James Tiptree, Jr.: the double life of Alice Sheldon

Shockingly* for a feminist who’s been to Clarion, I’ve never read James Tiptree, Jr. But with this biography,
just as in The Futurians, I get the sense of what it was like to be part of the project of sf — the vision of what the future could be, in both utopian and dystopian terms. (It’s especially fascinating to read about an intense, gossipy literary community right after getting back from ALA.)

Here’s a quote from the long period when Tiptree was putting off requests for biographies:

“You know as well as I do we all go around in disguise. The halo stuffed in the pocket, the cloven hoof awkward in the shoe, the X-ray eye blinking behind thick lenses, the two midgets dressed as one tall man, the giant stooping in a pinstripe, the pirate in a housewife’s smock.”

* my latest overused adverb, replacing “actually”