About this title: Tiptree burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hard-edged, provocative short stories. Then the cover was blown: the author was actually a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon--world traveler, debutante, chicken farmer, CIA agent, and experimental psychologist. This fascinating biography is based on full access to her ...
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Description: Good. Dust Cover Missing. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0312203853 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: Good. 2006-Hardcover----Used-Good-Hall Street Books proudly ships from Brooklyn, NY. All orders are processed and shipped within 24 hours, M-F. 100% money back No-Worry guarantee with expedited delivery and delivery confirmation available. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780312203856ISBN:0312203853
Description: New in new dust jacket. NEW copy, * * New & Unread Book that May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf. * good clean, bright, tight pages. no ink markings. NO NAMES. NO UNDERLINING. (slight shelf wear) . With dust jacket. 469 p. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Picador
Date Published: 2007-06-12
ISBN-13:9780312426941ISBN:0312426941
Description: Like New. May be shiny, in some instances dust jackets are not included, no missing pages, no damage to binding, may have a remainder mark. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: St. Martin's Press: , New York: , 2006. First Edition
ISBN-13:9780312203856ISBN:0312203853
Description: Octavo, hardcover, fine in near fine gray pictorial dj. "Tiptree burst onto the science fiction scene in the 1970s with a series of hard-edged, provocative short stories. Then the cover was blown: the author was actually a 61-year-old woman named Alice Sheldon-world traveler, debutante, chicken farmer, CIA agent, and experimental psychologist. This fascinating biography is based on full access to her papers. " Not to be overly dramatic, but I believe this biography to be one of the most ... read more
Binding: Hardcover W/DJ
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780312203856ISBN:0312203853
Description: 9.6 x 9 x 1.6 inches. Very good hardcover in price clipped DJ. Light wear to edges of book and DJ. Pages are unmarked. Not remaindered. Not ex-library. Not book club. read more
Description: Near Fine in Near Fine dust jacket. Hardcover. St. Martin's Press, 2006. 3rd Printing. Near Fine Book in Near Fine Dust Jacket. Price Intact. Light shelf wear to Book and Jacket. Overall, a clean and tight copy to add to a collection or read and enjoy. Dust Jacket protected with a new archival cover. Bubble wrapped and shipped promptly in a box. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover; Second Printing
ISBN-13:9780312203856ISBN:0312203853
Description: Fine in Fine dust jacket. Hardcover. St. Martin's Press, 2006. 1st Edition/2nd Printing. Fine Book in Fine Dust Jacket. Price Intact. Overall, a clean and tight copy to add to a collection or read and enjoy. Dust Jacket protected with a new archival cover. Bubble wrapped and shipped promptly in a box. read more
Binding: book Hardcover
Publisher: St Martins Press
Date Published: 2006
ISBN-13:9780312203856ISBN:0312203853
Description: Brand New. Brand new. Never read or owned. May have a remainder mark. 447 pages. 9.50 x 6.50 x 1.50 in. 29.6 oz. Julie Phillip's rich and complex biography traces the psychological roots of Alice B. Sheldon, the wealthy and troubled woman who would write seminal 1970s science fiction as James Tiptree, Jr. Sheldon's life is dark and interesting on its own merits: as a child she accompanied her parents on gorilla-hunting expeditions to the Congo where she witnessed cannibalism and even ... read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Picador USA
Date Published: 2007-06-12
ISBN-13:9780312426941ISBN:0312426941
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780312426941. read more
"What a wonderful biography of a truly interesting person. Alice Sheldon was born to parents who took her game-hunting in Africa three times when she was a child/ya. She debuted in Chicago society and married an F. Scott Fitzgerald wannabe. After that rather short marriage she went into the military and intelligence work. And in her forties she began writing science fiction under the pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. As Phillips points out in this fascinating biography, she gave the science fiction community what it was wanting at that time, a male feminist sci-fi writer. (Not everyone was wanting such a thing in the late 60's/early 70's: Phillips relates how both Playboy and Cosmopolitan turned down her story "The Women Men Don't See" yet it was snatched up by the first sci-fi editor who saw it.)
I've been reading on this book for a long time because every sentence is so chock full of information that you want to read slowly and savor it. It's such a thrill when Phillips gets to explaining the stories to relate their themes to the events and concerns of Sheldon's early life. And always there is the omnipresent "double life" that Sheldon creates. Her writing under a man's name does not so much become a feminist critique as it is a continuation of her constant search for identity; she feels she has to "become" different people (and different genders) in order to say different things. It's an admitted psychosis and one which troubled her all her life. But she became a writer of fascinating science fiction, and this biography does her justice."
"This incredibly rich biography, as all the best writing, cannot be summarized, it can only be introduced. It is the charming, detailed, fascinating story of Alice Sheldon and her struggles with being a woman with ambitions, a woman with sexual desires, with being any kind of woman at all. It's about her anger, and how she pushed it inside, because it was safer that way. Her unrequited crushes, her two marriages, and her difficult parents, her turning towards and away from friendships. It's about her amazing intellect, her analysis of herself and others, and how it all eventually came to a head in her ten years writing award-winning science fiction addressing gender and sexuality and extensive correspondence with other authors, all under a male pseudonym. And, in the end, it's as much a celebration of achievement and wonder as it is a tragedy of faltering potential."
"It's unusual to read a biography that feels like fiction. Julie Phillips did that with this book -- the life of Alice Bradley Sheldon feels like fiction so much of the time. More than once I wanted to reach in and grab the main character and just shake her hard, tell her "No! Stop!" and "But it isn't that way." Even knowing the ending -- her suicide -- didn't prevent the revelation of it from being a shock, a kick to the head. My eyes teared up.
I was involved.
This book not only looks at the life of Sheldon/Tiptree, but gives glimpses into the world of SF writing during Tiptree's active period -- the late 60s/70s, when much of what we now recognize as science fiction was shiny and new. My own sensibility about SF formed from the writing of this period -- I started reading science fiction in sixth grade, roughly 1977, and I was a teen subscriber to IASFM and Analog and F&SF. I went to conventions and read through fanzines. I even, for a short while in junior high, worked with a writing coach via mail, using only my initials and trying to hide my gender -- and, when that was revealed, suffering losses because I was a girl.
And yet, I never read any Tiptree. I've only read one story even now, although I plan to remedy that quite soon. I had no idea Tiptree existed or that I had any parallels to her. They stand out strongly to me now, many of them, as much because they took place at parallel times, although I was a girl of 14-15, and she was a woman in her late 60s. I wish now that I'd come across one of her stories back then, when I still wrote fan letters to writers I admired and occasionally got answers back.
Perhaps I identified too much with this book and this person. Phillips wrestles nearly as much with questions of gender and sexual identity as Tiptree did. Questions get raised for which there are still no clear answers. I'm still having some of the same discussions with people today that Joanna Russ and Tiptree discussed 30 years ago.
Most of all, though, this is a detailed, sharp, even cutting portrait of a very complex individual. But it is not unkind or unsympathetic for all its clear eyed honesty. It's a book to read slowly and think about."
"I must confess that I've never read any of James Tiptree Jr.'s work, and that I had no idea who this person was prior to picking up Phillips' book. That didn't seem to matter, however, because this was one of the most well-written biographies I've read in quite a long while. Alice Bradley Sheldon was a most interesting subject -- and Phillips does an excellent job in researching, putting together and presenting Sheldon's life both as herself and as James Tiptree, Jr., a writer of science fiction whose works were very well known even though Tiptree himself remained somewhat of an enigma even among his contemporaries in the world of SF writing. I won't go into detail here, because many other reviewers have done so quite well, and there are multiple places on the internet to find details about Sheldon.
Phillips' analysis of Sheldon's background, her insecurities, her search for who she really was and wanted to be is very well done. But this isn't just a cut and dried biography. It's a look at a woman trying to find herself through many different persona: daughter of Chicago society parents, eloping at an early age and divorcing, then going into the Army Air Corps, then moving along to work in the CIA, marrying again, obtaining a PhD to do psychological research, and becoming an egg farmer, to name a few. Phillips' argument is that Sheldon knew none of these roles ever truly fitted her, and that by taking on the role of Tiptree, a male science fiction writer, she had finally found a way to give herself an outlet for the person she'd always wanted to be. But even then she still got very caught up in her own turmoil about identity as her Tiptree persona consistently grew in stature and landed him a bit of fame along with awards (Hugo, Nebula); Alice had to devote more of her own lessening energies into maintaining it while trying to keep Alice Bradley Sheldon a secret.
Very well written; I had a lot of difficulty putting it down once I got started. When I can pick up a biography of someone with whom I'm not even vaguely familiar and not want to put it down, that's saying something about the author's writing. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants an intelligent read."
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