Winner - 2007 Hugo Awards
Winner - 2007 ALA Notable Non Fiction Selection
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Tiptree burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hard-edged, provocative short stories. Then the cover was blown: the author was actually a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon--world traveler, debutante, chicken farmer, CIA agent, and experimental psychologist. This fascinating biography is based on full access to her papers.

The name that hid a startling secret

Review by Robert Weibezahl

It was common in the 19th century for a woman to adopt a male nom de plume in order to be taken more seriously as a writer or to preserve her privacy. By the 20th century, though, women had come into their own in literary terms, and a practice that had well served such writers as George Eliot, George Sand and the Brontës became passé. So it was surprising in the late 1970s when acclaimed science fiction writer James Tiptree, Jr., was "outed" as a woman, not least of all because Tiptree had been heralded as a notably masculine writer, albeit one who played fast and lose with gender issues in his stories.

Tiptree, the world learned, was really Alice Bradley Sheldon, a then 60-something woman living a quiet life in the rural exurbs of Washington, D.C. But as Julie Phillips demonstrates in her impressively detailed and engaging biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, much of Sheldon's earlier life had been anything but quiet. Before becoming a science fiction writer when she was in her 50s, this gifted woman had been a painter, a WAAC officer during World War II, a CIA agent, a research psychologist and even a chicken farmer. Extraordinarily bright and beautiful, Allie Sheldon did many things well, but spent much of her life struggling with identity issues, a struggle that kept her from leaving her mark in any one field—until she rediscovered science fiction in middle age.

Reading Phillips' incisive and sympathetic account of Sheldon's life, it seems inevitable that this woman would have an unconventional life. She was born to a world of privilege, her father a Chicago lawyer and her mother, Mary Bradley, an extremely successful writer of popular fiction and adventure travel. The Bradleys were atypical by any measure, leading numerous expeditions to the African interior and taking young Alice along with them from the time she was six. A childhood spent hunting elephants and learning Swahili left the girl with a restless sense of adventure that she would never tame, saddling her with aspirations that pushed beyond the circumscribed parameters for women of her generation. More often than not, these unfulfilled aspirations led to frustration and unhappiness.

Sheldon dabbled in colleges—Sarah Lawrence, Berkeley, NYU—never quite finishing what she began, and at painting, even studying with Ashcan School painter John Sloan. She weathered an impulsive and

disastrous early marriage and had strong emotional and casual sexual attachments to a number of women (Phillips suggests that Sheldon's true sexual disposition was lesbian, but she never had the courage to embrace that life). Twenty-six when America entered World War II, Sheldon enlisted, enjoying her work in the photo intelligence division, and ultimately marrying her boss, Col. Huntington "Ting" Sheldon. After the war, the Sheldons tried their hands at running a chicken hatchery in New Jersey before returning to Washington where they both took positions with the nascent CIA.

Ting stayed with the Agency, though Allie left after just three years, frustrated by its glass ceiling. She tried a bit of freelance writing, then finally knuckled down academically, earning a Ph.D. in psychology. She ultimately applied her fascination with theories of perception to her fiction, and that fiction, Phillips shows, would borrow heavily from Sheldon's extraordinary experiences and her lifelong personal conflicts about sexuality and gender roles. In 1987, Sheldon shot Ting while he slept, then turned the gun on herself, carrying out a suicide pact the two had made.

The limited output of James Tiptree, Jr., is not well known outside the world of science fiction, but Phillips' appealing, authoritative biography is meant for readers well beyond the limits of the genre. Sheldon's "secret" identity and the issues she explored in her fiction are interesting, true, but her life story proves fascinating in its own right, unique in its particulars, and emblematic of the constricting reality that intelligent, accomplished women routinely faced before the women's movement made it possible for them to be masters of their own destiny.

Robert Weibezahl is the author of the novel The Wicked and the Dead.

© 2006, All rights reserved, BookPage

Publisher Comments

James Tiptree, Jr. burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hardedged, provocative short stories. Hailed as a brilliant masculine writer with a deep sympathy for his famale character, he penned such classics as "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"and "The Women Men Don't See. "For years he corresponded with Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Ursula Le Guin. No one knew his true identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: A sixty-one-year old woman named Alice Sheldon. As a child, she explored Africa with her mother. Later, made into a debutante, she eloped with one of the guests at the party. She was an artist, a chicken farmer, aWorld War II intelligence officer, a CIA agent, an experimental psychologist. Devoted to her second husband, she struggled with her feelings for women. In 1987, her suicide shocked friends and fans. The James Tiptree, Jr.Award was created to honor science fiction or fantasy that explores our understanding of gender. This fascinating biography, ten years in the making, is based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to Alice Sheldon's papers Julie Phillips has written about books, film, feminism, and cultural politics for "Newsday, Interview, Mademoiselle, "and for" Ms." and "The Village Voice, " where her original articles on James Tiptree, Jr., appeared. Born in Seattle, she worked as a journalist in New York and now lives in Amsterdam with her husband and their two children.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle AwardA "Publishers Weekly" Best Book of the YearA "New York Times" Notable Book of the YearAn American Library Association Notable Book of the Year James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a series of hard-edged, provocative stories. He redefined the genre with such classics as "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?"and "The Women Men Don't See. "He was hailed as a brilliant writer with a deep sympathy for his female characters. For nearly ten years he carried on intimate correspondences with other writers--Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula K. Le Guin, to name a few. None of them knew his true identity. He was so reclusive that he was widely believed to be a top-secret government agent. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: a mysterious sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon. A native of Chicago, Alice traveled the globe with her mother, the writer and hunter Mary Hastings Bradley. At nineteen, she eloped with the poet who had been seated on her left at her debut. She became an artist, a critic for the "Chicago Sun," an army officer, a CIA analyst, and an expert on the psychology of perception. Beautiful, theatrical, and sophisticated, she developed close friendships with people she never met. Devoted to her second husband, she struggled with her feelings for women. An outspoken feminist, she took a male name as a joke--and found the voice to write her stories. Alice Sheldon's bold appropriation of a "masculine" style and a male identity (she once contributed to a feminist symposium as one of the "sensitive men") not only demolishes assumptions about gendered writing, it speaks, in a way no other writer's life has, to the mystery of the writing persona. Only when she became someone else could she tell the truth about herself. Only in writing about the alien could she speak about her body and her experience. Tiptree stands alongside Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin as one of the most important and exciting writers of speculative literature. As new generations of readers are drawn to her prescient work, her passionate life and her suicide in 1987 continue to haunt those who knew and admired her. With ten years of work, Julie Phillips has written a first-rate biography of Alice Sheldon. Based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to Alice Sheldon's papers, this is the biography of a profoundly original writer and a woman far ahead of her time. "In Julie Phillips's engrossing and endlessly revelatory biography, the woman behind the alias is at last allowed to step into the spotlight, emerging as neither a malicious prankster nor a defiant contrarian, but simply as a writer for whom science fiction proved to be the ideal genre to tell her own story . . . Phillips's]writing achieves its own kind of narrative tension, a spell that obliges even the readers already clued in to Tiptree's secret to turn the book's pages with increasing suspense as they wait for its real-life inhabitants to catch up with them . . . a] thoughtful and meticulous biography provides both the expert and the novice with a Rosetta stone to the Tiptree catalog -- an opportunity to extract from these stories the many layers of personal resonance they once held only for Sheldon herself. And it gives a new generation of readers the chance to prove to Sheldon, who in her final years wrote that she was "trying to become nothing," just how supremely wrong she was."--Dave Itzkoff, "The New York Times Book Review" "An incredible life, done elegant justice. Tiptree-Sheldon is one of the century's astonishing figures, somewhere between Katharine Hepburn, Philip K. Dick, and Billy Tipton."--Jonathan Lethem, bestselling author of "The Fortress of Solitude" "An examplary biography of a fascinating life--the brilliantly elusive woman who, as a writer, called herself James Tiptree, Jr. Never oversimplifying, never over-interpreting, Julie Phillips illuminates a formidably complex psyche wihout invading it."--Ursula K. Le Guin, Hugo- and National Book Award-winning author of "The Dispossessed" "The meticulous, emotionally intelligent biography of an extraordinary writer. Alice Sheldon is easily the most intriguing figure in late 20th-century American science fiction. Julie Phillips has given 'Tiptree' the book she deserves."--William Gibson, "New York Times" bestselling author of "Pattern Recognition" "A fascinating subject, an engrossing read. Philips provid