James Tiptree Jr
Mike Chary
Back when I was a kid, she (or at least I am told it's a she) was one of
the more prominent sf writers around. Not in the Asimov or Clarke class,
but certainly anyone who was at least a semi-serious sf reader had heard
about James Tiptree, Jr. Anyway, about 1990, I went seriously into
religious scholarship, and I had to stop reading everything that was not
written in a dead language more than a thousand years ago. On recently
deciding to "catch up" with sf, I haven't seen hide nor hair of Tiptree.
What happened? (Someone at Walden's thought she might be dead.)
--
Court Philosopher and Barbarian, DNRC http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~fchary
"Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it."
-- Samuel Butler
"Ipsa scientia potestas est." -- Roger Bacon
Dave Brockman
Per The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
James Tiptree, Jr., was the pseudonym of US writer and psychologist
Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (1915-1987). She had been married to
Huntington Sheldon since 1945. In the early 1980s he contracted
Alzheimer's Disease. In 1987, herself in precarious health, she shot him
and killed herself.
****************************
Dave Brockman aka Big Dave
http://www.oz.net/~daveb
da...@oz.net
****************************
Steven H Silver
"James Tiptree, Jr." committed suicide back in 1986 or 87.
Mark J. Rosen wrote:
>
> I don't know if she died (I don't think so), but she did publish a book a few
> years ago called _Brightness Falls from the Air_, or something like that. It
> was an excellent book, and I recommend it.
>
> Mark
>
> ==================================================================
> Mark J. Rosen "Great spirits have always encountered
> m...@grok.org violent opposition from mediocre minds"
> -- Albert Einstein
--
Steven H
Silver
silv...@earthlink.net
http://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/index.html
Harry Turtledove Bibliography, Jewish SF, Chicago SF, Debut SF, Book
Reviews
-----------------
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4208/index.html
Medieval History Bibliographies, Chicago, Random Links
Colin Campbell
She killed her very ill husband and then suicided.
Paul Ciszek
lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>>
>>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>Messy and sad.
Call me tasteless, but I would not have expected such an ultimate "stand
by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
Paul Ciszek "Evolution is a theory that accounts for
variety, not superiority."
pciszek at nyx dot net -- Joan Pontius
Mark J. Rosen
Shawn Wagner
She's dead.
Damn good writer, but I can only read her stuff
in small doses. It's just too depressing.
Good, but depressing.
Mike Chary <fch...@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote in article
<57fns8$9...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>...
Lawrence Watt-Evans
In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>
>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
Messy and sad.
--
For information on Lawrence Watt-Evans, finger -l lawr...@clark.net
or see The Misenchanted Page at http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/
The Horror Writers Association Page is at http://www.horror.org/HWA/
Mike Chary
[Geez, Chary, way to bring down the newsgroup, sorry guys.]
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>>
>>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>
>Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>
>Messy and sad.
Well, gee, I really did like her writing. I am not exactly sure how to
react. _Up the Wall of the World_ was a keen book.
rrh...@aol.com
In article <57fns8$9...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
fch...@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu (Mike Chary) writes:
>Back when I was a kid, she (or at least I am told it's a she) was one of
>the more prominent sf writers around. Not in the Asimov or Clarke class,
>but certainly anyone who was at least a semi-serious sf reader had heard
>about James Tiptree, Jr. Anyway, about 1990, I went seriously into
>religious scholarship, and I had to stop reading everything that was not
>written in a dead language more than a thousand years ago. On recently
>deciding to "catch up" with sf, I haven't seen hide nor hair of Tiptree.
>What happened? (Someone at Walden's thought she might be dead.)
>
Well, she died, suicide, in 1987. In my opinion, she was above the Asimov
and Clarke class, in the Wolfe class, at least as far as her short fiction
goes. An incredible writer.
One of those for whom just a list of stories speaks volumes:
"The Girl who was Plugged In"
"Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death"
"The Last Flight of Doctor Ain"
"And I Awoke and Found me Here on the Cold Hill's Side"
"The Only Neat Thing to Do"
"The Screwfly Solution" (as by Raccoona Sheldon)
"The Women Men Don't See"
"The Peacefulness of Vivyan"
"And so on, and so on ..."
and also the odd, moving, uneven novels:
_Up the Walls of the World_
_Brightness Falls From the Air_
Anyone says SF isn't literature, or SF is in decline since the '50s (or
whenever), just point to Tiptree.
Rich Horton
"To feel the always coming on, the always rising of the night" --
Archibald MacLeish
Junsok Yang
In article <57fns8$9...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>,
fch...@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu says...
> On recently
>deciding to "catch up" with sf, I haven't seen hide nor hair of Tiptree.
>What happened? (Someone at Walden's thought she might be dead.)
You probably found out that she committed suicide about ten years ago.
There was an excellent collection of her work out from, I believe, Arkham
Press (a small hardcover press) called "Her Smoke Rose Forever" which
collected her stories from the 70s and early 80s. It may still be available
from mail order or SF specialty stores. That's just about the only book of
hers published after 1990, I think.
--
**************************************************************************
"I'm sitting here, doing nothing but aging." ...George Harrison
Junsok Yang (yan...@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu)
(yan...@minerva.cis.yale.edu)
James Nicoll
In article <57g8lk$c...@clarknet.clark.net>,
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>>
>>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>
>Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>
>Messy and sad.
But rational, given that Alzeimer's is currently uncurable and
the US doesn't have provisions for mercy killing AFAIK. If memory serves,
she took care to place her affairs in order and called her lawyer before
hand to let him know what she was going to do.
I just had a long quality-of-death conversation with my uncle,
since my grandmother just died in her sleep: not a good thing but if
one has to die, better than either my grandfather's strokes (Which were
bad enough he refused life-extending techniques) or his mother's multi-
year coma. I think perhaps North Americans could deal with death and
aging more gracefully.
James Nicoll
--
Maureen F. McHugh
In article <57fns8$9...@dismay.ucs.indiana.edu>, bf...@freenet.carleton.ca wrote:
>Back when I was a kid, she (or at least I am told it's a she) was one of
>the more prominent sf writers around. Not in the Asimov or Clarke class,
>but certainly anyone who was at least a semi-serious sf reader had heard
>about James Tiptree, Jr. Anyway, about 1990, I went seriously into
>religious scholarship, and I had to stop reading everything that was not
>What happened? (Someone at Walden's thought she might be dead.)
>
James Tiptree Jr., (Alice Sheldon) was born in 1915 and died in 1987. Her
husband was in ill health and so was she and in what was apparently a suicide
pact, she shot him and then herself.
Maureen F. McHugh
Elisabeth Carey
Paul Ciszek wrote:
>
> lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>
> >In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
> >>
> >>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>
> >Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
> >shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
> >disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>
> >Messy and sad.
>
> by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
The story's criticisms are of Men in General. Her husband was not Men in
General, but an individual, whom she'd been married to for many years,
with whom she had a strong mutual commitment. And Alzheimer's was
destroying the person she loved, there was no cure or even treatment,
and we don't currently have any graceful solutions to that problem.
Lis Carey
Junsok Yang
In article <E1JGn...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca
says...
>In article <57gkuv$e...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
>Paul Ciszek <pci...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>>lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>>>In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>>>>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>>>Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>>>shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>>>disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>>>Messy and sad.
>>Call me tasteless, but I would not have expected such an ultimate "stand
>>by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
> Why? Authors aren't their works.
At the risk of diminishing James' comments which I do agree with, I would
expect such a behavior from the author of "Love is the Plan, and the Plan is
Death."
> Tiptree and her husband had an interesting courtship and it isn't
>surprising that the result was a relationship with deep commitment.
Since I didn't know either Tiptree or her husband (though I was surprised
to find out after her death that we had lived in the same area; McClean Va.
during some of her most fertile writing period - though I did not know her
work at the time. Hell, I could have passed her in the bookstore at the
SF section or the post office! ) I'm surely not really qualified to comment;
but based on what is listed in the news reports, I thought it was romantic.
Maureen F. McHugh
In article <329CA1...@worldnet.att.net>, Elisabeth Carey <lis....@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Paul Ciszek wrote:
>>
>> lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>>
>> >In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>> >>
>> >>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>>
>> >Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>> >shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>> >disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>>
>> >Messy and sad.
>>
>> Call me tasteless, but I would not have expected such an ultimate "stand
>> by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
>
>General, but an individual, whom she'd been married to for many years,
>with whom she had a strong mutual commitment. And Alzheimer's was
>destroying the person she loved, there was no cure or even treatment,
>and we don't currently have any graceful solutions to that problem.
>
>Lis Carey
Alice Sheldon suffered from heart problems herself, and the decision was
apparently not to stand by her man, but what to do about someone she could no
longer care for, and more importantly, about her own quality of life. I think
she killed her husband because he wanted to die. She killed herself because
she felt that she could no longer do the things she saw as giving her life
meaning, and was afraid she soon would become dependant on others, the way her
husband had.
I don't know that I agree or disagree with the decision.
Maureen F. McHugh
Steven H Silver
Maureen F. McHugh wrote:
> Alice Sheldon suffered from heart problems herself, and the decision was
> apparently not to stand by her man, but what to do about someone she could no
> longer care for, and more importantly, about her own quality of life. I think
> she killed her husband because he wanted to die. She killed herself because
> she felt that she could no longer do the things she saw as giving her life
> meaning, and was afraid she soon would become dependant on others, the way her
> husband had.
>
> I don't know that I agree or disagree with the decision.
I don't know that it is our place to agree or disagree with her
decision, merely to accept that for Sheldon it was the decision she felt
was right. It was, however, a sad decision in that her life had come to
such a place where she was in the position to make such a decision.
HARRY R. ERWIN
Mike Chary (fch...@ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu) wrote:
: Back when I was a kid, she (or at least I am told it's a she) was one of
: the more prominent sf writers around. Not in the Asimov or Clarke class,
: but certainly anyone who was at least a semi-serious sf reader had heard
: about James Tiptree, Jr. Anyway, about 1990, I went seriously into
: religious scholarship, and I had to stop reading everything that was not
: written in a dead language more than a thousand years ago. On recently
: deciding to "catch up" with sf, I haven't seen hide nor hair of Tiptree.
: What happened? (Someone at Walden's thought she might be dead.)
Suicide after shooting her husband, who had late stage AD.
--
Harry Erwin, Internet: her...@gmu.edu, Web Page: http://osf1.gmu.edu/~herwin
49 year old PhD student in computational neuroscience ("how bats do it" 8)
and lecturer for CS 211 (data structures and advanced C++)
James Nicoll
In article <57gkuv$e...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
Paul Ciszek <pci...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
>
>>In article <57ft13$r...@park.interport.net>, m...@grok.org says...
>>>
>>>I don't know if she died (I don't think so)...
>
>>Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
>>shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
>>disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>
>>Messy and sad.
>
>Call me tasteless, but I would not have expected such an ultimate "stand
>by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
Why? Authors aren't their works.
Tiptree and her husband had an interesting courtship and it isn't
surprising that the result was a relationship with deep commitment.
James Nicoll
--
Carol Ann Green & Steve Kerry
James Tiptree Jr. real name was Alice Sheldon. She wrote under a
pseudonym for many years, before it was finally acknowledged that 'he'
was a she. She committed suicide after her husband contracted Alzheimers
disease, I believe she shot him first, then herself.
For many years Tiptree's work was thought to be 'ineluctably masculine'
(Robert Silverberg in his introduction to 'Warm Worlds And Otherwise').
I think it shocked a lot of people to learn that Tiptree was really a
woman, but her work lives on in some of the best science fiction stories
ever written
Carol Ann Green
Lawrence Watt-Evans
In article <57p4uh$h...@news.enterprise.net>, meta...@enterprise.net
says...
>
>For many years Tiptree's work was thought to be 'ineluctably masculine'
>(Robert Silverberg in his introduction to 'Warm Worlds And Otherwise').
>I think it shocked a lot of people to learn that Tiptree was really a
That's such bullshit.
I'm sorry, it's not your fault; you're just quoting the popular
mythology, but it's still bullshit. A LOT of people thought Tiptree
was a woman, including me. (I was flat-out certain of it.) The
"ineluctably masculine" line comes from an introduction Robert
Silverberg wrote in which he said he'd heard this rumor and thought
it was nonsense. He looked like a fool a year or so later, when her
true identity came out, and I never heard ANYONE other than Silverberg
say anything of the sort before that, and I never heard of anyone but
Silverberg being shocked.
Once her identity WAS known, a lot of people latched onto the Silverberg
quote to support their feminist agenda -- that Sheldon really did fool
everyone. Which is bullshit. I'm a feminist and have been for thirty
years, but I'm not blind or stupid, and Tiptree sure looked feminine to
me.
There are writers whose sex is not apparent in their work, lots of 'em --
Katherine McLean, for example -- but Tiptree was not one of them.
Silverberg is on record making several really stupid statements over the
years, mixed in with a lot of good sense and genuine insight; this is just
one more.
rrh...@aol.com
In article <57p4uh$h...@news.enterprise.net>, Carol Ann Green & Steve Kerry
<meta...@enterprise.net> writes:
>For many years Tiptree's work was thought to be 'ineluctably masculine'
>(Robert Silverberg in his introduction to 'Warm Worlds And Otherwise').
>I think it shocked a lot of people to learn that Tiptree was really a
>woman, but her work lives on in some of the best science fiction stories
>ever written
I think one of the reasons Silverberg called Tiptree's work "ineluctably
masculine" was that many people thought Tiptree must be a pseudonym for a
woman: and he disagreed. Of course, he was wrong. But the "many people"
were right.
The mistake can cut both ways: Theodore Sturgeon's review in Galaxy of
Jean Mark Gawron's first novel, _An Apology for Rain_, made note of the
qualities of the novel which were uniquely feminine (as he thought "Jean"
was a woman's name (don't know what he made of Mark (maiden name?))). His
review was from galleys, upon seeing a copy of the finished book complete
with dust jacket photo, he printed an embarrassed retraction noting that
based on the photo, Gawron was certainly a man.
I think a lot of people, myself often included, read a text differently
based on assumptions about the sex of the author, and thus can be quite
fooled by an ambiguous byline. (That said, I do think there are
"generally feminine" and "generally masculine" writing qualities. And
lots of exceptions.)
Matt Austern
pci...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek) writes:
> >Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon committed suicide a few years back --
> >shot her husband, then herself. Her husband had some ghastly terminal
> >disease, I forget exactly what; they'd agreed on this beforehand.
>
> >Messy and sad.
>
> Call me tasteless, but I would not have expected such an ultimate "stand
> by your man" action from the author of "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?".
Note, however, just how often suicide comes up in Tiptree's stories.
It's more than a little bit creepy, in light of what we now know.
david carlton
lawr...@clark.net (Lawrence Watt-Evans) writes:
[ talking about whether or not people were surprised to learn that
Tiptree was female ]
> and I never heard ANYONE other than Silverberg say anything of the
> sort before that, and I never heard of anyone but Silverberg being
> shocked.
Wasn't there a roundtable in a feminist magazine with lots of female
SF authors, Tiptree, and Delany, where at some point Tiptree and
Delany got kicked out because Tiptree was acting macho enough to make
the female authors uncomfortable? I'm sure I recall reading about
something like that in Sarah Lefanu's _In the Chinks of the World
Machine_. Of course, this example cuts both ways - the fact that she
was invited at all is a real strike against the "ineluctable
masculinity" of her work.
david carlton
car...@math.mit.edu
HUMAN REPLICAS are inserted into VATS of NUTRITIONAL YEAST...
Nancy Lebovitz
In article <57q3s5$p...@clarknet.clark.net>,
Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>Once her identity WAS known, a lot of people latched onto the Silverberg
>quote to support their feminist agenda -- that Sheldon really did fool
>everyone. Which is bullshit. I'm a feminist and have been for thirty
>years, but I'm not blind or stupid, and Tiptree sure looked feminine to
>me.
>
What struck you as feminine about Tiptree's writing?
--
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
October '96 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Lawrence Watt-Evans
In article <585nlq$i...@universe.digex.net>, nan...@universe.digex.net
says...
>
>In article <57q3s5$p...@clarknet.clark.net>,
>Lawrence Watt-Evans <lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>
>>Once her identity WAS known, a lot of people latched onto the Silverberg
>>quote to support their feminist agenda -- that Sheldon really did fool
>>everyone. Which is bullshit. I'm a feminist and have been for thirty
>>years, but I'm not blind or stupid, and Tiptree sure looked feminine to
>>me.
>>
>What struck you as feminine about Tiptree's writing?
It's been a long time. Lessee...
I had to pull out "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and "The Girl Who Was
Plugged In" and think about it, but part of it is that the emotional
reactions of the male characters when thinking about women don't ring true.
There isn't enough fear or desire. The sexual politics are too political,
not sufficiently sexual. The characters think in terms of place rather than
rank, fitting rather than winning.
--
For information on Lawrence Watt-Evans, finger -l lawr...@clark.net
The Misenchanted Page is at http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/
Last major update: 11/17/96
Don D'Ammassa
I believe it was Alzheimer's. I corresponded with her off and on up
until about a year before it happened. She seemed increasingly
depressed.