Meet Me at Infinity

by James Tiptree Jr.

  On leaving Africa in 1925, the Bradleys traveled through India, several SE Asia countries, and to interior of then Indo-China, for tiger and gaur (a whopping great buffalo thing with armor-plated brains [if any]) and to observe the Moi peoples. (Now called “Montagnards”; and virtually destroyed.)

  The Bradleys’ last expedition, 1929/30, was the first crossing of the African continent by automobile (two ton-and-a-half Chevrolet trucks). Crossing was at equatorial latitudes. Despite assurances of Colonial authorities, few bridges were found to exist and most rivers were crossed by unloading and constructing wood tracks on canoes. On this trip the speed of Colonial despoilment of Africa’s peoples, land, and wildlife was sadly evident (save in some British territory). Such was the ambience of the last trip to Africa that no one desired to return. (An attempt by the Belgian colonials to silence us permanently before we could tell outsiders what we’d seen—a series of artfully arranged reports of nonexistent elephants damaging crops—led us to go on foot deeper and deeper into lethal drought country, from which all game had fled and where all rivers were dry. Just at the point of no return, Father’s “radar” turned us back. The last days of the march out were made on Vi cup of water each in 110-degree heat. The last night we came to a dry buffalo wallow which yielded filthy water three-feet down; giving us an excellent chance to test the Army’s Halozone… This contributed to the unhappy ambience of colonial Africa.)

  There were other minor travels in the same childhood period; a trip across Exmoor, Engl., on horseback with Mary Bradley, and attendance with her at the historic PEN Congress in Scotland when the Nazi delegation walked out; Swiss schooling (Les Fougères, Lausanne) to acquire some vocalizations which were occasionally taken for French.

  Marriages:

  (1) 1934-38, to Wm Davey, poet, polo player, alcoholic (Princeton), and (2) 1945-on, to Huntington Denton Sheldon (Eton, Yale), Pre-World War II, H. D. S. was president, American Petroleum Corporation of America (not an oil company); commissioned Army 1942, joined Air Force (then a part of Army), working in A2 (Air Intelligence); ultimately Colonel, Deputy Chief of Air Staff A2, for European Theatre. Numerous awards, oak leaves. Two previous marriages had ended by divorce; met present wife (the author) among specialists he had summoned from the States in 1945 to evaluate the defeated Luftwaffe.

  Children: None.

  Education:

  Sarah Lawrence: U. of Calif, at Berkeley: N.Y.U.: USAAF Photo Intelligence School, Harrisburg, PA (first female attendee); Rutgers Agricultural Col.; School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins; American U. (D.C.) B.A., scl.; George Washington U. (D.C.), where PhD mcl Exper. Psychol., 1967.

  Religion:

  Atheist: ethical imperatives consonant with Christian New Testament, rationalized on basic principle of striving against entropy. (E.g., greed is more entropic than altruism; truth is less entropic than lies.)

  Organizations. Memberships:

  A.C.L.U., Friends’ Service Committee, N.O.W., A.P.A., Psi Chi,

  Sigma Xi, AAAS; Audubon Society; Smithsonian Associates,

  Amer. Museum of Nat’l Hist., S.F.W.A., Esperanto Society of

  Washington.

  Avocational Interests and Hobbies:

  Nishikigoi (ornamental koi); Hydrogen as energy source; bright

  young people; learning to speak, read, and write English.

  CAREER or Pre-SF Work

  1925-1941 Graphic artist: book cover illos., a few designs in New Yorker mag.; then painter, student John Sloan, exhib. Corcoran, D.C. and Chicago Art Inst. “All Americans”.

  1941-1942 Art critic new Chicago Sun (weekly full page), while awaiting admission of women to Army under women officers.

  1942-1946 U.S. Army,2 WAAC-WAC/AAF. 1943, assigned USAAF/A2 (Air Intelligence); became first female American Photo-Intelligence Officer. (British enlisted women already expert at similar work.)

  Author joined a small group at HQ AAF (the Pentagon, in—literally—the cellar) who were developing industrial photoanalysis and targeting, with regard to the Far East, where other-source intelligence was lacking. (Reconnaissance film was flown to DC for interpretation.) Despite the interest of the work, the author, like many Pentagon prisoners, strove by every means to get overseas where the war was, and was just as persistently blocked by the inaccurate label of “indispensable.” Finally in 1945 she was liberated by the requirements of the Air Staff Post-Hostilities Exploitation Project—but only to Europe, where the war was ending. The Project was a large task force of AAF specialists, scientists, and experts in every AAF function, assigned to locate and interrogate their captured Luftwaffe counterparts, in order to extract and evaluate all technology and material of potential use to the USAAF. It was essential to move quickly, for much of the German caches of secret scientific material and personnel (e.g., atomic physicists) were in the forward zone scheduled to be turned over to Russian occupation. (The Project in fact proved highly successful; it started a stream of priceless scientific and military prototypes, concepts and research flowing to the United States—the first operational jet planes, the rockets that became NASA, among them.) It was solely devised by its commander, Col. Huntington D. Sheldon, who had been thinking ahead while his peers thought about going home. The author met with Col. Sheldon in July to explain her total unsuitability for work with the Luftwaffe, and to beg to be sent to the Far East. Instead, on 22 Sep 1945, in a French mayor’s charming office, she found herself becoming Mrs. H. D. Sheldon—after which the report on the Luftwaffe’s photo-intelligence was completed through a long German winter. Both returned to the States for demobilization in Jan 1946, the author with rank of major: WAAC Service Ribbon, and Legion of Merit Award.

  1946-1952 Partner with husband in small rural business (custom hatching, N.J.); also worked intermittently as volunteer for civilian anti-Nazi intelligence-gathering orgs., primarily Ken Birkhead’s “Friends of Democracy,” now defunct. (After Birkhead’s tragic death, F.O.D.‘s files went to B’Nai B’Rith.)

  1952-1955 Both Sheldons recalled independently to D.C. to participate in development of then-new CIA; H. D. S. at supergrade levels, the author at mere technical level to help start up CIA Photo-Intelligence capability (then faced with evaluation of large caches of German air photography of USSR). In 1954-55, a brief tour of duty on clandestine side working up basic files on Near East. In 1955 resigned CIA to pursue more personally congenial goals.

  1955-1968 Hiatus for taking stock: The author’s early graphic arts work had left tantalizing unsolved questions of psychological aesthetics in her mind, and even amid other tasks she had found and followed some of the technical literature. Simply stated, why, for instance, does a certain spot of orange in this area of a painting “look right,” seem to “complete a structure”—while the same patch in, say, blue, or the orange in a different place “looks all wrong?” Why? What is this “structure!” And what about individual variation, the notorious de gustibus? Perhaps most tantalizing, why have so many new styles in art been violently rejected by their contemporaries, only to become the visual treasures of later generations? This phenomenon has been common at least since Rembrandt—the night watchmen who commissioned his famous painting refused to pay the few guilders they owed him and sent back the painting, now worth millions. And the story of the Gaugain and van Gogh paintings used to roof chicken coops is well known.3 Why? The whole topic of visual values is beset by windy theories devoid of factual base, and loud with substanceless argument. The author was fired with the urge to understand everything that could be known about visual perception and value, and to devise some experimental benchmarks in the murk.

  To do this work required a doctorate. The author was then in her forties, with only forty-seven recorded undergraduate credit-hours to her name. Nevertheless she returned to college (at American Univ. in D.C.), and perhaps because it was unusual to come on a student driving for the PhD for the sake of knowledge rather than as a means to a job, a grant—a fine high-status NIH Pre-Doctoral grant
—was secured by the Psychology Dept. Chairman, Dr. True-blood (dec). Thus helped, the B.A. (scl) came in 1959, and after a change to Geo. Wash. Univ, D.C., the coursework and exams for the PhD were completed in the early 1960s, and the author was into a full-scale experimental work for the dissertion—and attempting to defer the actual degree as long as possible, to maintain the grant.

  The incoming “baby boom” was then overloading all college faculties; teachers were urgently needed. So while working up the final experimental paradigms (in an ex-coal cellar on H St.), the author taught experimental psychology and psychological statistics at American and G.W.U.

  By 1967 all experimental work was finished, with unexpectedly good results and the doctorate could be no longer deferred. (PhD, mcl. G.W.U. 1967) This precipitated a crisis; health was failing under the combination of experimental work and the teaching load of “monster” classes routinely given to new PhDs. It was also necessary to obtain a new postdoctoral grant for further research, a full-time job in itself. All in all it appeared impossible soon to resume pure research, which had been the basic goal.

  At this point a heart problem forced temporary retirement at semester’s end. Meanwhile, some SF stories written as a hobby were all selling, to the author’s immense surprise. As health returned, the temptation to write more won out. The author rationalized this activity as a claim for a broader concept of “science” than rocketry and engineering, and the aim of showing SF readers that there are sciences other than physics, that bio-ethology or behavioral psychology, for instance, could be exploited to enrich the SF field.

  But this writing had to be kept secret; the news that a new PhD with offbeat ideas was writing science fiction would have wakened prejudice enough to imperil any grant and destroy my credibility with the Psychology Departments of G.W.U. and American—not to mention ever being again employed, had I desired, in the CIA.

  A year passed, during which it became clear that the marvels of medicine were not going to give a fifty-five-year-old the strength for work that would have exhausted one half her age. Luckily, the challenge of writing had exerted its spell; retirement from university work became permanent without any great traumas, and the author found herself with a new line of effort ready-made for somewhat erratic health.

  Writing. Pre-Science Fiction

  The author’s only non-SF story is a fiction/fact piece, “The Lucky Ones,” in the 16 Nov 1946 New Yorker; a plea for more humane American treatment of the D.P.s (“Displaced Persons”)—those pitiable surviving thousands of Nazi slave laborers, Jews and non-Jews, who as children had been kidnapped from their homelands, raped, tortured, starved, and worked near to death, and were then fallen into American hands.

  Science Fiction Writing

  Foreword; The Pesudonym That Got Away.

  The first SF stories were naturally not expected to sell, so a pseudonym was selected at random (from a jam pot). The plan was to use a new name for each new batch of stories, so as to avoid permanent identification with the slush pile. But “Tiptree” sold, and thus became permanent. In the interests of consistency and privacy the name was used for all SF dealings, and for letters that grew into deeply friendly correspondences, with the unintended result that for eleven years only H. D. Sheldon—not even Tip’s agent, Bob Mills—knew who or what Tiptree was. Tiptree in fact began to take on a peculiar, eerie, vitality of his own, while the author yearned more and more to write at least a few things as a woman. Hence, in 1974 “Raccoona Sheldon” appeared: but she required a minor assist from Tiptree to get started—Tip at first could afford to give her only some weaker stories.

  Then, in 1977 the author’s mother died after a long illness, at the age of 92, and Tiptree—who wrote only the truth in all letters—had imparted so many of the details of Mary Bradley’s unusual life that when her obituary was read by certain sharp-eyed young friends,4 James Tiptree, Jr., was blown for good—leaving an elderly lady in McLean, VA, as his only astral contact.

  Science Fiction Writing

  James Tiptree, Jr., is known primarily as a short story writer, having published over fifty shorts, novellas, and novelets (including four by “Raccoona”) to one novel, as of 1982. All but the most recent stories have been collected in four volumes.

  This relatively slender body of work has begun to attract critical attention from beyond the strict borders of SF, following the trend which is luring mainstream critics to peer over their fences at any handy sample of SF. In the New York Times Book Review, Gerald Jonas called Tiptree’s tales “some of the finest SF short stories of the past decade,” and the collection Warm Worlds inspired him to say, “If it made any sense to talk about a successor to Cordwainer Smith among contemporary SF writers, the most likely candidate would be James Tiptree, Jr.”

  Tiptree’s rise in the SF world has often been called meteoric. To the author’s bewilderment, no story remained unsold; even more startling were the award nominations which started after the first “serious” story (“The Last Flight of Doctor Ain,” 1969). This curiosity and commotion began to threaten privacy, and even aroused suspicions that Tiptree’s determined reticence was a publicity trick.

  The excitement, the unrelenting personal curiosity—and the awards—continued, somewhat to the author’s dismay, until late 1977, when Tiptree (and Raccoona) were abruptly unmasked.

  After this only the feminist world remained excited, but on a different basis, having nothing to do with the stories. Tiptree, by merely existing unchallenged for eleven years, had shot the stuffing out of male stereotypes of women writers. Even nonfeminist women were secretly gleeful. The more vulnerable males discovered simultaneously that Tiptree had been much overrated, and sullenly retired to practice patronizing smiles. Thus the matter stands today.

  But no account of Tiptree’s career could be complete without mention of the many helping hands that were extended to the new writer—truly too many to name, except for the very early good offices of SF’s incomparable writers-turned-editors: Harry Harrison of Amazing and Fantastic, Ed Ferman of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; later and to a lesser extent Ted White then of Amazing and Fantastic—and at all times in all weathers, one whose friendly deeds were beyond calculation—Frederik Pohl of If and Galaxy. And not-to-be-forgotten, on the same ‘mags’, Judy-Lynn del Rey, then Benjamin. But the list must stop here, for that brings up the grand women pen-friends whom lonely Tip valued so much—writerly Vonda Mclntyre, brave Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Joanna Russ the scholarly fireball, and Ursula K. Le Guin, nonpareil. And—but there is space for only one more, so let it be that most intrepid and honorable of men and fans, Jeffrey D. Smith, of Baltimore.

  When Tiptree’s stories first began to appear, Jeff was publishing a formidable fanzine Phantasmicom (later Khatru), and he wrote to the mysterious Tiptree requesting a postal interview, and promising not to “pry.” Tiptree, realizing that some sort of biographical information would have to be furnished before exasperated blurb writers hired a detective, decided to take a chance on Jeffrey D. Smith. (Later on, other writers called this act insanely trustful.) The gamble paid off in years of friendship and jollity. From that interview—now regarded by strangers as a “research tool”—the correspondence progressed to miniarticles on everything Tiptree encountered, from the Maya Indians’ reason for not pointing at rainbows to the odor of glaciers, all of which Jeff published under a column name, “The 20-Mile Zone.” And there grew up a quiet pen-friendship, which seems to be surviving the replacement of “Tip” by “abs” as well or better than some noisier ones.

  —1980-1982

  Contemporary Authors Interview

  CA: You wrote and published under the name James Tiptree, Jr., for about ten years before your real personal identity was discovered. Did that discovery in any way change your feelings about your writing?

  Sheldon: Yes, it did very much. It’s a little difficult to explain why—perhaps because there is a certain magic in writing, and there is no magic in writers. I have a very st
rong feeling that the writer’s life and the writer’s work should be kept separate, especially in writing that carries some sense of wonder.

  A science fiction writer often has a deep urge toward transcendence, strong dreams of “this can’t be all there is.” He or she sets out to show that maybe this isn’t all there is. The story speaks to that hunger in others: magic.

  And then the camera suddenly pans and picks up the writer himself, he’s slouched in a haze of smoke over his typewriter, and it’s all come out of his little head… Magic gone.

  Or maybe the story’s a bitter tragedy—alien beauty loved and lost. It rather destroys the effect if you can think, Oh well, this is because that writer really yearns to eat granola for breakfast and he was unable to get granola last week and therefore he’s bitter.

  Kipling said it all in a poem called “The Appeal.” It ends:

  And for the little, little, span

  The dead are borne in mind,

  Seek not to question other than

  The books I leave behind.

  He detested this prying into the writer’s life. Of course his was to some extent Victorian secrecy, but I agree very strongly with that idea. A man called Cordwainer Smith, who was really Paul Linebarger, a diplomat, wrote some marvelous science fiction, and then he wrote an autobiographical introduction to one of his collections, and it was dreadful. It was racist and sexist, it contained sickening references to his dear old mammy and his house in general, and yet all that never showed in his work at all. His work was clear and pure and represented a type of stern and wonderful fantasy that was just not evident in his thinking about himself and his own life.