Author, Feminist, Pioneer: The Unlikely Queen of Sci-Fi [View all]

[ismnotwasm]

We can go to science fiction for its sense of wonder, its power to take us to far-off places and future times. We can go to political fiction to understand injustice in our own time, to see what should change. We may go to poetry — epic or lyric, old or new — for what cannot change, for a sense of human limits, as well as for the music in its words.

And if we want all those things at once — a sense of escape, a sense of injustice, a sense of mortality and an ear for language — we can read the stories of James Tiptree Jr., real name Alice Sheldon.

The daughter of a famous travel writer, Sheldon grew up privileged, eloped and regretted it, then joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps; after World War II she married a career intelligence officer and earned a Ph.D. in psychology. In 1967, at 51, she began sending science fiction to magazines, taking her pseudonym from a marmalade.

Sheldon as Tiptree wrote galaxy-spanning space opera, near-future apocalypse, hip premonitions of cyberpunk, and portraits of truly alien states of mind. Tiptree became known for elegant prose, for unhappy endings, and for sensitivity to women: science fiction stars like Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin admired this mysterious man, who hinted that he was a spy.

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/11/193476887/author-feminist-pioneer-the-unlikely-queen-of-sci-fi