Brightness Falls From the Air.
Inscribed
(Sheldon, Alice H.B.) Tiptree, James Jr. Brightness Falls from the Air. (New York: Tom Doherty Assoc., 1985).
8vo.; black cloth, stamped in silver on the spine; six-page appendix in the rear; full color illustrated dust-jacket; fine. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition. A presentation copy, inscribed on the half-title: Dear Marjorie—I thought you might like to see how your wonderful labours turned out! Best and warmest, James Tiptree, Jr. *aka Alice B. Sheldon. “Marjorie” may refer to Sheldon’s close friend Marjorie Webster, who knew Sheldon during her years at Sarah Lawrence. According to Julie Phillips’s biography of Sheldon, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St. Martin’s Press, 2006) Webster and Sheldon met on a train in Chicago in 1933.
One of only two novels written by the acclaimed science fiction short story writer, Brightness Falls from the Air appeared after it was publicly revealed that “James Tiptree” was the pseudonym for Alice Sheldon. The novel concerns the congregation assembled, some alien and some human, on the planet Damiem to watch a star explode.
Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (1915-1987) penned science fiction short stories under the name James Tiptree, Jr. from 1967 to 1977. Before devoting her life to writing, she served in the Air Intelligence division of the U.S. Army, where she met her second husband, Huntington Sheldon. She was discharged from the military in 1946 and worked for the CIA for nearly a decade, resigning in 1955. In an interview conducted after her identity was known, Sheldon explained her decision to write under a male pseudonym, saying, “A male name seemed like good camouflage. I had the feeling that a man would slip by less observed. I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.” She chose the name Tiptree randomly, after seeing the word on a jar of marmalade.
It was widely known that James Tiptree was a pseudonym, but no one guessed that the author of provocative stories like “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” about a society of ruthless female clones, was a woman. Tiptree never made public appearances, but did respond to fan mail and was always careful to be vague when directly asked about gender. Though Sheldon was married twice, she claimed to be bisexual. She once remarked, “I like some men a lot, but from the start, before I knew anything, it was always girls and women who lit me up.”
Sheldon won several major science fiction awards in her lifetime, including the three Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards. However, despite critical and commercial success, Sheldon struggled with depression for most of her adult life, and shot her husband and then herself in 1987.
(#10403)
(Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2008. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2008)
Print Inquire