||||
| 1982 | |||||||||
| 'The Boy Who Waterskied to Forever' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1983 | |||||||||
| 'Beyond the Dead Reef' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1985 | |||||||||
| 'Morality Meat' (novelette, under the name Racoona Sheldon) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Only Neat Thing to Do' (novella) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'All This and Heaven Too' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1986 | |||||||||
| 'Our Resident Djinn' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| ' In the Great Central Library of Deneb University' (short story) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Good Night, Sweethearts' (novella) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Collision' (novella) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1987 | |||||||||
| 'Second Going' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Yanqui Doodle' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'In Midst of Life' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 1988 | |||||||||
| 'Backward, Turn Backward' (novella) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Earth Doth Like a Snake Renew' (novellette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'The Color of Neanderthal Eyes' (novella) | Yes | ||||||||
| 'Come Live with Me' (novelette) | Yes | ||||||||
| 2000 | |||||||||
| 'The Trouble Is Not in Your Set' (short story) | |||||||||
| 'Trey of Hearts' (short story) |