"The genre would have been very different without her": a notable centennial

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alice Bradley Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., aka Raccoona Sheldon (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987). Since the revelation in late 1976 that James Tiptree Jr. was a 5' 8" sixty-one-year old woman, Tiptree has been a figure of interest more for what Tiptree biographer Julie Phillips calls Sheldon's "double life" than for Tiptree's work. I'm always a little sad to re-discover that many people who know what the Tiptree Award is haven't actually read Tiptree's work. And so I'd like, on this occasion, to quote Jo Walton on that work:

Tiptree was constantly pushing the boundaries of science fiction. “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973) prefigured cyberpunk—it’s one of the three precursor stories, with John M. Ford’s Web of Angels and John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider. “Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death” made a space for Octavia Butler’s later writing about aliens and sex and identity. “And I Awoke and Found me Here” did the same for Varley—-- for a lot of the writers who came into SF in the later seventies and the eighties Tiptree was part of their defining space, and the genre would have been very different without her. Science fiction is constantly a dialogue, and her voice was one of the strongest in the early seventies, when everything was changing. She wasn’t a New Wave writer, and in many ways she was very traditional, “And I Have Come Upon This Place” could have been written by Murray Leinster, except for the end. She wrote what she wrote and expanded the possibilities for all of us. Science fiction would be very different without her. (What Makes This Book So Great, p. 318.)

To mark the centennial of this great writer, Twelfth Planet Press is releasing Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce.The volumes includes contributions from 35 persons (who, by the way, number several Aqueduct authors), archived letters from Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree Jr./Alice Sheldon, excerpts from The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms by Helen Merrick, an excerpt from The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier, and an essay by Michael Swanwick.

Letters to Tiptree

 Today Twelfth Planet Press released the list of contributors to their forthcoming anthology, Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce, and The Los Angeles Review of Books published The Women You Didn't See: A Letter to Alice Sheldon by Nicola Griffith.You can check out the star-studded list and preorder the book at http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com/products/ebooks/letters-to-tiptree. The book is scheduled for release on the centenary of Sheldon's birth, August 24.

Call for Submissions: LETTERS TO TIPTREE

The great James Tiptree Jr was born sometime in 1967, a little over forty-eight years ago. Fifty-two years earlier Tiptree’s alter-ego, the talented, resourceful and fascinating Alice B. Sheldon was born. And somewhere in there, about forty years ago, poet Racoona Sheldon showed up.

In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Sheldon’s birth, and in recognition of the enormous influence of both Tiptree and Sheldon on the field, Twelfth Planet Press is publishing a selection of letters written by science fiction and fantasy’s writers, editors, critics and fans to celebrate her, to recognise her work, and maybe in some cases to finish conversations set aside nearly thirty years ago.

LETTERS TO TIPTREE will be a collection of letters written to Alice Sheldon, James Tiptree or Racoon Sheldon; a set of thoughtful pieces on the ways her contribution to the genre has affected (or not) its current writers, readers, editors and critics.

Edited by Alexandra Pierce and Alisa Krasnostein, we are looking for two types of submissions.

Firstly, letters that are between 1000 and 2000 words, exploring personal and/or literary reflections on Tiptree/Sheldon.

Secondly, briefer responses addressing questions such as:
Does it make a difference, reading James Tiptree Jr’s work, knowing that Tiptree was Alice Sheldon?
Who is James Tiptree Jr to you?
Why do you care about James Tiptree Jr?
What impact has reading James Tiptree Jr’s fiction had on you?

We are paying 5cpw up to $USD100 to be paid on publication. We are looking for World First Publication in all languages, and exclusivity for twelve months. LETTERS TO TIPTREE will be published in August 2015.

Submissions are open between May 18 and June 8.

Please send your essay to contact@twelfthplanetpress.com

- See more at: http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com/submissions#sthash.oUnof8el.dpuf

The April 2013 issue of the CSZ is out

The April 2013 issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone is now available at http://thecsz.com. I have a long essay in it myself, one prompted by a recent re-reading of Raccoona B. Sheldon's "Your Faces, O My Sister, Filled of Light" and the reflections on changing perceptions of sex and gender that it (inevitably, I think) provoked. I've written on this subject before, but obviously its not through with me yet. The issue has a second (shorter) essay, for our Grandmother Magma column, that was especially pleasurable to read: Karen Joy Fowler's piece on Sylvia Townsend Warner's classic feminist fantasy, Lolly Willowes (or the Loving Huntsman).

Here's the entire table of contents for the issue:

Current Issue
Vol. 3 No. 2 — April 2013

Essay

Asking the Wrong Questions: Alice Sheldon,
the Gender Learning Curve, and Me
  by L. Timmel Duchamp

Poem

1995
  by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back

Grandmother Magma

Lolly Willowes
(or the Loving Huntsman)
by Sylvia Townsend Warner
  reviewed by Karen Joy Fowler

Reviews

These Burning Streets
by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back
  reviewed by Evan Peterson

Sister Mine
by Nalo Hopkinson
  reviewed by Ama Patterson

Necessary Ill
by Deb Taber
  reviewed by Nic Clarke

A Stranger in Olondria
by Sofia Samata
  reviewed by Nisi Shawl

How to Greet Strangers
by Joyce Thompson
  reviewed by Daniel José Older

Bio-Punk: Stories from the Far Side of Research
edited by Ra Page
  reviewed by Victoria Elisabeth Garcia

Featured Artist

Cheryl Richey