James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips

Throughout her life, Alice B. Sheldon—better known by her pseudonym, James Tiptree Jr.—made it her mission to challenge the expectations placed upon women by a male-centric world. A unique and admirable figure of 20th century literature, Sheldon was known for writing science fiction that powerfully addressed gender roles and sexual identity. In Julie Phillips’ 2007 biography about this enigmatic author, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, readers are provided a captivating look into Sheldon’s complex and fascinating life.

The focus of Phillips’ book is on the dual lives that Sheldon lived for many decades. Outwardly, Sheldon was a suburban housewife named Alice Bradley. A veteran of the WAVES during World War II, Alice spent her days at home taking care of her second husband, Huntington Sheldon, and studying art, entomology, and psychology. But Alice also had a secret life, one in which she inhabited the identity of James Tiptree, Jr.

Using her male pseudonym, Alice wrote diverse science fiction stories that touched upon themes of gender and sexuality, most notably in her 1973 groundbreaking story, “The Girl Who Was Plugged In.” The complex story is dystopian in nature and follows its protagonist, a female advertising executive whose consciousness is transferred into a beautiful manufactured body, as she tries to make sense of the changing nature of identity within a society that only values external beauty.

Alice created a mysterious reputation for herself as James Tiptree, Jr., which she used to great effect in her writing. Unlike her contemporaries Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ, Alice was never publicly identified as a female author, allowing her to write stories that, while progressive, still fit within the conventions of early 20th century science fiction. Alice’s dual identities allowed her to successfully explore gender politics, identity, and agency in her fiction with greater freedom.

Alice/James continued writing until her death in 1987. During this time, Alice balanced her time between her two lives, sometimes even using them to inspire synergy in her writing. While Alice never explicitly wrote about her other identity, her work as James Tiptree, Jr. is intertwined with Alice’s experiences and feelings as a female writer stemming from her childhood. Perhaps the best example of this is her prize-winning story “The Women Men Don’t See”, which is widely thought to be an extrapolation of Alice’s time as a female soldier in WWII.

Julie Phillips’ James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon delves into Alice’s world with precision and insight. Through her meticulously researched biography, Phillips explores the life of a woman whose intelligence and creativity were undeniable, and who used them to write stories that still inspire readers today. Phillips effectively reintroduces readers to a complex figure, ultimately revealing Alice Sheldon to be a woman of passion and strength, whose life was—and still is—worthy of admiration.