Andre Norton 1912-2005

I was surfing the net when I discovered an obituary for Andre Norton, who passed away March 17 of this year. This is my belated personal obituary for the First Lady of Fantasy Literature.



MURFREEBORO, Tenn. Science fiction author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular "Witch World" series of books, died today at her home in Murfreesboro. She was 93. Her death was announced by friend Jean Rabe, who said Norton died of congestive heart failure.

Norton was born Alice Mary Norton on February 17th, 1912 in Cleveland. She penned more than 130 novels during her career of nearly 70 years.

The "Witch World" series, which detailed life on a planet reachable only through metaphysical gateways, included more than 30 novels.

Her last complete novel, "Three Hands of Scorpio," is set to be released next month.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America recently created the Andre Norton Award for young adult novels, and the first award will be presented in 2006.

Rabe says Norton requested before her death that she not have a funeral service.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

If you are a baby boomer there were two juvenile authors of science fiction and fantasy you read. One was R. A. Heinlien the other was Andre Norton. Her asexual nom de plume allowed her to be published at a time when SF was dominated by men.
"It was when she published her first novel that Ms. Norton began to legally use the name Andre, and she has continued to use it exclusively. Thus, the citation of "Andre" as a pseudonym for her given name, Alice Mary, in a number of bibliographies, biographies, and critical accounts is in error. This name change was implemented primarily because she expected to be writing for young boys, and she felt that the change would increase the marketability of her work in this traditionally male market. This was an added asset when she entered the masculine-dominated science-fiction field." Andre Norton Biography By Roger C. Schlobin

I was one of those boys who became an Andre Norton fan. It was when I was in elementary school I discovered her science fiction Witch World series. I continued to read her through out my school years, and became an avid SF and Fanatasy fan. It was her writing style, that was clear and crisp, that inspired me to become a writer, not one of fiction but of journalism.

I also read the Mary Norton's (no relation) Borrowers Series, and the wonderfully wistful and strange The Red Planet, whose chapter title illustrations made Martians look like onions rather than little green men. But it was Andre Norton's voluminous writings that kept me entranced, through out my elementary and junior high years, even after I found Sherlock Holmes, the works of Edgar Alan Poe, and Donald Wolhiem.

Her passing at such an old age, and with such a large literary output is astonishing. She had just finished another novel which was being prepared for publishing when she passed away.

She influenced me and many young readers with her wonderous tales, and we ended up wanting more. She produced for my generation, novels on par with Harry Potter for this generation. And like Rowling, she never talked down to her readers.

She was a feminist, in the sense that she developed strong female characters in her novels, they taught us about egaltarian relations through the medium of fantasy and SF. Her books allowed both boys and girls to see that we could go beyond gender stereotypes to be whatever we wanted to be.

Her love of cats came through in many of her novels, and certainly over the years I have learned that joy of living and communing with our feline companions. Again a subtle influence of her writing in my life.

And her work is not dated, I hope that a new generation of readers inspired by Harry Potter will avail themselves of her books. In a publishing industry today, that is flooded with commercial fantasy novels written for profit rather than any literary value, her works still stand out and stand the test of time.

So long Alice/Andre you have spoken to the imagination of generations, we will always remember you and be grateful for the worlds you opened to us.



Her last complete novel, "Three Hands for Scorpio," .
Norton's publisher, Tor Books, rushed to have one copy printed so that the author, who had been sick for almost a year, could see it. "She was able to hold it on Friday," Jewell said. "She took it and said, 'What a pretty cobalt blue for the cover." Although several more collaborations are scheduled for printing, Three Hands for Scorpio is Andre's last novel written solely on her own. Her last legacy. As you know, Andre has requested that she be cremated with a copy of her first and last book, the alpha and omega. This book will be one of them.

• ANDRE NORTON REREAD

All Rebel, No Cause: Andre Norton’s Ride Proud, Rebel!

Judith Tarr

Tue Feb 18, 2020 3:30pm 25 comments 2 Favorites [+]

2020 is a difficult year for reading novels about the American Civil War. The old comfortable myths, the familiar interpretations of history, have developed serious fractures. The romance of the Confederacy has given way to the dismantling of Confederate war memorials. The election of an African-American President represented both the power of cultural change and the vehement, even violent opposition to it.

Andre Norton published Ride Proud, Rebel! in 1961, in the midst of the Civil Rights era. Her science fiction novels took care to depict a future that was not all or even mostly white, and she tried hard to write Black and Native American characters with respect and understanding. And yet she chose this material for a foray into historical fiction.

She imprinted in youth on Gone With the Wind, which is evident in her first novel (though published second), Ralestone Luck. But a generation had passed and her work had moved on to very different genres and philosophies. In fact, I wonder if this is another early trunk novel, written before she did serious thinking about race and culture in the United States.

Whatever motivated it, here it is. Fiery young Kentuckian Drew Rennie has defied his wealthy, Union-sympathizing family and joined the Army of the Confederacy. We meet him late in the war, still in his teens but already a hardened veteran. Despite the determined optimism of his fellow soldiers, the end is already in sight.

Drew’s rebellion is personal. His parents, he’s been raised to believe, are both dead. His father was a Texan, his mother a daughter of the house. When she became pregnant and her husband was apparently killed in war against Mexico, her father stormed down to Texas and hauled her back home. There she died after delivering her son.

Drew has a lifelong hate-hate relationship with his grandfather. He gets along, more or less, with the rest of the family, though all of them are on the other side and one is married to a Union officer. As the story progresses, he becomes the very unwilling protector of his young cousin Boyd, who wants to be a rebel just like Drew. Boyd runs away to join the Confederates; much of the action, in and around historical battles and skirmishes, consists of Drew trying to track down his wayward cousin and force him to go home.

That much of the plot is very 1961. Teen rebellion was a huge industry. The short life and tragic death of James Dean was its epitome, and his most famous film, Rebel Without a Cause, encapsulated the mood of the time.

Maybe that’s why she chose to write about the Civil War. It offers a dramatic backdrop for teen rebellion, with careful historical research and a battle-by-battle depiction of the final throes of the Confederacy in Kentucky and Tennessee. There’s a family secret and a mystery to solve, and there’s a direct lead-in to a sequel, in which Drew Goes West, Young Man to find out the truth about his father.

Drew is kind of a cipher, despite his personal conflicts, but some of the other characters are as lively as Norton characters get, including Boyd (though he’s also quite annoying) and the dialect-drawlin’ Texan, Anse Kirby. A Native American scout plays a strong role, and now and then a female character gets a decent number of lines.

Much of the action devolves into summary and synopsis of numbingly similar battle scenes. As often as characters get shot in the arm or shoulder, I feel as if I’m watching a Hollywood historical epic. Gallop gallop gallop pow! pow! off flies the soldier, winged in mid-flight. Drew gets knocked out and misses key battles, which have to be summarized after the fact. And in true series-regular fashion, he never suffers any serious damage, though the same can’t be said of the humans or equines around him.

The equines are amazingly well and accurately drawn. I wouldn’t have expected it of Norton, based on the way she generally portrays them, but this is a surprisingly horse-centric book. Drew’s family breeds horses, and he loves and understands them. He’s in the cavalry; when we meet him, he’s trying to round up horses for the army, and he’s riding a true horseman’s mount, a tough, not at all physically attractive, smart and savvy gelding named Shawnee. Shawnee, without a speaking part, still manages to be one of the novel’s more memorable characters, as, later on, does the mighty Spanish mule, Hannibal. Even the rank stud is well portrayed, and we get to see what Drew has to do in order to manage him on the trail and in camp.

Drew really is a convincing horse (and mule) man. He doesn’t fall for flash and pretty, he understands the true blessing of a smooth-gaited mount for spending long hours in the saddle, and we see exactly what those hours do to both the rider and the mount. When I was driven to skim the battle scenes—they are sincerely not my cuppa—I slowed down to enjoy the equine portions. She got them right.

And yet the novel, to me, felt hollow at the core. We are never told what the Cause is that Drew is fighting for. As far as anything in the story indicates, it’s a nebulous conflict, brother versus brother, fighting over land and resources. Drew is on the Confederate side because his grandfather is Union. What those two things really mean, we’re never actually told.

Drew’s world is overwhelmingly white, with a couple of token Native Americans (and some reflexive racism in that direction from the Texan, going on about the cruel, savage Comanche whose torture techniques come in handy for terrorizing bandits and Union soldiers). Once in a great while, we see a Black person. There’s a Mammy figure back home on the plantation, there’s a servant or two. Near the end we see an actual Black regiment fighting for the Union. We’re never told what that means. Or what the war is about. The words slave and slavery just… aren’t a factor.

It’s a massive erasure, and it’s compounded by the heroic portrayal of Nathan Bedford Forrest, under whom Drew eventually (and wholeheartedly) serves. Forrest here is heavily sanitized, turned into a hero-general. We hear nothing about his history, his slave trading and his atrocious treatment of his human merchandise. There’s no hint that his Cause might just happen to be unjust. Even while Drew tries to disabuse Boyd of the notion that war is all jingling spurs and flashing sabers, the war he fights is just as steeped in myth and denial, though it’s notably grittier.

I want to know how the story ends, despite the problems with the first half, so I’ll be reading Rebel Spurs next. As it happens, the first chapter takes place right down the road from where I sit, in a town I know quite well. That should be interesting.

Judith Tarr’s first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Her most recent novel, Dragons in the Earth, a contemporary fantasy set in Arizona, was published by Book View Cafe. In between, she’s written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies and space operas, some of which have been published as ebooks from Book View Café and Canelo Press. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, a blue-eyed dog, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

TOR.COM

SEE ANDRE NORTON

Childhoods End

Arthur C. Clarke the great SF writer who put the 'science' into science fiction has passed on. He was a humanist who believed in the spirit of man. I got emails from Clarke because he supported the SETI project.

In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realised 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres above the Equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

Space expert Robin Scagell told Sky News: "He was very much a scientist and science was at the heart of his work.

"As well as predicting satellites, he saw that rockets would go into space."

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore paid tribute to his friend.

"He was a great visionary, a brilliant science fiction writer and a great forecaster," he said.

"He foresaw communications satellites, a nationwide network of computers, interplanetary travel - he said there would be a man on the moon by 1970, while I said 1980 - and he was right."

Childhood's End is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1953, and a version with a new first chapter was released in 1990 due to the anachronistic nature of the opening chapter (the first attempts to launch rockets into orbit by both the Americans and Russians are in progress but aborted suddenly when aliens arrive, with a sense of the death of a dream). This story was originally a short story dubbed Guardian Angel which Clarke first published in 1950 for the Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine. It is basically the novel's section after the prologue, Earth and the Overlords but with some different text in certain places.

Clarke struck notes that were poignant and challenging, as with this final, anguished question which ends "The Star":

"There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?"

May he join the stars in his passing unto the duat.

"Term of all that liveth, whose name is Death and inscrutable, be thou favorable unto us in thine hour. And unto him, from whose mortal eyes the veil of physical life hath fallen, grant that there may be the accomplishment of his True Will. Should he will absorption in the Infinite, or to be united with his chosen and preferred, or to be in contemplation, or to be at peace, or to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation on this planet or another or in any star, or aught else, unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his true will."

My libertarian science fiction opera loving uncle Phil Smith, a bread truck driver, turned me on to sci-fi as a kid. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Andre Norton, the books he read he passed on to me. And we both shared our love of sci-fi with lots of political debate as well as I became a radical teen ager. He was right wing libertarian and I was a left wing anarchist, yet we agreed more often than disagreed. My favorite memory of my uncle was the two of us seeing 2001 together.I got to help him pass into the duat when he died of cancer.

Unfortunately as I cruise the sci-fi section of bookstores I find that it is stuffed full of fantasy novels, sci-fi has been eclipsed by the money making fantasy genre. Hopefully with Clarke's passing more folks will decide to read his works, as dated as they me be, and to begin to read more sci-fi because science fiction has always been a radical critique of existing society unlike fantasy. Which may be why the publishers like it, safe money making literature, not unlike that other fantasy genre; romance novels.



SEE

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

RAW RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

Van Allen Belt

LEM RIP

Andre Norton 1912-2005

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, authors, writers, 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, RIP, Childhoods End, science fiction,

Forrest J. Ackerman RIP

Forry Ackerman the father of 'Sci-Fi' and Famous Monsters of Movieland died yesterday. When I learned this I said to a friend wow I thought he had passed away years ago. At least he had as a pop culture icon of fantasy, sci-fi and movie monsterdom. He was relagatedto occasional apperances in cheesy B sci fi and monster movies, which he loved, while the fickel world of pop culture popularity replaced him with George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Harry Potter and Tolkien.
One thing I learned from this LA Times obituary bio was that he was a closet lesbian. Which makes alot of sense, Hollywood where he grew up was always a kinky place and science fiction was place where homosexuality was one of the speculative fictions.
And the science fiction community known as 'fandom' was always a fringe community, begining in its earliest days as pulp fiction, it was based on readers and writers who cooresponded with each other, in doing so they linked to other fringe groups, and movements, some of them in their embryonic forms; feminism, occultists, conspiracy theorists, socialists,beatniks, hippies, homosexuals, etc. etc. It was not limited to the United States. Fandom was populated by the original geeks and nerds who read wild tales of imaginary worlds. In doing so they helped create the counter culture of the fifties and sixties. And in LA they created links between sci fi and libertarian politics as well as the feminist, homosexual and occult community. And no one was more of a geek than Forry.

By his late teens, he had mastered Esperanto, the invented international language. In 1929, he founded the Boys Scientifiction Club. In 1932, he joined a group of other young fans in launching the Time Traveler, which is considered the first fan magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction and for which Ackerman was "contributing editor." Ackerman also joined with other local fans in starting a chapter of the Science Fiction Society -- meetings were held in Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown L.A. -- and as editor of the group's fan publication Imagination!, he published in 1938 a young Ray Bradbury's first short story. During World War II, Ackerman edited a military newspaper published at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro. After the war, he worked as a literary agent. His agency represented scores of science-fiction writers, including L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, H.L. Gold, Ray Cummings and Hugo Gernsback. In 1954, Ackerman coined the term that would become part of the popular lexicon -- a term said to make some fans cringe. My wife and I were listening to the radio, and when someone said 'hi-fi' the word 'sci-fi' suddenly hit me," Ackerman explained to The Times in 1982. "If my interest had been soap operas, I guess it would have been 'cry-fi,' or James Bond, 'spy-fi.' " At the time, Ackerman already was well-known among science-fiction and horror aficionados for his massive collection. After a couple from Texas showed up on his doorstep in 1951 asking to view the collection, Ackerman began opening up his home for regular, informal tours on Saturdays. Over the years, thousands of people made the pilgrimage to the Ackermansion. He also wrote what has been reported to be the first lesbian science-fiction story ever published, "World of Loneliness." And under the pen name Laurajean Ermayne, he wrote lesbian romances in the late 1940s for the lesbian magazine Vice Versa.





SEE:

Childhoods End

RAW RIP

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

Lily Munster RIP

Grandpa Munster RIP

Van Allen Belt

LEM RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Heinlein Centennial

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Andre Norton 1912-2005

Lagrange 5

Good Morning Dave

Another Character Generator




Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about: science, fiction, writers, sci-fi, sf, novels, writers, America, obituary, horror films/a>, Space, Famous Monsters of Movieland, Forrest J. Ackerman, Libertarian, libertarianism,science-fiction, culture, america, writing, books, sf, sci-fi, USgov,

Coming of Age

Arising out of pulp fiction for the masses Science Fiction is now fully out of the literary ghetto.

It has now been claimed by the U.S. Government as a cultural artifact of America. Society, Science Enriched by Science Fiction

Does this then make SciFi an official State Literature?

If so there might be some competition in that regard. The St. Sputnik Project: Modern Russian Sci-Fi - Online Resources ...


Also See:

LEM RIP

Heinlein

Andre Norton RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

Lagrange 5

And Then They Built An Ark

Another Character Generator

Good Morning Dave

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Gothic Capitalism Redux

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

The Most Secretive Woman in
the History of Science Fiction



This month marks the centennial of sci-fi
author James Tiptree, Jr., a man who was
as fictional as his make-believe characters

 Alice Sheldon 

by Ted Gioia

conceptual fiction
Exploring the Non-Realist Tradition in Fiction


Who is the most mysterious sci-fi author of them all?

Maybe that fellow L. Ron Hubbard, who decided that a religion from outer
space had a better payback than stories about outer space? Or perhaps
Philip K. Dick, who was convinced he had been possessed by the spirit of
the prophet Elijah? And let’s not forget Cordwainer Smith, who apparently
believed that he lived part-time on an alien planet.

But I insist that we add James Tiptree, Jr. to this list.
August 24 marks the 100th anniversary of Tiptree's

birth, and it is an event well worth celebrating. One of
my favorite genre writers, Tiptree earned a shelf full
of major awards for short stories and novellas back
in the 1970s and 1980s. And Tiptree's fame lives
on posthumously. Three years ago, Tiptree was
inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Every
year the James Tiptree, Jr. Award is given to a work
of sci-fi and fantasy that explores gender roles.

But there never was a James Tiptree, Jr.

When Tiptree was a rising star of the science fiction
world, any fan who tried to phone the author learned
that no one by that name was listed in the directory.
No author photos could be found on the jacket sleeves of Tiptree’s books.
All requests for public appearances were declined. Influential sci-fi writers
and editors who hoped to meet Tiptree in person found their overtures
rebuffed.

David Gerrold, screenwriter for the famous "Trouble with Tribbles"
screenplay on Star Trek, even went to Tiptree's mailing address in
Alexandria, Virginia, a large rambling home in a wooded area. Knocking
on the door, he was greeted by a diminutive, middle-aged woman who
was puzzled by her visitor’s request to meet James Tiptree, Jr. She had
no idea who he was talking about.

But this absence of firsthand knowledge hardly stopped the sci-fi
community from speculating about the hot new writer on the scene.
Tiptree was "a man of 50 or 55, I guess, possibly unmarried, fond of
outdoor life, restless in his everyday existence," speculated Robert
Silverberg in his introduction to Tiptree's Warm Worlds and Otherwise.
Silverberg mentions in passing rumors that Tiptree might be a woman,
but was quick to dismiss these suggestions as "absurd"—then added:
"there is something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writings."

Readers who wanted the inside scoop on James Tiptree, Jr. would
have done better to skip Silverberg's introduction, and instead mull
over the title to one of the most provocative stories in the collection,
a tale named “The Women Men Don’t See.” That describes the writer
of these stories much better than any of the details in the standard
author's bio.

These smart, iconoclastic stories were actually
written by Alice B. Sheldon, who was almost sixty
years old when she won her first Hugo award for
the prescient 'virtual reality' novella "The Girl Who
Was Plugged In." Sheldon had never known anyone
named Tiptree—she found the name on a jar of
English marmalade. But it suited the debonair
persona she hoped to construct for her public image.

This wasn’t the first time Alice Sheldon had adopted
a secret identity. She had learned about secrecy from
the very best teachers while working for Army
intelligence and the CIA. In later life, she found that
these skills helped her in unexpected ways. When
she briefly left her husband in the mid-1950s, he
struggled to find any clue to her whereabouts—and
her spouse, Huntington D. Sheldon was a high-level
CIA spy! "I used my clandestine training to disappear,"
she later boasted. "In a day, I had a new name, a new bank account, had
rented a house and really destroyed all traces of my former personality."

Husband and wife later reconciled, but Alice Sheldon found that this
assumption of a new identity served as a test run for her eventual rebirth
as sci-fi author James Tiptree, Jr. She later denied any attempt to
mislead. "I can’t help what people think sounds male or female," she
complained. But Sheldon clearly put as much energy into creating the
Tiptree persona as she did into making her finely crafted stories.

 Alice Sheldon In Africa in the Pith Helmet

I can’t blame Silverberg for asserting the masculinity of Mr. Tiptree. The
men in Sheldon’s stories are macho and lustful. They spend a lot of time
looking at women, or concerned with fighting and weapons. As a
youngster, Sheldon had traveled extensively, visiting Central Africa,
Southeast Asia and other far-flung locales, and she gave Tiptree a
similarly cosmopolitan background. Readers probably envisioned Tiptree
as a kind of sci-fi Hemingway, running with the bulls or off on an African
safari. The occasional hints of espionage—Tiptree would turn down a
request for a public appearance because of “secret business”—imparted
an additional 007-ish flavor to the author’s image.

Sheldon can hardly be faulted for this charade. We are familiar with authors
who hide their gender in order to reach a larger audience. But women in
science fiction have faced perhaps the greatest obstacles in gaining
credibility among the genre’s core audience—which has traditionally
been dominated by young males.

Back in 1949, a major science fiction magazine surveyed its fan base,
and learned that only 6.7% of its readers were female. Similar surveys from
the 1970s, when Tiptree started gaining recognition in the field, suggest
that women had grown to around a quarter of the audience for sci-fi. But
female writers still struggled to find acceptance in the field—1970s surveys
of 'all-time favorite' sci-fi stories gave all the top spots to men.

By taking on the Tiptree image, Sheldon bypassed the stereotypes and
biases that might have limited her otherwise. Many of her predecessors
in the field, such as Andre Norton or C.L. Moore, had already taken
similar steps. Sheldon no doubt recognized that attitudes were changing
in the 1970s—in fact, she corresponded with Ursula K. Le Guin and
Joanna Russ, who were enjoying success with an overtly feminist brand
of sci-fi during this period. But Tiptree had a different attitude. She was
sympathetic with feminism, joined NOW and at one point started referring
to other women as "sisters." She had romantic entanglements with women,
and saw herself as essentially bisexual. But she also delighted in her ability
to convince the leading men of sci-fi that she was one of their own. Above
all, she took pride in her skill in constructing a double life, and was reluctant
to give it up.

But eventually someone penetrated behind Tiptree’s façade. Sheldon had
shared some details about her mother, whom she had described as an
explorer living in Chicago. A fan used this information to track down an
obituary from the Chicago Tribune, which identified Alice B. Sheldon as
the only survivor of Mary Hastings Bradley, a noted travel writer. The details
of the deceased matched Tiptree's account of his mother, and the author
was soon confronted with the results of this successful sleuthing.

Related Essay:
When Science Fiction Grew Up


Sheldon decided to publicly acknowledge her real identity. She wrote
'coming out' letters to Le Guin and others, taking the opportunity to
apologize for deceiving her literary friends. But like a true master spy,
Sheldon disliked having her cover blown. She continued to publish works
under the name James Tiptree, Jr. and in later days grumbled about
researchers who wanted to write her life story. She even asked her
agent whether she could charge them money for answering their questions.

Sheldon’s final years were marred by illness, both her own and her
husband's. Her 1987 death was a shocking one—the result of a suicide
pact between the couple . After first shooting her husband in his sleep,
she calmly phoned her lawyer to describe what she had done, then turned
the gun on herself. She had been talking about suicide for many years—
the note she left explaining it was dated from 1979. When the police
arrived on the scene, they found the two bodies side-by-side, holding
hands.

Tiptree’s reputation has been in the ascendancy since the author’s death.
A full-scale Tiptree/Sheldon biography was published by Julie Phillips in
2006—and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. And I suspect
a Hollywood movie will eventually bring her story to an even larger
audience. If Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking deserve a bio-pic, why
not the remarkable Alice B. Sheldon?

The centennial of this author’s birth gives us an opportunity to marvel over
the extraordinary deception practiced by the most mysterious woman in
20th century genre fiction. I hope it also gives a few readers an excuse to
get familiar with her writing. But as much as I admire these works, I can't
help concluding that the most impressive fictional character created by
James Tiptree, Jr. was the author himself.


Ted Gioia writes on books, music and popular culture. His latest book Love Songs: The Hidden
History, is published by Oxford University Press.

This essay was published on August 23, 2015