James Tiptree, Jr., pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon (post 3): Allie finds her science fiction-writing personality, and he takes on a life of his own

“Later Alli sometimes wondered if Tiptree hadn’t been in her all along, waiting to be given a name. But he doesn’t seem to have been a deliberate plan…

“In February 1967, she defended her thesis and became Dr. Alice B. Sheldon…Her thesis was published in the prestigious Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology. She was now a research scientist, with formal credentials…

Meanwhile, by November of 1967, “James Tiptree, Jr., wasn’t rich, but with three stories accepted in six weeks he was a selling science fiction writer.

“Alli…gave him a flowing signature that looked very different from Alice Sheldon’s neat, careful one…

“When Tiptree got on a first-name basis [in written correspondence with science fiction magazine editors] he asked them…to call him ‘Tip’…

“Later she wrote, ‘Tiptree kept taking on a stronger and stronger life of his own…This voice would speak up from behind my pancreas somewhere. He insisted on the nickname, he would not be Jim.’ It seemed to Alli, at least in retrospect, that Tiptree was creating himself…

“ ‘The Last Flight of Dr. Ain’ [1968] was Tiptree’s real debut, the moment when he found his own voice and his own material…

“Though ‘Ain’ went through several drafts—as would almost all of Alli’s stories—she later said its writing felt strangely natural. For the first time, she experienced the writer’s sense of an inner voice, as if someone else were telling the story and all she had to do was write it down…” (1, pp. 212-222).

1. Julie Phillips. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2006.