• Title: James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
• Author: Julie Phillips
• Genre/Subject: Biography
• Publisher: Picador
• Publication Date: 2006
• Start date: 9/2/24
• Finish date: 9/10/24

Review:

Noted SFF author James Tiptree Jr. was a woman. Alright, thank you for reading this review and remember to check back often as new material is added…. er, well there is a bit more.

James Tiptree appeared on the science fiction scene in the late 1960s, writing about rocket ships, aliens, intergalactic bureaucracy, exploring new planets and other wonderful tales of adventure and discovery.

So, before I get any further I will admit that I had heard the name before but have never read any novels, stories, anything by the author. Meaning that I may have read one or two stories in anthologies but I don’t remember any or associate Tiptree with anything I have read. But this book was not a review or literary criticism of Tiptree’s works but rather the story of the author’s extraordinary life.

Alice Hastings Bradley was born in 1915 in Chicago to two extraordinary parents. In 1921 at the age of 6 she was in the Belgian Congo on a year long expedition to then uncharted areas where no white man, let alone a white 6 year old had ever set foot. In 1929 Alice found a dog-eared copy of Weird Tales and this set her imagination on fire for alien worlds and set the course for her future life as an author.

Fast forward to 1934 when a 19 year old Alice makes her society debut and elopes with a man who became her first husband. In 1942 an Alice clad in spike heels and a fox fur coat enlists in the US Army. In 1946 Major Alice Sheldon retires from the army after a distinguished career with both the regular army and army intelligence. In 1985 Austrian pop singer Falco records ROCK ME AMADEUS!! Sorry, that had to be done.

During Tiptree’s career he remained an enigma. No one had ever met him, seen him at a convention, anything. However, he carried on correspondence with many of the literary legends of the SFF genre for many years. And I do mean legends: Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison, Robert Silverberg. All of which swore up and down that Tiptree was a man, wrote masculine stories in a masculine voice and was a man of genius. Finally in 1976 some intrepid fans discovered the true Tiptree was our Alice B. Sheldon and the SF world has never been the same since.

Now, what is it that I say so often about books but biographies in particular? Get. An. Editor. This was a 500 page monster that could have been a great book at 300 or less. 40 chapters of a year by year breakdown of Tiptree/Sheldon’s life. Sigh. I know why writers do this, I really do. They want the press reviews to say, “An exhaustively researched biography…” And, as I invariably find in the acknowledgements, a grant from some illustrious foundation. So when you get that grant money and can finally drink wine that doesn’t come in cans, you want to show the foundation that enabled this that you were worth every penny. I understand this, but I don’t like it. Too much information is often as bad as not enough information, and this book was no exception.

This wasn’t the best, and it certainly wasn’t the worst. It was a good read, too long, but all things considered a lot of good informative reading about an extraordinary writer, and an even more extraordinary life.