Will leave you crying, hoping, jubilant, and in awe. This is surely a book that must not be missed. - Baltimore Sun

James Tiptree Jr. (1915-1987)

Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon wrote most of her fiction as James Tiptree, Jr. She adopted this pseudonym to challenge sexist assumptions in literature and to keep her US government employers unaware of her creative pursuits.

Most of her works are short story collections, with Her Smoke Rose Up Forever being considered her finest selection. Sheldon’s stories are characterized by a blend of radical feminism and a stark, tragic view of life. Even her virtuous characters are often depicted as unwitting beneficiaries of oppressive socio-economic systems. Her narratives explore how even good men can be complicit in the oppression of women, as seen in her well-known stories “The Women Men Don’t See” and “Houston, Houston, Do you Read?”, or in the context of ecocide.

Despite the often tragic themes, Tiptree’s work maintains an attractively ironic tone, occasionally veering into outright comedy. It is important to note that her profound seriousness never descends into somberness or pomposity.

Her two novels, Up the Walls of the World and Brightness Falls from the Air, are remarkable reinterpretations of conventional space opera. Up the Walls of the World features a colossal destructive entity, sympathetic aliens facing annihilation, and human telepaths attempting communication across vast interstellar distances.

Alice Sheldon died tragically in 1987.

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