James Tiptree Jr. was the pen name of Alice Bradley Sheldon, whose radical and pioneering science-fiction stories were matched by her extraordinary life. As a child, she travelled widely with her parents and featured in several African-set travel books written by her mother. After attending a finishing school in Switzerland, she embarked on an early career as an artist and art critic. During the Second World War she joined the US Army Air Forces, attaining the rank of major, and then worked for the CIA before moving to a chicken farm in Virginia with her husband.
She turned to science-fiction writing as an escape from her PhD thesis on experimental psychology, and chose her pseudonym from a pot of jam. She later explained that : A male name seemed like good camouflage ... I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation'. Her true sex was kept secret for years. She died in 1987 in what appeared to be a murder-suicide pact with her husband.
She turned to science-fiction writing as an escape from her PhD thesis on experimental psychology, and chose her pseudonym from a pot of jam. She later explained that : A male name seemed like good camouflage ... I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation'. Her true sex was kept secret for years. She died in 1987 in what appeared to be a murder-suicide pact with her husband.
