Review Summaries

• The biography is valued for using letters and testimony to portray both the public mask and private anguish of the writer. It is read not only as SF history but also as a book about gender and art.

Reviews

• 待てど暮らせど邦訳がでないので

  しかたなくこれを読んでいる。じっくりやると時間がかかるので、斜め読み。彼女の71年間が、20分割されて述べられているので、親切な設計だと思う。Tiptreeだったのは20年間あまりなのだが、その他の半世紀も順を追って読める。〝作品もさることながら作者〝への興味が生んだ著作。

• Excellent look at a key SF author

  This is an excellent biography of James Tiptree Jr. / Alice Sheldon. A thorough look at her life, her influences and how she influenced others and the genre of science fiction. I read this in print first but when I realised it was available electronically I had to get it because it's a bit heavy to carry around in hard copy and it's the sort of biography you want to re-read.

• A hit with my classic sci-fi fan

  Spouse loved it: has been into knowing more about the sci-fi authors of the 1950s-80s for a long time, and found this one to be really informative and well-written

• Sad and shocking

  Tip was a very formative author in my 20s, loved her imagination and characters and plots, expressed a direction that I couldn t find elsewhere, and I read a lot. Also lived a few similarities to her life; much tamer but stlil can relate. She was very gifted: brains beauty, wealthy parents, exotic early experience, in an era marked both by society s requirements and unforeseen opportunity for a woman. Alas her life was mostly stilted and circumscribed. She was a pioneer stepping out of women s roles, pulled in many directions, struggling with being a woman in the 20th century world. There were few models, all experimental, no supports of generations of her kind showing how it s done. The writer is sensitive and thoughtful for the most part although some jarring judgements crept in here and there. I also found the later chapters were about her stories and plots, kind of like a book report which was annoying. Her aging and experience post exposure are both mysterious and fraught with power for those of use still looking for examples, inspiration and lessons later in life. Yes, it s a sound and sensitive chronicle of a life with a horrible end. But I still hope there will be someone out there, in my time, who can bring more experience and insight to bear because this was a fascinating woman. A lot of emphasis on her suppressed lesbianism but I felt her real story was more about being an independent, senior professional, creative and very experienced thinker who used science fiction as a vehicle of expression but was frustrated and limited by the world she struggled to function in. And she floundered, though sometimes soared. As I guess we all do though not so well. This story seemed to spend more energy on her flounders than her transcendance which is the rare part. I am dreading rather than looking forward to la Guin's bio, now that I ve read. it. Another towering female thinker and writer whom I miss a lot. Has this biographer grown enough to be up to the challenge?

• Perhaps the Ultimate Biography

  This book is a delight. I would go so far as to say it is the best biography I have ever read (not that I've read a great number). Philips has presented an exhaustive but not exhausting account of the life of Alice B. Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., aka Racconna Sheldon. This is a comprehensive work at over 400 pages of smallish print. One gets the feeling that Philips has done the job almost to perfection. What makes this book so amazing? Firstly, the subject, Alice Sheldon, is fascinating. This is much more than a biography of a science fiction writer (although it is that too); it is a chronicle of a difficult and ultimately tragic life. It would be hard to read this book and not feel for Sheldon, who 'lived inside her body as though inside an alien artifact.' Sheldon's lack of comfort in her own body is palpable in these pages. One can sense her dis-ease. Philips presents this difficult material sympathetically, correctly asserting that Sheldon's life is indicative of the changing landscape of sexual politics in twentieth century America. The various sections of Sheldon's life are interesting in themselves. For example, the chapters on Africa are fascinating, as is the material on Sheldon's mother, Mary Hastings Bradley (who I'd never heard of, although she was a famous writer in her day). 'Alli's' life is overshadowed by that of her successful mother, and the older woman's presence hangs over these pages. By the time we finally get to Sheldon's own writing career, more than half the book (and half her life) is over. This enables us to see the ephemeral figure of 'James Tiptree Jr.' in the context in which he was concieved. One funny thing about this book is that Tiptree's writing career is made to seem almost like an afterthought, or a not-entirely successful experiment. This is strange because most readers of this book will come to it thinking of Tiptree as one of the greatest writers in SF history (which 'he' is). But although Tiptree garnered the Hugos and Nebulas in quick time, none of it was much comfort to Sheldon. Here, again, one can sense Sheldon's dissatisfaction with her creations. A slight criticism of this book, in my mind, is that Philips spends little time addressing the themes and ideas in the stories themselves. It is almost as though the author of the biography does not quite appreciate the value of the stories to the extent that many of Tiptree's readers do. Stories like 'A Momentary Taste of Being' and 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' are surely some of the greatest in the English language. It may be that in not coming from a SF background, Philips sees Tiptree's writing in the context that Sheldon herself may have seen it in. OK I am speculating, but Sheldon was clearly not content with having written these fabulous stories. As Philips makes clear, Sheldon 'meant it' when she wrote about death again and again. The ending to this book, which deals with the circumstances of Sheldon's murder of her husband 'Ting' and then her suicide, is simply shocking. Not knowing the details of Sheldon's death in advance, I was floored by this ending. This make me realise that while a reader such as myself finds enlightenment (or even redemption) in Tiptree's fiction, Sheldon herself drew little comfort from it. This is an essential book, not only for those interested in Tiptree's SF career, but also for anyone interested in twentieth century history. It is useful especially in regard to the history of the so-called 'sexual revolution,' which came a few decades late for Alice B. Sheldon.

• Five Stars

  A really good, informative book about one of the all time greats of Science Fiction.

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