Alice Sheldon began her science fiction career as
James Tiptree Jr. in 1968 and was assumed to be a
male until her real name was revealed in 1977.
Thereafter she continued to write as Tiptree and
occasionally as Raccoona Sheldon. Her earliest
work was colorful and often quite striking, but it
only hinted at the quality of the material she
would produce later. Stories such as “AMBERJACK”
(1969) demonstrated her ability to tell a complex
story in an economical manner, and others, including “Parimutuel Planet” (1968) and “Your Haploid
Heart” (1969), proved that she could bring new
life to familiar situations. Some of her early stories
were no more than light space adventures, although they were generally well written.
Tiptree seemed to find her voice at the beginning of the 1970s, producing a steady stream of
fine stories. A vastly superior alien culture contacts
humanity in “And I Found Me Here on the Cold
Hill’s Side” (1972), but the interaction of the two
cultures is inadvertently destructive to humans.
“The Man Who Walked Home” (1972) is a clever
and emotion-laden story of a man trapped by
forces beyond his control. Tiptree’s feminist leanings became apparent in “The WOMEN MEN DON’T
SEE” (1973), in which two women choose alien
companions in preference to a male human. This
story suggests that we are culturally blind to gender
differences, and that men and women are, at least
in one sense, two separate alien species themselves. That same year saw two more of her most
successful stories. “The GIRL WHO WAS PLUGGED
IN” is a bitter indictment of the consumer culture
and the way in which we exploit one another for
personal profit. “LOVE IS THE PLAN THE PLAN IS
DEATH” is an extended metaphor about the destructive effects the two genders have upon one
another, expressed in an exaggerated form by
means of an alien species whose gender roles have
been pushed to an extreme. The former story won
a Hugo Award, and the latter a Nebula.
Tiptree’s first collection, 10,000 Light Years
from Home (1973), underlined her sudden ascendancy within the genre, and a second, Warm
Worlds & Otherwise (1975), confirmed it. Although her output had begun to decline in quantity, those stories she did write were invariably
excellent. “A Momentary Taste of Being” (1975) is
one of her longer pieces, a rather depressing but
speculatively fascinating examination of humanity’s role in the universe, reduced at last to a
minor evolutionary spasm. Another long story,
“HOUSTON, HOUSTON, DO YOU READ?” (1976)
indicted male chauvinism in no uncertain terms,
with a contemporary crew of astronauts propelled
through an anomaly into a future in which males
have become extinct. It won both the Hugo and
Nebula Awards. Other outstanding stories from
her late career include “The Screwfly Solution”
(1977) and the posthumously published “The
Color of Neanderthal Eyes” (1988) and “Backward, Turn Backward” (1988).
Although Tiptree is primarily known for her
short fiction, she also wrote two interesting novels.
A mysterious and dangerous alien force is spreading through the galaxy in Up the Walls of the World
(1978), compelling a band of individuals with various psi powers to forge a combined defense against
its encroachment. Scenes set on an alien world inhabited by a telepathic species capable of flight are
particularly evocative. In Brightness Falls from the
Air (1985), a team of scientists and others travel
through space to observe a rare astronomical
event, unaware that the experience will have a
strong psychological impact on them individually
and as a group. Although there are flashes of brilliance in both novels, Tiptree seemed unable to
sustain the emotional impact of her work at that
length.
Tiptree’s later stories are collected in Star Song
of an Old Primate (1978), Out of the Everywhere and
Other Extraordinary Visions (1981), Byte Beautiful
(1988), Crown of Stars (1988), Her Smoke Rose Up
Forever (1990), and Meet Me at Infinity (1990). The
Starry Rift (1986), ostensibly a novel, is actually a
series of short episodes that collectively describe
humanity’s destiny in the wider universe. The stories in Tales of the Quintana Roo (1986) are primarily fantasy.