US & Canadian Literary Biography, Literary Figures - Women's Biography
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Overview
"James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a string 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." With ten years of work, Julie Phillips has written a biography of Alice Sheldon. Based on extensive research, exclusive interviews, and full access to Alice Sheldon's papers, this is the definitive biography of a profoundly original writer and a woman far ahead of her time.Winner of the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
What could be better than getting two biographies for the price of one? In essence, that's what Julie Phillips has given us with this spellbinding portrait of Alice Sheldon, the extraordinary woman who created stunning works of science fiction under the pen name of James Tiptree Jr. Sheldon, whose unconventional life included a childhood filled with exotic adventure, a stint in the CIA, and an eventual murder-suicide, assumed Tiptree less as a pseudonym than as a masculine persona that allowed her to express many facets of her complicated personality, including profound gender confusion and a fixation with sex and death that surfaced in her brilliant, disturbing stories. Ten years in the making, this biography does elegant justice to an enigmatic literary figure whose double life remained a secret for nearly a decade. In a word, it's unputdownable.Martin Morse Wooster
In sf, Alice Sheldon's chief legacy is the James Tiptree Award, given annually for the best feminist sf. Her work blazed a trail that other women have followed. Julie Phillips does an excellent job in telling Sheldon's story.— The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Journalist Phillips has achieved a wonder: an evenhanded, scrupulously documented, objective yet sympathetic portrait of a deliberately elusive personality: Alice Sheldon (1915-1987), who adopted the persona of science fiction writer James Tiptree Jr. Working from Sheldon's (and Tiptree's) few interviews; Sheldon's professional papers, many unpublished; and the papers of Sheldon's writer-explorer-socialite mother, Phillips has crafted an absorbing melange of several disparate lives besides Sheldon's, each impacting hers like a deadly off-course asteroid. From Sheldon's sad poor-little-rich-girlhood to her sadder suicide (by a prior pact first shooting her blind and bedridden husband), Sheldon, perpetually wishing she'd been born a boy, made what she called "endless makeshift" attempts to express her tormenting creativity as, among others, a debutante, a flamboyant bohemian, a WAC officer, a CIA photoanalyst, and a research scientist before producing Tiptree's "haunting, subversive, many-layered [science] fiction" at 51. Sheldon masked her authorship until 1976, and afterward produced little fiction, feeling that a woman writing as a man could not be convincing. Through all the ironic sorrows of a life Sheldon wished she hadn't had to live as a woman, Phillips steadfastly and elegantly allows one star, bright as the Sirius Sheldon loved, to gleam. 16 pages of b&w photos. (Aug.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Kirkus Reviews
Finely detailed biography of a woman whose ascension as a cult figure writing as a man was the most visible facet of her fascinating and, in the end, tragic life. Journalist Phillips's (Ms., Village Voice, etc.) superb depiction of Alice B. Sheldon (1915-87) as the woman behind the persona of science-fiction writer James Tiptree is an extraordinary achievement. A Chicago debutante who survived a quickie society marriage and divorce, "Alli" Bradley enlisted in the army and became a WWII intelligence officer. After the war, she married fellow veteran Huntingdon Sheldon, and they both joined the fledgling CIA. She also dabbled in graphic art and eventually earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology. After more than a decade of publishing as "Tiptree," Sheldon's secret was revealed. Her life ended in a double suicide with her ailing husband. Apart from the basic facts of her life, Sheldon's innermost thoughts were revealed to the world through her stories and the voluminous correspondence "he" exchanged with close friends, who, like Tiptree's readers, had no idea that it was a woman speaking to them. Most, Phillips says, saw him as a manly man's writer, dealing with issues of sex and death-her writing was sometimes compared to Hemingway's-but one with an unusual talent for creating sympathetic female characters. Phillips is more than adept at plumbing Sheldon's writing to expose her anger at the role gender plays in sex, creativity and power. A compelling portrait of a conflicted feminist.From the Publisher
"An incredible life, done elegant justice. Tiptree-Sheldon is one of the century's astonishing figures."—Jonathan Lethem, bestselling author of The Fortress of Solitude"This account of a heroically inventive and highly peculiar quest for personal and creative fulfillment may make you rethink your ideas about what it means to be male or female—or, for that matter, human."—Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine
"Ms. Phillips does a fine, perceptive job of piecing together the patchwork of her subject's personality."—The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
Book Details
Published
August 8, 2006
Publisher
New York : St. Martin's Press, 2006.
Pages
480
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780312203856