Description
For a decade Alice Sheldon produced an extraordinary body of work under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr, until her identity was exposed in 1977. HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER presents the finest of these stories and contains the NEBULA AWARD-winning LOVE IS THE PLAN THE PLAN IS DEATH; HUGO AWARD-winning novella THE GIRL WHO WAS PLUGGED IN; HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ? - winner of both the HUGO and NEBULA - and of course the story for which she is best known: THE WOMEN MEN DON'T SEE. This is a true masterwork - an overview of one of SF's true greats at the very height of her powers.
About the Author
"James Tiptree Jr." was born Alice Bradley in Chicago in 1915. Her mother was the writer Mary Hastings Bradley; her father, Herbert, was a lawyer and explorer. Throughout her childhood she traveled with her parents, mostly to Africa, but also to India and Southeast Asia. Her early work was as an artist and art critic. During World War II she enlisted in the Army and became the first American female photointelligence officer. In Germany after the war, she met and married her commanding officer, Huntington D. Sheldon. In the early 1950s, both Sheldons joined the then-new CIA; he made it his career, but she resigned in 1955, went back to college, and earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology.At about this same time, Alli Sheldon started writing science fiction. She wrote four stories and sent them off to four different science fiction magazines. She did not want to publish under her real name, because of her CIA and academic ties, and she intended to use a new pseudonym for each group of stories until some sold. They started selling immediately, and only the first pseudonym—"Tiptree" from a jar of jelly, "James" because she felt editors would be more receptive to a male writer, and "Jr." for fun—was needed. (A second pseudonym, "Raccoona Sheldon," came along later, so she could have a female persona.)Tiptree quickly became one of the most respected writers in the field, winning the Hugo Award forThe Girl Who was Plugged InandHouston, Houston, Do You Read?, and the Nebula Award for "Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death" andHouston, Houston. Raccoona won the Nebula for "The Screwfly Solution," and Tiptree won the World Fantasy Award for the collectionTales from the Quintana Roo.The Tiptree fiction reflects Alli Sheldon's interests and concerns throughout her life: the alien among us (a role she portrayed in her childhood travels), the health of the planet, the quality of perception, the role of women, love, death, and humanity's place in a vast, cold universe. TheOtherwise Award(formerly the Tiptree Award) has celebrated science fiction that "expands and explores gender roles" since 1991.Alice Sheldon died in 1987 by her own hand. Writing in her first book about the suicide of Hart Crane, she said succinctly: "Poets extrapolate."Julie Phillipswrote her biography,James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon
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