Books Update: James Tiptree Jr – A Truly Manly Writer!
*Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror: James Tiptree quickly made an impact when his work began appearing in SF publications. Intensely private, speculation abounded about his true identity. Robert Silverberg famously wrote an introduction called Who Is Tiptree, What Is He? to a collection of short stories (Warm Worlds And Otherwise) in which he described scouring telephone directories (remember them?) and failing to find a single Tiptree. He went on to scoff at suggestions that Tiptree was a woman, writing that the style was intrinsically masculine, and citing the author’s knowledge of travel and espionage to suggest that in reality Tiptree was a secret agent. I imagine his face was red when Tiptree was finally revealed to be Alice Sheldon (although to be fair, she had been in the CIA)! In addition to this collection with its notorious introduction, we have two more collections, Star Songs Of An Old Primate and 10,000 Light-Years From Home, as well as a novel, Up The Walls Of The World. Featuring great stories such as The Women Men Don’t See, Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death and The Man Who Walked Home, these are all well worth checking out.