James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Phillips. Non-fiction. Julie Phillips has taken an enormous wealth of material (letters to and from Tiptree and Sheldon, Sheldon’s journals, friends’ and colleagues’ reminiscences, and photographs) and used it to present an image of the pseudonymous author and his creator. It’s a fairly heart-breaking image, and I can’t help wondering what she might have been like born fifty—or even forty—years later, into a society with a somewhat better attitude toward gayfolk, and with access to serotonin reuptake inhibitors. We might have lost a great deal of excellent (though almost uniformly draining) fiction; but a lovely, talented woman might not have spent quite so much of her life miserable. As it was, between her mother’s shadow, her frustration with the powerlessness of women, and the absence of a relationship that was emotionally and sexually satisfying to her, she doesn’t seem to have enjoyed what was to outside appearances an extremely successful life.