James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips

May 27, 2011 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, wild-women, passing

My first acquaintanceship with James Tiptree was some years ago when I heard that the James Tiptree Award was being given to Kelly Link, a writer I admire. What an odd name. Who was he?

He was a she, I found out. A writer of science fiction. How strange...and utterly fascinating.

I'm not a science fiction fan, have read very little of the genre, but had the good fortune to fall into an online group of writers about 10 years ago (prior to the time of goodreads, facebook, blogs, etc; it's since all...more My first acquaintanceship with James Tiptree was some years ago when I heard that the James Tiptree Award was being given to Kelly Link, a writer I admire. What an odd name. Who was he?

He was a she, I found out. A writer of science fiction. How strange...and utterly fascinating.

I'm not a science fiction fan, have read very little of the genre, but had the good fortune to fall into an online group of writers about 10 years ago (prior to the time of goodreads, facebook, blogs, etc; it's since all but disbanded). Primarily made up of writers of SF, slipstream and such--people like Keith Brooke, Jeff VanderMeer, Forrest Aguirre, and others--I came to appreciate, and understand a little better, the attraction of this genre.

There are few women practitioners: Ursula LeGuin, Joanna Russ, and Octavia Butler come to mind. And yet...there was James Tiptree. How I wish I'd come across his works before. Alice Sheldon, the only child of a mother who was also a successful author, grew up going on long exploratory trips in Africa as a child. A blonde child and a girl, she was the quintessential outsider.

Julie Phillips follows the trajectory of Sheldon's life, her time in the Women's Corps in WWII, her work in image detection in the early incarnation of the C.I.A., her years as a poultry farmer in New Jersey, her rebirth as James Tiptree, Jr., science fiction author.
In the process, much is revealed about the struggles of an unconventional woman in marriage, in a society where career options for women were few and narrowly imagined.

The birth of Feminism, the Women's Movement, is also covered and we sympathize with Tiptree's uneasy place in it. Tiptree was able to keep his identity completely concealed for a good number of years, and few had reason to doubt he was other than a man. In fact, his fiction was praised for its manliness...a man who also understood women! But eventually, after a number of years, he is outed.

"Of course the revelation did change how people read Tiptree. First, it embarrassed a lot of men who had said women couldn't write science fiction. There was then, and to some extent still is, a persistent feeling both in and out of science fiction that women's writing is different from men's and somewhat less equal. Even now, women writers are told off for being "too domestic," or frowned upon when they write fiction that challenges, exhilarates, or disturbs. Women's writing is still seen as less potent than men's. Yet men who didn't think they liked fiction by women admired Tiptree, and had acclaimed him for the very energy and drive they said women lacked." (433).

I was going to give this 4 stars (thought it'd have surely been 5 if I'd already read Tiptree's fiction), but when I got to Alice Sheldon's death--the details of which I'll let you find out for yourself--I was surprised at how upset I was. I felt so sad, angry, confused. I knew then this was a 5-star biography.
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Jun 06, 2011 Lightreads rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, fiction, feminism, lgbt, nonfiction, science-fiction

Alice Bradley Sheldon. In rough order: she walked over a thousand miles through then uncharted Africa, was a society debutante, eloped, enlisted and then worked her way up to an army Captain in World War II, was a painter and an art critic, became a chicken hatcher and then a CIA analyst, traveled the world, became a doctor of psychology, wrote some of the most searing and extraordinary science fiction short stories I have ever read, played out a complex gender identity shell game with her male...more Alice Bradley Sheldon. In rough order: she walked over a thousand miles through then uncharted Africa, was a society debutante, eloped, enlisted and then worked her way up to an army Captain in World War II, was a painter and an art critic, became a chicken hatcher and then a CIA analyst, traveled the world, became a doctor of psychology, wrote some of the most searing and extraordinary science fiction short stories I have ever read, played out a complex gender identity shell game with her male pseudonym, had an epistolary affair with Joanna Russ, shot her husband and then herself.

Damn I wish someone else had written this book. I would seriously pay cold hard cash for Hermione Lee’s version. Because this is an extraordinary story about someone with a rich, turbulent life, with complicated and contradictory ideas of gender, and who maintained multiple personas and voices. Phillips had access to Alice’s papers, conducted extensive interviews, and is a deft writer. And I could not trust her.

The overarching problem is her lack of critical tools. The best biographers have all the intensity and knowing of a spouse, but the coolness of a surgeon. They have to love the subject, know her flaws, and be able to cut her open and let her entrails steam in the same sentence, without ever changing tone.

Phillips didn’t have that. She is untrustworthy in that hard-to-spot way where she rushes or elides things that make her uncomfortable. Like, okay, you can’t give me half a paragraph on an incident from Alice’s tumultuous twenties where she apparently turned to prostitution and barely escaped a knife-wielding customer with her life, and then trot hastily on to the next thing, determinedly never looking back. That would be absurd in any biography; in the biography of this woman, who wrote so much about sex and violence and gendered sex and violence, it’s fatal.

Things like that. And her lack of consistency or control with questions of gender. I mean, you cannot write a biography of Alice Sheldon/James Tiptree Jr. without bringing an educated, consistent, interrogated framework of gender to the table. Or so I thought.

And the lack of critical faculties sometimes betrayed Phillips into total fail. She takes Alice’s late-life account of the sexual advances her mother made on her when she was a teenager at such unquestioning face value that she actually says that Alice acknowledged some responsibility for what happened, and then blithely carries on for the rest of the book accepting that as true. Because obviously if the fifteen-year-old victim of what was at the least sexual predation victim blames herself, well whatever she says goes, right?

I just, argh. I’m harping. But this book could have been so brilliant. The subject is so extraordinary, the material so rich. And I really enjoyed it for everything I learned about Alice. But all the ways Phillips failed just kill me.
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Moira Russell Lightreads wrote: "I'm still glad I read it though. I'm reading one of her collections simultaneously, and she's one of those cases where the facts of...more
Jun 06, 2011 10:46pm

Bryn Hammond Yes, thanks for this review; I sort of worshipped her short stories at the time, and what can't you do with a biography like hers...? I hope in the fu...more
May 10, 2012 03:20pm

Oct 03, 2007 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In the late 1960s, a new writer emerged on the science-fiction scene, producing powerful stories that explored the role of sexuality and gender unlike any author before. James Tiptree Jr. tackled often-controversial themes with humanity and compassion. He won several literary awards and garnered recognition both in and out of the sci-fi field. Although Tiptree corresponded by letter with fans and several notable writers – Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Harlan Ellison, and Philip K. Dick, among...more In the late 1960s, a new writer emerged on the science-fiction scene, producing powerful stories that explored the role of sexuality and gender unlike any author before. James Tiptree Jr. tackled often-controversial themes with humanity and compassion. He won several literary awards and garnered recognition both in and out of the sci-fi field. Although Tiptree corresponded by letter with fans and several notable writers – Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Harlan Ellison, and Philip K. Dick, among others – no one had met the elusive author or even spoken with him on the phone. In 1976, James Tiptree Jr. was exposed to be Alice B. Sheldon, a woman in her mid-60s. Tiptree continued writing and publishing until her 1987 suicide. In her legacy, she would remain an enigma.

The first biography on the author, Julia Phillips' James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, successfully explores this extraordinary life. More than a mere genre writer, Alice B. Sheldon had explored Africa by the time she was 6; run a chicken farm; helped, while in the Army, pioneer the skill of analyzing aerial photographs of potential military targets; and worked for the CIA – all before embarking on her writing career under the Tiptree pseudonym. Sheldon's mother, Mary Bailey, wrote popular African travelogues, one of which, Alice in Jungleland, the young Sheldon illustrated.

As Phillips unfolds the many incredible aspects of Sheldon's life, a troubled and unhappy woman emerges. She unhappily grew up in the shadow of her famous and successful mother. Sheldon lived during an era when, regardless of her ambitions and intelligence, a woman was expected to marry, be a dutiful wife, and have children – none of which she aspired to. She suffered from chronic bouts of severe depression.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Phillips parts the veil and reveals the woman that was James Tiptree Jr. Far more than providing a biography of an important and influential literary figure, she introduces us to one of the most fascinating and complex personalities of the 20th century.

(Originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, August 16, 2006.)
Link: [http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyroba...](less)

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Aug 28, 2011 Thea rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Julie Phillips does a thorough and extremely impressive job telling the story of Alice Sheldon's life. She points out patterns through Sheldon's life and Tiptree's work without it ever feeling like she's psychoanalyzing, and while maintaining compassion for this complex person. Having never heard of Tiptree, I would have passed this over but for jacket quotes from Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, William Gibson, and Dorothy Allison, who says, "I think this may be the rare case when a biography actua...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Gabe Dybing rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fascinating biography! I found it most interesting that Alice Sheldon's relationship with writing became tense after she no longer could hide the fact that she wasn't a man (the gender of the constructed identity she had been writing under; this writing included lengthy correspondences with an extensive social group). It really raises questions about just how important gender identities and gender constructions are when it comes to expression, art, and discourse. Just what Sheldon "is" in term...more

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Mar 08, 2010 Phoenixfalls rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: gender, james-tiptree-jr, biography, female-subject, mothers

It is very hard, when reviewing a biography, to separate liking for the book (as a book) and liking for its subject. In this case, I liked Sheldon less than I expected to -- the section of the book when she is working for the CIA and then working towards her Ph.D I read very slowly, as I kept getting annoyed with her. Much though she struggled with her gender, her sexuality, her relationship with her parents, she remained the product of privilege, and she never seemed to see that.

But the biograp...more It is very hard, when reviewing a biography, to separate liking for the book (as a book) and liking for its subject. In this case, I liked Sheldon less than I expected to -- the section of the book when she is working for the CIA and then working towards her Ph.D I read very slowly, as I kept getting annoyed with her. Much though she struggled with her gender, her sexuality, her relationship with her parents, she remained the product of privilege, and she never seemed to see that.

But the biography is extremely well done -- messy, yes, with big gaping holes where there is no real record of what went on, but still a wonderfully detailed portrait of a life that spans Victorian, colonial America to post-Civil Rights era modern America and a person who took active part in all of those disparate, disjointed ages. Sheldon was raised with Victorian ideals of service and a woman's place in the world, went on safari in Africa at age six, was a bohemian artist in the 30s, fought in WWII, helped form the CIA, sympathized with the Civil Rights movement and was a conflicted member of the womens' lib movement, and all BEFORE she created the persona of Tiptree, who (with Ursula Le Guin and several others) made SF more literary and raised questions of what the role of women was to be in the genre. Her end was tragic, and one of the few things that bothered me about the biography was that her suicide note was not provided. The truly wonderful thing about this biography is how much Phillips allows Sheldon (and all the other people who touched and were touched by Sheldon's life) to speak through her own words -- her writing, her letters to friends, her journals all are quoted liberally throughout.

My only other quibble about this book is the end notes. Phillips clearly wrote this book with as much care as a scholarly paper, but all of her detailed source notes and the extraneous information is buried at the back of the book in end notes. I did not discover them until halfway through reading, and I despise the physical process of flipping back and forth, so I tried to simply read the notes for each chapter as I completed it, but even that was too confusing because they were annotated merely as to page, not line (or within the text). I finally gave up on that process as too unwieldy and read them all at the end, but I am sure that I missed some of the connections.

Still, this is an impressive work, as Sheldon's is an impressive life, and I hope that it finds wide readership.(less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Randolph Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, non-fiction

Julie Phillips has done a great service in writing this exhaustive biography of Alice B. Sheldon. Starting from before conception to her untimely suicide in 1987, Phillips explores Sheldon's remarkable life from African explorer, to WAC, to CIA photo analyst, to psychology PhD, to science fiction author (under 3 different names!), to suburban housewife, to feminist. She explores not only Sheldon's life but her stories and novels in detail, elucidating the themes that enlivened her writing.

Minut...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Bill Breedlove rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Great, very well researched ad detailed biography of "James Tiptree, Jr.", a very accomplished and interesting writer of speculative fiction/science fiction. Probably many people will know that Tiptree was actually Alice B. Sheldon. Much like a biography I read earlier of Patricia Highsmith (BEAUTIFUL SHADOW), the author's life was even more interesting than the excellent stories she wrote. Sheldon's extraordinary life, its challenges, contradictions, messiness and triumphs is truly a great, inv...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Kate O'Hanlon rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, gender-sex-and-sexuality, science-fiction

Born in 1915, Alice B. Sheldon travelled through Africa as a child, was married and divorced before she was my age, served her country in the Army's photo-intelligence during WWII, raised chickens commercially, then joined the CIA with her husband. And all that happened before she became an award winning science fiction writer under the pen name James Tiptree Jr. and had the 70s sf establishment completely fooled as to her real identity.

All this is by way of saying that you don't have to have re...more

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Jun 01, 2009 Iris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: lovers of sci or fi or sci-fi, biography readers, writers, job hunters

Shelves: biography

In the spring of 1967, Alice Sheldon left behind her work as a research scientist, Pentagon officer and poultry farmer. She became a prominent science fiction writer under the faintly ridiculous alias James Tiptree, Jr. (Check out Her Smoke Rose Up Forever.) When writing in the persona of the 60-something fishing enthusiast James Tiptree, Alice's ideas about sex, society, belief and value wove in and out of her fiction and correspondence.

The biography is a page-turner, with Julie Phillips matchi...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it · review of another edition

Julie Phillips, a journalist, took a decade to complete James Tiptree, Jr., her first book. Drawing on Alice Sheldon's voluminous papers and more than 40 existing interviews with the author, Phillips ably handles the contradictions of Sheldon's personae, negotiating with uncommon grace and confidence the complexities of a woman best known as a man. Although Sheldon's readers may already know the story behind her strange life, Phillips keeps the material fresh. James Tiptree, Jr. will find fans e

...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Dichotomy Girl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, library, 2012, non-fiction

I am currently halfway through this book, halfway through the story of Alice Sheldon's life, and already she has been:

An African explorer in her childhood
A debutante
An unhappy young wife and college dropout
A WAC in WWII
The owner / operator of a chicken Hatchery
An employee of the CIA
A College / Graduate / Doctoral Student
A Doctor of Psychology
And in her late 40's has just become a Science Fiction Writer.

Makes me feel a bit lazy!

This was a fascinating book. I was not familiar with her as an author...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, read-in-2012

Interesting biography of Alice B. Sheldon. She had a successful SF career writing under a male pseudonym and also carrying on extensive letter-writing relationships with editors, authors and fans while maintaining the persona of James Tiptree Jr. She had a fascinating childhood and a wide variety of careers ranging from chicken farming to working for the CIA. She was confused sexually her entire life at a time when there were few tools to help women deal with their sexuality.

I was immediately gr...more

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Feb 15, 2009 Martha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While reading James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, I couldn't help but wonder if it will be possible to write such a well-supported, detailed biography of any of our contemporary authors fifty years from now. Throughout her life - decades before she began publishing as James Tiptree, Jr. - Alice Sheldon was an avid correspondent. She wrote to family, friends, politicians, newspapers and authors. The amazing thing is that she routinely kept copies of many of these letters. Als...more

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May 11, 2009 Nancy Oakes rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, nonfiction

I must confess that I've never read any of James Tiptree Jr.'s work, and that I had no idea who this person was prior to picking up Phillips' book. That didn't seem to matter, however, because this was one of the most well-written biographies I've read in quite a long while. Alice Bradley Sheldon was a most interesting subject -- and Phillips does an excellent job in researching, putting together and presenting Sheldon's life both as herself and as James Tiptree, Jr., a writer of science fiction...more I must confess that I've never read any of James Tiptree Jr.'s work, and that I had no idea who this person was prior to picking up Phillips' book. That didn't seem to matter, however, because this was one of the most well-written biographies I've read in quite a long while. Alice Bradley Sheldon was a most interesting subject -- and Phillips does an excellent job in researching, putting together and presenting Sheldon's life both as herself and as James Tiptree, Jr., a writer of science fiction whose works were very well known even though Tiptree himself remained somewhat of an enigma even among his contemporaries in the world of SF writing. I won't go into detail here, because many other reviewers have done so quite well, and there are multiple places on the internet to find details about Sheldon.

Phillips' analysis of Sheldon's background, her insecurities, her search for who she really was and wanted to be is very well done. But this isn't just a cut and dried biography. It's a look at a woman trying to find herself through many different persona: daughter of Chicago society parents, eloping at an early age and divorcing, then going into the Army Air Corps, then moving along to work in the CIA, marrying again, obtaining a PhD to do psychological research, and becoming an egg farmer, to name a few. Phillips' argument is that Sheldon knew none of these roles ever truly fitted her, and that by taking on the role of Tiptree, a male science fiction writer, she had finally found a way to give herself an outlet for the person she'd always wanted to be. But even then she still got very caught up in her own turmoil about identity as her Tiptree persona consistently grew in stature and landed him a bit of fame along with awards (Hugo, Nebula); Alice had to devote more of her own lessening energies into maintaining it while trying to keep Alice Bradley Sheldon a secret.

Very well written; I had a lot of difficulty putting it down once I got started. When I can pick up a biography of someone with whom I'm not even vaguely familiar and not want to put it down, that's saying something about the author's writing. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants an intelligent read. (less)

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Apr 04, 2012 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: africa, authors_james_tiptree, biography, cold-war, litcrit, science-fiction, vietnam, wwii

This story couldn't be made up. In the 1920s, a young girl from New York society travels to central Africa with her parents to hunt gorillas. When she returns, immersed in personal coming-of-age experiences from an extremely foreign culture, she gravitates toward pulp science fiction. 15 years later she becomes an early employee of the CIA. In the 60's and 70's, she creates a false identity and assumes a male persona, writing some of the most literary acclaimed SF of the time, and sense then.

Fo...more

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Mar 01, 2010 Sallie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not a sci-fi enthusiast, so I had never heard of James Tiptree, Jr. before picking up this prize-winning biography. The author does a wonderful job of making this woman, Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the penname of Tiptree, come to life--a woman whose issues surrounding gender identity made her vulnerable and unhappy for much of her life. She discovered her 'voice' and her most genuine self while assuming a man's identity in the fiction she wrote, and for more than thirty years no one knew...more

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Sep 21, 2012 Tina rated it 5 of 5 stars

James Tiptree Jr. was a science-fiction author who became popular in the 1960's and 1970's. Tiptree wrote complex and jarring fiction, somehow managing to bring chaos to life, sympathy to monsters, and heroes to their own self-destruction. Tiptree is also a woman, masquerading under a pseudonym. Her name is Alice Sheldon, and this book is the story of her life.
First of all, this woman's life was CRAZY. She is the daughter of big-game hunters, who take her to Africa when she is really young to s...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Stephen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Biographies of writers are risky propositions given the often solitary and introspective life that the art/craft often entails. No such concern here with this thoroughly researched and remarkably detailed biography of the writer who can perhaps best lay claim to the true origins of cyberpunk. Alice B. Sheldon grew up going on African safaris with her parents, illustrating her mother's books as a child and while her life may never have reached that level of adventure again it did not lack for int...more

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Apr 08, 2012 Franki Demerle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An indepth journey through the life of Alice Sheldon; a well-researched and well-written biography that gives great insight into the damage done to women by male oppression as well as a highly intelligent and very creative woman's way of masking the damage. Reading this book helped me understand my own mother's mental/emotional issues. Also explores the evolution of twentieth century US science fiction and how the male dominated field of psychology had no clue about women. I would have given it...more

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May 05, 2009 Mikhaela rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this amazing dense 400+-page biography in a several day fever-dream ending in eyestrain and tears. It's probably the best-written biography I've ever read, of one of the most fascinating characters (and hoaxes) in literature.

Alice B. Sheldon spent her childhood on scientific expeditions in Africa, eloped with a man she met at her debutante ball, pursued open marriage, became a painter, got a divorce, joined the WAC in WWII, got married again in Paris, joined the CIA, took too much speed,...more

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Feb 04, 2009 Sarah Pi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, gender, writing

I don't read a lot of biographies, but this is one of the finest I have ever read. I had read some of Tiptree's stories as a teenager, and I knew that he was actually a woman, but I assumed that it was a case like Andre Norton or George Eliot, a woman publishing under a man's name. The complexity of Alli's relationship with her alter-ego Tiptree, and of Tiptree's relationships with others, was compelling.
The book asks many fascinating questions about gender and identity and self (taken as three...more

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Feb 09, 2009 Annie Garvey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was such a difficult book to get through because I really did not like Alice Bradley Sheldon. As portrayed as a young girl, I felt sorry for her. Her parents took her on African adventures complete with cannibals. I think adventures are fine for children as long as their safety is assured. For Alice and her parents, this was not always the case.

The author Phillips says a great deal about Sheldon’s latent lesbianism. I don’t see it as latent. In her first marriage, her husband Billy Davey ca...more This was such a difficult book to get through because I really did not like Alice Bradley Sheldon. As portrayed as a young girl, I felt sorry for her. Her parents took her on African adventures complete with cannibals. I think adventures are fine for children as long as their safety is assured. For Alice and her parents, this was not always the case.

The author Phillips says a great deal about Sheldon’s latent lesbianism. I don’t see it as latent. In her first marriage, her husband Billy Davey caught her with another woman and was physically abusive because of it. I’m sure he was abusive for other reasons, too. During this marriage Sheldon also got pregnant, and her mother Mary Hastings Bradley helped her get an abortion. This must have been so difficult for her mother who struggled to have children. Why would you involve someone who you knew had lost a child before you were born?

Sheldon also tells the story of her mother trying to seduce her to a fellow writer and a lesbian Joanna Russ. Why would anyone accept as gospel truth the statements of this woman? She was a drug addict, though brilliant. I think Mary Bradley was a controlling parent; however, not that controlling.

And her poor second husband Ting Sheldon. Sheldon obviously married him for security and because he reminded her of her father. The author said that she fell in love with him; however, I don’t see it. Ting took care of her. When he lost his sight and could not take care of her anymore, Sheldon couldn’t stand it. As early as 1977, I believe, she got him to agree to a suicide pact and would sit next to him as he slept with a loaded gun. His son Peter knew that something was wrong; however, he didn’t imagine that his father was afraid to die at the hands of his wife. After all, Peter’s sister Audrey was a suicide, and her death was such a blow to his father Ting. Although he couldn’t see, Ting enjoyed life. Just imagine being afraid to sleep because you’re wife might shoot you in the head. When the police came the first time that night, why didn’t Ting tell them the truth? Was he ashamed?

Allie Sheldon as James Tiptree, Jr. and Raccoona Sheldon was fun for her. I think that all authors should use pseudonyms. It’s freeing and who really cares who they are? When people are dead, that’s when I like to read about them. I hate 20-year-old actors writing their life stories. What did I know at 20 – what do I know now?

I will read Allie Sheldon’s stories to see if they speak to me. I do feel that her soul was tortured because she tried to be too many things to too many people. If she was born today, how different would Sheldon’s life be, if her sibling had lived, if she had children, if she lived as a lesbian, if, if, if . . . ?(less)

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Jun 30, 2012 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

James Tiptree Jr. was known to those of us reading Sci Fi in the early 70's and on as an award winning writer. His books and short stories were unique, even for Science Fiction. He carried on correspondence with several successful Sci Fi writers, including Harlan Ellison and Ursula K LeGuin. All of this was even more unique than you might think because in reality Tiptree was Alice B.Sheldon, a married woman living and writing in New England. This book tells her story, from childhood and the purp...more

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May 14, 2012 Heather rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A fascinating and incredibly thorough biography of such a complex, interesting person. The excerpts from Sheldon's letters, alone, make for an incredible read, and add to that the strange and improbable paths her life took in the fiftyish years before she even became James Tiptree Jr and you have a recipe for great storytelling.

Sheldon/Tiptree is often a difficult person for me to like, in this telling. Dealing with immense bouts of depression and gender and sexuality confusion, obsessed with s...more

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Mar 31, 2010 Sarah Souther rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography

A biography of an absolutely fascinating individual. She was a pioneer as a woman in military intelligence and as a writer of scifi that was truly different and new. The reader gets a little tired of hearing over and over again what women could and could not do during certain time periods. It seems like Phillips gets bogged down a bit in Ally's gender issues, but so did Ally. I'd love to have dinner with Tip/Ally because she was a great conversationalist and had so much to say. I'd also like to...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Alexandra rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, read-in-2011

It's probably impossible for me to give an adequate review of this amazing biography. It is written so beautifully, and Sheldon/Tiptree's life so extraordinary, that it's hard to encapsulate in anything other than this book.

For those late to the party: Alice Sheldon wrote SF as James Tiptree Jr and remained incognito for many years. This biography sets out Sheldon's entire life, though, not just the fiction-writing part, because it is truly a life worth recording. She went to Africa three times,...more It's probably impossible for me to give an adequate review of this amazing biography. It is written so beautifully, and Sheldon/Tiptree's life so extraordinary, that it's hard to encapsulate in anything other than this book.

For those late to the party: Alice Sheldon wrote SF as James Tiptree Jr and remained incognito for many years. This biography sets out Sheldon's entire life, though, not just the fiction-writing part, because it is truly a life worth recording. She went to Africa three times, with her parents, before the age of 15 - one time on a gorilla-hunting expedition. Life at home was no fairy tale... and she got married at 19 to a man she had only met a few times. They stayed together for about 6 years. She tried university, she tried being an artist, she tried journalism. She joined the WAC during WW2 and thus met her second husband, Ting. She got a doctorate in psychology, she tried chicken farming, and - the reason most people will read this bio - she wrote science fiction, mostly in short story form. She was a complex woman, probably a difficult one, beset by a number of demons - how to deal with emotions, her mother, depression, anger, and drug use. I'm not convinced I would have liked her as a person. That's beside the point, though.

This is not a happy story. There is a lot of heartbreak and difficulty in Sheldon's life, on large and small scales. Phillips' discussion of her depression and drug use is sympathetic: not so delicate as to ignore it, not romanticising it or making excuses, just... this is how it was. Which was heartbreaking, to be honest. The way Sheldon herself wrote about her feelings and frustrations was agonising, perhaps because, frankly, it was (for me) just faintly recognisable.

One thing I really liked about this biography is Phillips' use of names. She calls her subject Alice early on, and Alli after Ting's mother starts using that nickname (she loved it apparently). She also uses Tiptree when referring to the fiction and letters and possible thoughts of that alter-ego, which I think is a lovely way of complicating what could otherwise be dismissed as 'simply' a nom-de-plume. (Phillips also devotes some time to Raccoona Sheldon, and how Tiptree and Raccoona were seen to interact by editors etc.) It's a true history book too: Phillips has used a lot of primary material, and - delightfully - quotes from it frequently. This worked really well, and was utterly riveting, when it came to Tiptree's letter writing. Tiptree was an inveterate letter-writer; fan letters, letters accompanying stories, the occasional letter to a magazine... Tiptree was a regular correspondent of a huge number of people, and by regular that might be a letter every fortnight or so. And the people? Oh, Ursula le Guin and Joanna Russ, for example. (My head exploded a little bit at the idea of those three exchanging letters and talking about each other to the other. Which they did.) Yes, it did inspire me to write a fan letter to Julie Phillips.

I am not of the opinion that one must know the gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity and schooling history of an author in order to understand or appreciate their work as a piece of art. There is, however, no denying that some background or knowledge can add depth. Knowing Tiptree to be a woman does change how we read some of his/her fiction; and knowing something of her struggle with sexuality and sex can add depth, too, as well as her experiences of colonialism in Africa an Europe after WW2.

These comments haven't even touched on Sheldon's sexuality, her politics, or any number of other issues in her life. It's a really, really great biography - even if you're not interested in Tiptree's fiction, this is a remarkable life, and illuminates all sorts of interesting things about life in one part of America from the 1920s to the 1980s. Highly, highly recommended. (less)

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Jan 16, 2011 Jlawrence rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Alice B. Sheldon led a fascinating life - taken by her parents on African safaris when a young child, became a frustrated painter and published art critic, did photo-intelligence work during WWII which lead to a job in the CIA after the war, and earned a doctorate in experimental psychology.

And that was all before she wrote award-winning science fiction under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr.

This biography does a great job chronicling Sheldon's tumultuous life, balancing anecdotes, letter excer...more Alice B. Sheldon led a fascinating life - taken by her parents on African safaris when a young child, became a frustrated painter and published art critic, did photo-intelligence work during WWII which lead to a job in the CIA after the war, and earned a doctorate in experimental psychology.

And that was all before she wrote award-winning science fiction under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr.

This biography does a great job chronicling Sheldon's tumultuous life, balancing anecdotes, letter excerpts, quotes from friends and loved ones with analysis of Sheldon's psychology and writings. Sheldon initially chose the pseudonym as a kind of lark, but her Tiptree persona soon took on a life of its own. Tiptree's voice was strong and unique, combining what seemed an unmistakably 'male' voice with well-rounded female characters and complex takes on feminist themes, and the best Tiptree stories melded hard science fiction and social and psychological themes seamlessly.

Sheldon, as Tiptree, was secretive and refused to meet anyone in person, but nonetheless developed strong friendships with many sf writers of the era, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Joanna Russ, entirely through letter-writing. (These engrossing exchanges make up a large portion of the book). Sheldon wove in facts of her real life into what Tiptree revealed to others, but only the ones who got the most personal in their exchanges - Le Guin and Russ - ever suspected the mystery man might be a woman. In fact, Ellison and Robert Silverberg both wrote praise-filled intros to Tiptree stories talking about how the secretive Tipree *had* to be a man, based on his writing.

It was only through her mother's death and obituary that Tiptree sleuths were able to figure out her identity and out her. After losing the powerful mask of Tiptree, Sheldon only a few times wrote as strongly again, and a decade later heartbreakingly succumbed to the depression that'd been plaguing her for decades by taking her husband's and her own life.

Phillips gives us the troubled, fiercely intelligent, many-sided Sheldon, warts and all, and the only place where her analysis seems to misfire is in missing an important (and to me very explicit) nuance in the ending of one Tiptree's most important takes on feminism, the story 'Houston Houston, Do You Read?'.

Otherwise, fascinating and moving for the individual it reveals, and for the questions raised by Tiptree/Sheldon about what masculine and feminine mean, in fiction and in life.(less)

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Dec 14, 2010 Neil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wrote about and recommended this book in other forums earlier. It's a wonderful biography of one of history's fringe characters, a science fiction writer who grew up in a society family, Alice Sheldon had a very unusual upbringing, part African explorer, part ingenue. Her parents went on several early safaris and took their young daughter with them, making her essentially, the first white girl in many parts of Africa. Sadly, that would become a kind of metaphor for how well Alice fit in anywhe...more

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Jun 15, 2010 tENTATIVELY, cONVENIENCE rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, sf

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Dare I even TRY to write a review of this?! Or will it immediately turn into a personal memoir in wch I say things that'll make me even more unpopular than I already am?! Is that possible?! (Yes, of course, it's possible!).

Let's start w/ my personal relationship to feminism, shall we? Having been born in 1953, I was 16 when 1970 began. Feminism, as it seems to be currently referred to, may be sd to've started around this time. As a guy who had long hair living in a lower middle class suburb out...more

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