James Tiptree junior

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Signatures of Alice Sheldon and her pseudonyms

James Tiptree, Jr. (actually Alice B. Sheldon ; born August 24, 1915 in Chicago , Illinois , † May 19, 1987 in McLean , Virginia , USA ) was an American writer and psychologist. The author used the pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr. between 1968 and 1987 for the publication of most of her science fiction short stories and two SF novels , but some of her short stories appeared under her other pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon .

Alice Sheldon is now considered one of the best short story writers in the science fiction genre, thanks in particular to the content and style of her stories from the 1970s. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is named after her pseudonym and is awarded every year for works of science fiction or fantasy that examine and expand understanding of gender roles.

Life

Alice Sheldon in Africa with Kikuyu tribe members

Alice Sheldon was born to Mary Hastings Bradley, a prolific writer - mostly of travel literature - and Herbert Bradley, a lawyer, African and naturalist. From an early age she accompanied her parents on expeditions to Africa, India and Asia, for example on a safari in the years 1921–1922. According to her own statement, she was marginalized at school and unpopular with her peers, but not with adults, which she found boring. Her interests and talents initially lay in the fine arts, and she began to draw and paint. In 1934, at the age of 19, on her mother's advice, Sheldon hastily married a man named William Davey. Alice Sheldon lost the ability to have children during a legal abortion that she said was botched by the doctor in charge. She continued to focus on a career as a painter and draftsman, had a number of exhibitions in prestigious galleries in the USA until about 1940, but eventually came to the conclusion that she was "not good enough" for another career as an artist.

In 1941 Sheldon divorced William Davey and worked as an art critic for the Chicago Sun for two years . In 1942 she joined the US Army; At the beginning she was assigned to the air reconnaissance (Air Intelligence). During this time it was important for Alice Sheldon to deal with female officers who could be role models for her: there were many prejudices surrounding the service of women in the army and the fields of activity assigned to them were severely limited. Despite such restrictions, Sheldon became the first woman to work in Army Photo Intelligence. In 1943 she was assigned to Army Intelligence, the army's intelligence service. The intelligence work brought her to Europe, where she finally met Huntington Sheldon, a "blue-blooded Wall Street drop-out" who held the second highest rank in the European section of the then US American Intelligence. The two married in 1945. In 1946 Alice Sheldon was discharged from the army with the rank of major, while Huntington Sheldon remained in a leading position in the intelligence service; Financially and emotionally exhausted from the efforts of the war and returned to the US, the couple began running a small chicken farm. At the same time, Sheldon's first short story, The Lucky Ones - not science fiction - appeared in The New Yorker magazine .

Life on the chicken farm ended in 1952 when the Sheldons were asked, because of their intelligence experience, if they wanted to help build the newly formed CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). This made a move to Washington necessary, where the new agency was initially housed in temporary rooms. Regarding her work for the CIA, Sheldon later remarked that she looked very different and much less spectacular than one commonly imagines secret service work.

But as early as 1955 Alice Sheldon left the CIA, partly because she didn't like where the agency was headed and partly because she wanted to study psychology. Her interest in special activities in the secret service had not diminished, but she had the feeling that she “no longer fit in with the CIA” because her area of ​​responsibility was gradually changing. However, this dismissal brought problems because her husband was still employed in the top management of the CIA, where he was under high pressure and counted on the professional and emotional support of his wife. One tried to keep her in her profession. Alice Sheldon literally escaped, hid in a small house and, with all the intelligence methods she now had, made herself invisible to the CIA and her husband for half a year. When Huntington Sheldon finally tracked her down, he had to admit that Alice's separation from the Secret Service was final; However, the relationship between the couple deepened.

In 1956, at the age of 41, Alice Sheldon finally decided to study and enrolled at American University, where she earned a BA (Bachelor of Arts) degree in 1959. That year, the Sheldons moved to McLean, Virginia, because the CIA had relocated their headquarters to nearby Langley. In the following years she worked as an assistant at the university. 1967 finally their scientific activities led to a doctorate (Ph.D.) in experimental psychology, which she received from George Washington University. The topic of her doctoral thesis was "The reactions of animals to new stimuli in different environments".

But Sheldon was unsure whether she would even work as a psychologist or what she even wanted to do with her future life: “I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation” ( Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine , April 1983). During one sleepless night caused by the previous stress of getting her PhD, she began writing a science fiction story for relaxation and distraction. A short time later she discovered the term “Tiptree” on a jam jar which, according to Robert Silverberg, refers to Tiptree Heath in Essex, Great Britain, an area where “the conditions for growing strawberries, raspberries and currants are extremely favorable ". In March 1968, 52 years old, Alice Sheldon first used the pseudonym "James Tiptree, Jr." for the publication of her short story Birth of a Salesman in Analog magazine , which she kept from now on.

In the following years, new Tiptree stories appeared regularly in various science fiction magazines, which from the beginning met with great approval and admiration among fans and editors, repeatedly received awards for their inventiveness and stylistic qualities and from 1973 in several anthologies and anthologies have been reprinted. In a period of eight years, Sheldon had published around 40 SF short stories under her pseudonym, many of which can now be considered classics of the genre. John Clute writes in Science Fiction - The Illustrated Encyclopedia : “Between 1968 and 1976 she published about twenty stories of real size; it was one of the most significant bursts of creative energy that the SF scene - or any other - had ever seen. ”Although she had found her proper means of expression in the literary form of the short story, Sheldon ventured into the mid-1970s - at the age of 60 years - the first time in a 300-page novel, which in 1978 under the title Up the walls of the world ( the firebreak or the walls of the world highly appeared) and some motives depth that had already been cut in the short stories. However, in the late 1970s, Sheldon's health deteriorated; She had heart attacks, bleeding stomach ulcers, and severe depression, believed to be caused by a biochemical imbalance in her body. Huntington Sheldon, who was thirteen years older than his wife, suffered strokes and gradually went blind. The writer spent more and more time caring for her husband. Nonetheless, she continued to write short stories, albeit with less output. A second novel, Brightness Falls from the Air , followed in 1985.

After the health of both spouses had deteriorated, the couple chose to commit suicide. On May 19, 1987, at the age of 71, Alice Sheldon shot her 84-year-old, now almost blind and bedridden husband with a rifle; then she aimed the rifle at herself.

James Tiptree's science fiction

Between 1968 and 1976-77, when the "camouflage" was blown on the occasion of her mother's death, Alice Sheldon successfully managed to hide her gender and - to a lesser extent - her real age behind the pseudonym "James Tiptree". Tiptree's stories were stylistically imaginative and varied, full of energy and powerful, had a "young" tone, were drastic in their details, laconic and at the same time extremely sensitive. One story ended with the prospect of the extermination of all humanity by a virus specially produced for this purpose ( The Last Flight of Doctor Ain ), another reported in a conversational tone of unimaginable physical mutilations ( Painwise ). If one story was colored pessimistic or tragic ( And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side , A Momentary Taste of Being ), the next had a humorous, occasionally exuberant expression ( Birth of a Salesman , All the Kinds of Yes , Angel Fix ), although it often revolved around a very similar topic. The excitement that the stories of this suddenly emerged author caused because of their literary quality and their changing style from time to time can also be seen in the amount of awards that Tiptree texts received in the 1970s. The author never appeared in public, gave no telephone interviews, but at least sent letters to publishers and science fiction fans via a mailbox, who asked her questions, also mentioned true details from her life, but never made any statements about hers Gender. During this time, various theories about the author's true identity were circulating in the SF scene, including that Tiptree was actually a woman - a claim that e.g. B. Robert Silverberg called “absurd” in a now famous misjudgment because, in his opinion, Tiptree's texts had something deeply “masculine” about them and therefore could only have been written by one man. Some details in Sheldon / Tiptree's early stories were also designed to feed the assumption that the author was in the service of the US government or a US secret service (which at that time had long ceased to apply to Alice Sheldon). The male pseudonym, the way and what the alleged author wrote about, as well as allusions in the stories and letters that he was an (ex) secret service agent, obviously meant that almost no one suspected a woman behind Tiptree.

Describing the foreign and the other

In the small US SF fanzine Phantasmicom 9 from February 1972, Tiptree / Sheldon said the following about his / her worldview at the time: “Life throws you into the midst of strangers who make strange movements, distribute inexplicable caresses and threats; one presses buttons without lettering and is attacked by unforeseen results; encrypted chatter that sounds important ... “In a letter to her friend Mark Siegel, Alice Sheldon described a childhood experience that she had during a trip with her parents in India - it is a prototype of the most peculiar combination of Drastik, Alienation and sensitivity: “One night I saw a man on the banks of the Ganges burning his dead mother. Not a great big fire - he couldn't afford the wood, I guess - but with little sticks. The body wasn't burning very well. He tried and tried, but finally he gave up and threw the bones in the Ganges. The river was a dark, muddy, great thing. But then he walked down the steps of the sank into the river and seized her skull before it floated away, and prized out the gold teeth. This was an act of filial piety; this was mother's request, to hand this valuable down to her offspring, and the fact that he had to pry them out of her skull was of course looked on quite differently there ”.

The author's desire to “convey something of the mystery and the strangeness of existence” can be seen in almost all of Tiptree's texts (stories, novels, letters, essays and autobiographical notes). A theme that was varied several times in the early SF narratives, for example, is the appearance of malicious aliens who deceive people about their true intentions through their appearance and behavior, while people, blinded and influenced by their - sexual - instincts or pre-determined patterns of perception, make completely wrong ideas about the motives of the aliens ( Mamma Come Home , Help , Angel Fix ; an echo of this can also be found - with reversed signs - in the late story Second Going ). Sometimes the motivations and behaviors of the Tiptree aliens are understandable and comparable with earthly (plant, animal, human) life, but remain due to the sensitive description of Sheldon, who either takes the alien perspective completely or this through the behavior and the environment of the Makes aliens perceptible, strange and unsettling ( Fault , On the Last Afternoon , Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death ). In other stories, the author coolly and distantly observes the reactions of emotionally overwhelmed people to fascinating and powerful alien beings or their mysterious creations ( And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side , A Momentary Taste of Being , Slow Music ). In the harsh story The Screwfly Solution , a silent invasion of the earth takes place in an SF-untypical way, in which the aliens - almost invisible until the end - mix pheromones into the earth's atmosphere, which cause the men to form fundamentalist sects, their goal it is to exterminate the women now perceived as impure by them, whereby the men inadvertently cut the chain of procreation of humanity. At the end of the story, a woman who survived in the wilderness laconically referred to one of the aliens that she accidentally spotted taking soil samples in the forest as a "real estate agent".

In the novel Up the Walls of the World , which works heavily with parapsychological motifs , the author describes half material, half energetic stingray-like flying beings, which, because they spend their entire life in the upper layers of the air on the planet Tyree, have a completely different self-image and Body image than the earth dwellers with whom they come into telepathic contact in the course of the story. Even in personal relationships, gender roles and idioms of the Tyrenni (“By the wind!”, “Round like an egg”), an alien way of life based on free navigation in the wind and telepathic communication is modeled here. The novel ends with a transcendent survival of various now disembodied, but networked human and Tyrenni souls in space. In the ironic, fast-paced short story Birth of a Salesman , Tiptree describes a kind of trade agency or authority that advises earthly companies on all difficulties encountered in interplanetary trade; These difficulties almost always arise from the fact that certain properties of human products such as color and smell spectra or packaging forms are perceived completely differently by extraterrestrial races and can lead to unforeseen reactions - the story almost looks like a screwball comedy film in space of the future.

Also noteworthy is the story of the guy who greeted doors (Engl .: The Man Doors Said Hello To ). It is about an obscure, allegedly extraterrestrial agent whose secret mission includes the goal of protecting people from all sorts of mishaps through seemingly absurd interventions. A network of resources “hidden” in the everyday world helps him with this. For example B. on high wall and window ledges in streets that have two "rs" in their names, a kind of money exchange.

Feminism and Violence

A recurring theme is the human - and that almost always means at Tiptree: male - violence, especially the violence that is hidden in the opinion of the author on the basis of sexuality ( Houston, Houston, Do You Read? , Your Faces, O My Sisters ! Your Faces Filled of Light ! , The Screwfly Solution , With Delicate Mad Hands , We Who Stole the “Dream” ). This latent violence manifests itself in Tiptree stories in rape, infanticide or the derogatory, insensitive oppression of women by men, which is hidden behind generally accepted values ​​in the represented human societies. The author describes several times military-male bureaucracies and hierarchical command structures with recognizable aversion and sarcasm : The Army-General in charge of the US space program Second Going , the encounter of American astronauts with peaceful and cheerful aliens (in the form of bluish octopuses ) has on the subject, is called Streiter at Sheldon. Here too, however, the altruistic goals are actually not very altruistic, and Sheldon prevents the story from drifting into a simple black and white scheme. In one of their best-known stories, The Women Men Don't See (1973), two human women swap the stale rule of human men without complaint for a spontaneous trip with aliens, which they take with them after a visit to the Mexican peninsula of Yucatán . The author uses here - heavily alienated and as if by the way - the old motif of the robbery of women by extraterrestrial "bug-eyed monsters". B. is often depicted on the front pages of early Pulp SF magazines, and completely reinterprets the content: The first-person narrator, an older man, can understand the willingness of the two women, the earth and human society in the company of completely unknown To leave beings, do not understand.

In some of Tiptree's stories it seems as if women and men are members of two different races, between which communication is seldom and more likely in psychological exceptional states; In other stories there is initially a peaceful coexistence of the sexes, which then increasingly breaks up ( The Screwfly Solution ). In Up the Walls of the World, finally, the telekinetic abilities and migraine attacks of the colored computer specialist Margaret Omali act like a sublimation or reaction of her body to a cruel clitoral circumcision in childhood - just like her turn to the “impersonal” mathematical logic of the computer. It is Margaret Omali who is most willing of all the people portrayed in the novel to exchange their physical existence on earth for a symbiotic continued life as a spiritual being inside a giant subtle "space animal" in which physical contact and injuries from other people and Alien ghosts are no longer possible. Especially the figure of Margaret Omali (1978) and the story The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973), in which an ugly girl ("The ugliest one. A colossal monument to glandular malfunction. No surgeon would touch her.") For a media company remotely controlling an avatar in the form of a pretty girl with her brain already point to the cyberpunk in the SF of the 1980s.

Lost in time

Some stories Tiptrees deal with unwanted or unpredictable running time leaps ( Forever to a Hudson Bay blanket , The Man Who Walked Home , Houston, Houston, Do You Read? , Backward, turn backward ), which became the symbol of a human exile be in time . In The Man Who Walked Home, for example, as a result of an explosion during a time travel experiment, Major Delgano gets into a kind of time-spatial elliptical orbit that catapults him 50,000 years out of the usual timeline into the future and the major in his attempt to return to the "present" earth, during the following centuries, at annual intervals, only appears for seconds as a strange phenomenon at the scene of the accident. The contrast between this brief flash of a human body frozen in its fall, accompanied by howls and thunders, which people for centuries believed to be the appearance of a monster or ghost, and the changes in the surroundings of the catastrophe in which - after the through The global catastrophe that was triggered by the initial explosion - slowly new groups of people settle in and move away again, in which cities grow and social structures re-form, while in Delgano's subjective time only seconds pass, makes the radical loneliness and tragedy of the protagonist clear. Tiptree describes it compassionately, dryly and in a relaxed rhythm. Finally, a memorial stone is erected by the local dignitaries, the inscription of which begins as follows: "Once a year the figure of Major John Delgano appears here, the first and only person to travel through time."

After all, issues that increasingly preoccupied Sheldon in the 1980s were physical frailty, old age, and death. John Clute noted that death or transitions into another mental-physical state have always been the vanishing points of her stories: "Almost every story collected in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever ends in death, literal or metaphorical, experienced or nigh." In the essay Going Gently Down , the author, under the protection of her pseudonym, wrote quite optimistically about age and the psychological and physical changes that it brings with it : “When you reach sixty, I think to myself, the brain has become a scene of incredible resonance. It's packed with life, history, processes, patterns, half-sifted analogies between innumerable levels ... One reason old people respond slowly is that every word and every perception arouses a thousand references. What if you could release that , if you could reveal that? If you let go of ego and status, let go of everything and keep your head in the wind, with your senses that are growing dimmer could feel what is out there and grows. "

Awards

  • Nebula Award
    • 1974 for the best short story Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death
    • 1977 for best short novel Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
    • 1978 for Best Narrative, The Screwfly Solution
  • Hugo Award
    • 1974 for the best short novel The Girl Who Was Plugged In
    • 1977 for best short novel Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
  • Locus Award
    • 1984 for the best short story Beyond the Dead Reef
    • 1986 for the best short novel The Only Neat Thing to Do
  • Science Fiction Chronicle Award
    • 1986 for the best short novel The Only Neat Thing to Do
  • Jupiter Award
    • 1977 for best short novel Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
  • Seiun Award
    • 1988: The Only Neat Thing to Do
    • 2000: Out of the Everywhere
    • 2008: Brightness Falls from the Air
    • 2017: Backward, Turn Backward

Works

Novels

  • Up the Walls of the World , 1978 (German: Die Feuerschneise , Heyne 1980, later again as Die Wauern der Welt hoch , September 2016)
  • Brightness Falls from the Air , 1985 (German brightness falls from the sky , September 2018)

Stories and collections of stories

The year numbers refer to the respective first publication

  • 1968
    • Birth of a Salesman , short story (German birth of a salesman , 1976)
    • Fault , short story (German error , 1981)
    • Parimutuel Planet , Novelette (later also published under the title Faithful to Thee, Terra, in Our Fashion ; dt. Treu Dir, Terra, in our way , 1975)
    • Pupa Knows Best , Novelette (later also published under the title Help ; German help!, 1976)
    • The Mother Ship , Novelette (later also published under the title Mamma Come Home ; dt.Mama comes home , 1976)
    • The Man Doors Said Hello To , short story ( The guy who the doors greeted , 1975)
  • 1969
    • Beam Us Home , short story ( Beam us home , 1976; Beam us home , 1987)
    • Your Haploid Heart , Novelette ( born to enemies , 1974; your haploid heart , 1987)
    • The Last Flight of Doctor Ain , short story, revised 1974 (German Dr. Ain's last flight , 1981)
    • The Snows Are Melted, The Snows Are Gone , Novelette ( The snow has melted, the snow is gone , 1975)
  • 1970
    • I'm Too Big But I Love to Play , Novelette (dt. I'm too big, but I like to play , 1975)
    • Last Night and Every Night , short story ( This night and all nights , 1999)
    • The Night-Blooming Saurian , short story ( eng . The dinosaur blooms at night , 1981)
  • 1971
    • And So On, And So On , short story (Eng. People may come or go, but ... , 1984; And so on, and so on , 1987)
    • And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side , short story (Eng. And I woke up and found myself here on the cold mountain slope , 1975)
    • I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool Is Empty , short story (Eng. Wer rastet, der rostet , 1976)
    • Mother in the Sky with Diamonds , Novelette (German mother in the sky - with diamonds , 1975; SOS in space , 1975)
    • Painwise , Novelette (German experience of pain , 1975)
    • The Peacefulness of Vivyan , short story (German Die Friedfertigkeit Vivyan , 1976)
  • 1972
    • Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien , Novelette (later also published under the title All the Kinds of Yes ; German: All the beautiful Jas , 1981)
    • Amberjack , short story ( Amberjack , 1981)
    • And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways , Novelette (Eng. And I found this wrong , 1981)
    • Forever to a Hudson Bay Blanket , short story ( A life for a blanket by the Hudson Bay Company , 1975)
    • On the Last Afternoon , short novel (Eng. Last Afternoon , 1981)
    • The Man Who Walked Home , short story (dt. The time runners , 1975. The man who was on his way home , 1976)
    • The Milk of Paradise , short story (German paradise milk , 1981)
    • Through a Lass Darkly , short story (Eng. One Coming, One Going , 1981)
  • 1973
    • Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death , short story ( love is the plan, the plan is death , 1981)
    • The Girl Who Was Plugged In , Novelette (Eng. The girl turned on and off , 1981)
    • The Women Men Don't See , Novelette (German as Die inconspicuous women in 30 years The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , Munich 1981; Women who are overlooked in PERSPECTIVE CHANGES No2: Women! Strong stories about the strong sex , Septime Verlag , 2010)
    • Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home , collection with 15 previously published stories and an introduction by Harry Harrison (German without Harrison's introduction in two parts as 10,000 light-years from home , 1975, and Beam uns nachhaus , 1976; complete edition with an afterword by Gardner Dozois titled 10,000 Light Years from Home , 1987)
  • 1974
    • Angel Fix , Novelette under the name Raccoona Sheldon (Eng. For Good People Only , 1979; A Clean Deal , 1989)
    • Her Smoke Rose Up Forever , Novelette ( her smoke rose forever , 1984; her smoke rose forever , 1987)
  • 1975
    • A Momentary Taste of Being , short novel ( A fleeting feeling of being , 1980 and 1987)
    • Warm Worlds and Otherwise , collection of 12 previously published stories and an introduction by Robert Silverberg (dt. Without the narrative The Women Men Do not See as Warm Worlds and others , 1981)
  • 1976
    • Beaver Tears , short story under the name Raccoona Sheldon (German beaver tears , 1989)
    • Houston, Houston, Do You Read? , Short novel (German Houston, Houston, are you listening?, 1982; Houston, Houston, please report!, 1987)
    • She Waits for All Men Born , short story (German She waits for all men born , 1987)
    • The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats , Novelette (Eng. The psychologist who didn't want to torment rats , 1981 and 1987)
    • Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! , Short story under the name Raccoona Sheldon (Eng. Your faces, my sisters! Your beaming faces!, 1989)
  • 1977
    • The Screwfly Solution , short story under the name Raccoona Sheldon (German blow flies , 1983; Operation Goldfingerfliegen , 1988; Die Goldfliegen-Solution , 1989; Die Screwfly Solution , 2012)
    • Time-Sharing Angel , short story (German: Divided Suffering , 1989; Der Teilzeitengel , 2012)
  • 1978
    • We Who Stole the “Dream” , Novelette (Eng. We stole the “dream” , 1989; Who stole the dream , 2012)
    • Star Songs of an Old Primate , collection with 7 previously published stories and an introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin (German star songs of an old primate , 1987)
  • 1980
    • A Source of Innocent Merriment , short story ( A source of innocent joy , 1989; A source of innocent joy , 2012)
    • Slow Music , short novel (German sounds of the spheres , 1989; Coda , 2012)
  • 1981
    • Excursion Fare , Novelette (German for a price , 2012)
    • Lirios: A Tale of the Quintana Roo , Novelette (later also published under the title What Came Ashore at Lirios ; German as Lirios: A story by Quintana Roo in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. 16th episode , Munich 1982)
    • Out of the Everywhere , Novelette (German Beyond Somewhere , 1982; From Everywhere , 1989)
    • With Delicate Mad Hands , short novel (German with delicately mad hands , 1989)
    • Out of the Everywhere, and Other Extraordinary Visions , collection with eight previously published and the two new stories Out of the Everywhere and With Delicate Mad Hands (German from Everywhere and other strange visions 1989)
  • 1982
    • The Boy Who Waterskied to Forever , short story (German as the gateway to the past in myths of the near future - The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 68th episode , Munich 1984)
  • 1983
    • Beyond the Dead Reef , Novelette (German as Hinterm Totenriff in Nacht in derüsten - The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. 69th episode , Munich 1984)
  • 1985
    • All This and Heaven Too , Novelette (Eng. All this and Heaven Too , 1999, Hell, where is your victory?, 2012)
    • Morality Meat , Novelette under the name Racoona Sheldon (German meat , 1999; Von Fleisch und Moral , 2012)
    • The Only Neat Thing to Do , short novel
    • Byte Beautiful: 8 Science Fiction Stories , a collection of seven previously published stories and an introduction by Michael Bishop
  • 1986
    • Collision , short novel
    • Good night, sweethearts , short novel
    • Our Resident Djinn , short story ( The residing devil , 1999)
    • The Starry Rift , a collection of three loosely linked, previously published short stories
    • Tales of the Quintana Roo , collection of three previously published short stories set in the Yucatán Peninsula
  • 1987
    • In Midst of Life , Novelette (Eng. Mitten im Leben , 1999)
    • Second Going , Novelette (German: The Octopus Riddle , 1988; Non Angli Sed Angeli , 1999)
    • Yanqui Doodle , Novelette (German Yanqui Doodle , 1999)
  • 1988
    • Backward, Turn Backward , short novel (Eng. Back! Turn it back!, 1999)
    • Come Live with Me , Novelette (dt. Come on, goodbye to me , 1999)
    • The Earth Doth Like a Snake Renew , Novelette (German snake-like renews the earth , 1999)
    • The Color of Neanderthal Eyes , short novel (dt. The color of eyes Neanderthals , 1990)
    • Crown of Stars , collection with nine previously published and the new story Come Live with Me (Eng. Die Sternenkrone , 1999)
  • 1990
    • Her Smoke Rose Up Forever , collection of 18 previously published stories and an introduction by John Clute
  • 1996
    • Neat Sheets: The Poetry of James Tiptree, Jr. , collection of 19 previously unpublished poems, a small play, and an introduction by Karen Joy Fowler
  • 2000
    • Meet Me at Infinity , a collection of eight stories, 35 essays and articles, and an introduction by Jeffrey D. Smith; contains the two previously unpublished short stories The Trouble Is Not in Your Set and Trey of Hearts

German editions

Almost all of Alice Sheldon's science fiction was translated into German and - sometimes with a considerable delay - published in paperback books. With the exception of the novels Die Feuerschneise (or The walls of the world high ) and Brightness falls from the sky , all SF volumes published in Germany are narrative collections. Which stories are contained in which German volume can be found in the above-mentioned year numbers of the German publication. If individual stories are missing in German Tiptree volumes, these are usually published separately in anthologies ; in this case this is stated above.

German new edition

New edition of the stories in new translations, seven volumes: James Tiptree Jr. - All stories from 2011 by Septime Verlag, Vienna

Already published:

  • Volume 1: Doctor Ain . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-902711-23-6 (new translations by Elvira Bittner, Laura Scheifinger, Andrea Stumpf, Samuel Wohl, Margo Jane Warnken and Frank Böhmert )
  • Volume 2: Love is the plan . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-902711-37-3 (new translations by Frank Böhmert, Laura Scheifinger, Elvira Bittner, Andrea Stumpf, Samuel ND Wohl, Eva Bauche-Eppers , Sabrina Gmeiner and Margo Jane Warnken)
  • Volume 3: Houston, Houston! . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2013, ISBN 978-3-902711-07-6 (new translations by Bella Wohl, Laura Scheifinger, Andrea Stumpf, Samuel Wohl, Michael Preissl and Frank Böhmert)
  • Volume 4: At a price . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-902711-06-9 (new translations by Christiane Schott-Hagedorn, Frank Böhmert, Sebastian Wohlfeil and Michael Preissl)
  • Volume 5: Quintana Roo . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-902711-04-5 (new translations of the three Quintana Roo stories by Frank Böhmert, with an afterword by Anne Koenen : Struck by Mayaphilia. James Tiptree Jr.'s stories from Quintana Roo )
  • Volume 6: Star Digging . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2014, ISBN 978-3-902711-29-8 (new translations by Frank Böhmert, Eva Bauche-Eppers and Laura Scheifinger)
  • Volume 7: Yanqui Doodle . Septime Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-902711-33-5 (new translations by Andrea Stumpf, Elvira Bittner, Margo Jane Warnken, Eva Bauche-Eppers and Laura Scheifinger)

Also published:

How to get a grip on infinity . Essays, letters & poems. Septime Verlag, Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-902711-42-7 (from the American by Elvira Bittner, Andrea Stumpf, Sabrina Gmeiner, Bastian Schneider, Michael Preissl and Margo Jane Warnken)

literature

Monographs
  • Mary Hastings Bradley: Alice in Jungleland. D. Appleton and Company, New York 1927.
  • Gordon Benson Jr., Phil Stephensen-Payne: James Tiptree, Jr., a Lady of Letters: A Working Bibliography. Galactic Central Publications, Leeds, West Yorkshire 1988.
  • Inez Van Der Spek: Alien Plots: Female Subjectivity and the Divine in the Light of James Tiptree's “A Momentary Taste of Being”. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, England 2000.
  • Gardner Dozois : The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. Algol Press, New York 1977.
  • Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce (eds.): Letters to Tiptree. Twelfth Planet Press, Yokine, West Australia 2015.
  • Julie Phillips: James Tiptree Jr. - The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon . Septime Verlag, Vienna, 2013. ISBN 978-3-902711-05-2 .
  • Hans Frey: James Tiptree Jr. - Between Alienation, Love and Death . SF Personality Vol. 27, Memoranda in Golkonda Verlag, Berlin / Munich, 2018. ISBN 978-3-946503-69-9 .
Articles and introductions
  • John Clute : Introduction . In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever . Arkham House Publishers Inc., Sauk City, 1990, ISBN 0-87054-160-9 .
  • John Clute: Book of Deaths. In: (ders.): Canary Fever: Reviews. Beccon Publications, Harold Wood, Essex 2009.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin : Foreword . In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Star Songs of an Ancient Primate . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1987, pp. 7-14, ISBN 3-453-00974-6 .
  • Karsten Kruschel : About love and oxygen. Was James Tiptree Jr. Alice Sheldon - or was it the other way around? How one of the best and most complicated SF writers of all time left her mark on the genre. In: The Science Fiction Year 2013 , edited by Sascha Mamczak , Sebastian Pirling and Wolfgang Jeschke , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-453-53444-5 , pp. 67–85.
  • Theresia Sauter-Bailliet: Does space travel have a gender? SF speculations by Arthur C. Clarke and James Tiptree, Jr. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Das Science Fiction Jahr 1993 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, ISBN 3-453-06202-7 , pp. 311-327.
  • Mark Siegel: Love Was the Plan, the Plan Was ... A True Story About James Tiptree, Jr. In: Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction 44 (1988–1989), pp. 5–13 (this text is also online at David Lavery's Tiptree website).
  • Mark Siegel: The Short Stories of James Tiptree, Jr. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): The Science Fiction Year 1988 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag , Munich, ISBN 3-453-00983-5 , pp. 381-440 (German by Franz Rottensteiner ).
  • Robert Silverberg : Who, what is Tiptree? In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Warm Worlds and Others . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1981, pp. 7-16, ISBN 3-453-30724-0 .
  • Michael K. Iwoleit : Determination and Ecstasy. Hidden Motives in the Short Stories by James Tiptree, Jr. In: Franz Rottensteiner (ed.): Quarber Merkur No. 119, Verlag Lindenstruth, Gießen 2018, pp. 170 - 195, ISBN 978-3-934273-98-6
Lexicons

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Mark Siegel: Love Was the Plan, the Plan Was ... A True Story About James Tiptree, Jr. In: Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction 44 (1988-1989), pp. 5-13.
  2. ^ Robert Silverberg: Who, what is Tiptree? In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Warm Worlds and Others . Munich 1981, p. 7.
  3. ↑ Cf. Das Science Fiction Jahr 1988 , ed. by Wolfgang Jeschke, p. 229
  4. ^ Robert Silverberg: Who, what is Tiptree? In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Warm Worlds and Others . Munich 1981, p. 10.
  5. ^ A b Robert Silverberg: Who, what is Tiptree? In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Warm Worlds and Others . Munich 1981, p. 8.
  6. ↑ John Clute: James Tiptree, Jr. In: John Clute: Science Fiction - The Illustrated Encyclopedia . Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich, 1996, ISBN 3-453-11512-0 , p. 183.
  7. ^ Robert Silverberg: Who, what is Tiptree? In: James Tiptree, Jr .: Warm Worlds and Others . Munich 1981, p. 15.
  8. ↑ James Tiptree Jr .: science fiction awards database - . Retrieved on November 23, 2017.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.sfadb.com  
personal data
SURNAME Tiptree, James Jr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sheldon, Alice (real name); Sheldon, Raccoona (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American science fiction writer
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1987
Place of death McLean