James Tiptree, Jr.

Pseudonym (1967 to death in 1987) of Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon, born Alice Hastings Bradley, retired Major Alice Davey after WWII, erstwhile CIA photointelligence operative, Ph.D. in psychology, and therefore no stranger to name changes and aliases even before she began publishing science fiction under the Tiptree pseudonym.

Also published as Raccoona Sheldon (1974-1977).

The James Tiptree, Jr. Award was named after her.

Biography

Born to Mary Hastings Bradley (a writer) and Herbert Bradley (a lawyer and naturalist), Tiptree spent her childhood traveling with her parents. At 19 (1934) she married William Davey. In 1941 she and Davey divorced, and she joined the US Army soon after (in 1942), working in intelligence. She married Huntington Sheldon in 1945, resigned from the military in 1946, ran a small business until 1952 when she and her husband joined the CIA, and then returned to college ultimately completing a Ph.D. at George Washington University in 1967 in experimental psychology. On May 19, 1987, she shot her ailing husband and then herself, having suffered from depression through much of her adult life.

Although Tiptree was married to men through most of her adult life, she was more of a bisexual. "I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up."

She published her first story ("The Lucky Ones") in The New Yorker, Nov. 16, 1946 issue, credited variously as "Alice Bradley" and "Alice Bradley Sheldon". In 1967 she adopted the James Tiptree, Jr. pseudonym, consciously using a male name. While widely known to be a pseudonym, most people assumed the writer was male. Harlan Ellison introduced Tiptree's story, "The Milk of Paradise", in Again, Dangerous Visions, saying that "Wilhelm is the woman to beat this year, but Tiptree is the man." Robert Silverberg described Tiptree's writing as "ineluctibly masculine" in his 1975 introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise, attempting to dispel rumors that Tiptree was female. He described the notion that Tiptree was a woman as "absurd", a notion brought about by some people who thought it impossible for a man to be as clue-ful about women as Tiptree's writing.

When Tiptree's mother, Mary Hastings Bradley, died in 1976, Tiptree mentioned the death; enterprising fans found the obituary and outed Tiptree as Alice.

Bibliography

See Complete bibliography of James Tiptree, Jr.

Novels

• Brightness Falls from the Air (1985)
• Up the Walls of the World (1978)

Short Story Collections

• 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)
• The Starry Rift (1986)
• Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986)
• Crown of Stars (1988)
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990)

Notable Short Stories

• The Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)
• Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)
• Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)
• A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)
• The Screwfly Solution (1977, published under the name Raccoona Sheldon)
• The Women Men Don't See (1973)
• Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976, published under the name Raccoona Sheldon)

Further reading

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

External Links

• http://davidlavery.net/Tiptree/
• American Veterans Committee Organizes veterans 1945 -- mentions Capt. Alice B. Davey, WAC