Conference noted::sf

        By the way, the report I read indicated that the killing was the
        result of a "pact" between Alice and her husband, and not just
        something she did spontaneously due to depression. 
        
        	/dave

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!umnd-cs!uwvax!rutgers!daemon
Subject: Death of Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree, Jr.
Posted: 20 May 87 12:53:30 GMT
Organization: 
 
From: Mike Laufer <[email protected]>
 
    For those of you who have not heard this I am sorry to have to
pass on this sad news.  Author Alice Sheldon a.k.a James Tiptree Jr.
died yesterday. There is a long artical in todays Washington Post
(front page) about it. The story is a sad one as apparently it was a
murder/suicide.  Mrs. Sheldon's husband, Huntington Sheldon, was very
sick and had recently gone blind. In addition she was also suffering
from severe medical problems. 
 
    "Evidently there was some sort of pact between them ... It appears
that her husband's health was increasingly becoming more difficult for
him."  to quote the story in the paper. 
 
    I am only familiar with Mrs. Sheldon through her work but I feel
that we have lost one of the outstanding members of our community.  I
am very sorry that she has left us. 
 
    I quote from her own work what may be her own farewell.
From BRIGHTNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR:
 
    "If only I could tell them how I feel inside, she thinks.  So
light and free, all duties done... And at last I know it all; my whole
life is my own ... All known.  Like a child on a high hill, like a
first plane ride-- I can see it all from horizon to horizon, and think
it all over." 
 
    "And me ... funny, I'd forgotten myself.  I suppose they count
this as tragic.  Oh, if I only could tell them--all they see is this
rotting body; they don't see I'm perched in it like a bird in an old
tree.  When the tree goes I'll only float away.  Maybe, when it
crumbles, could I just fly away, free?  Flying to death ..." 
 
    "But such a beautiful sunrise--so comfortable, so radiant and
limitless! I wish they had time to enjoy... When you're dying you have
time.  And you don't need help to die.  No arrangements.  You can just
do it, all alone.  Right the first time..." 
 
    "Green, go."
 
Michael Laufer
[email protected]  ARPA

"You see me now a veteran of a thousand psychic wars ..."

    What a tragedy!  Another unique voice lost.  I can still recall
the thrill I got from the first story of hers that I ever read, "The
Man Who Walked Home".  She also wrote the best Star Trek story ever,
"Beam Me Home", and that's including the TV shows.  R.I.P.
/jlr

    I too will miss her as her later writings seemed
    to grow in depth. Maybe this was due to the personal
    problems.
    BTW-Where was this Star Trek story? I can't believe but
    I don't remember reading this.
    

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!ames!rutgers!daemon
Subject: Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) kills self and husband
Posted: 21 May 87 14:53:35 GMT
Organization: 
 
From: Kathy Godfrey <[email protected]>
 
    From Associated Press:
 
McLean, Va., May 19:
 
    A critically acclaimed author who wrote science fiction under the
name James Tiptree Jr. killed her husband and herself Tuesday [May 19]
after telling her lawyer to call the police, the authorities said. 
 
    The author, Alice Sheldon, 71 years old, and her husband,
Huntington Sheldon, 84, were found in bed together with single gunshot
wounds to their upper body, said officials of the Fairfax County
police. 
 
    Warren Charmichael, a spokesman for the police, said the shooting
occurred about 3:30 a.m. in the couple's home in this fashionable
suburb of Washington. 
 
    The police said Mrs. Sheldon had been depressed about her husband,
who became blind this year and was bedridden.  She called her lawyer
to warn him she was planning the killings and told him to call the
police, the spokesman said. 
 
                         "Enormous Critical Success"
 
    Virginia Kidd, Mrs. Sheldon's agent, said the author telephoned
her last week and had seemed "in her usual good spirits." 
 
    Ms. Kidd described Mrs. Sheldon as "middling popular" as an
author. "She had enormous critical success and was very highly thought
of by intellectuals," Ms. Kidd said.  "But she never made the
numbers." 
 
    Nevertheless, she won the respect of her peers.  Isaac Asimov, the
science fiction writer, said in a 1984 article that she "has produced
works of the first magnitude and has won the wild adulation of
innumerable readers." 
 
    He said he believed the reason she had been overlooked by some was
"that for some reason hidden in the recesses of her sweet soul, she
chooses to write under a pseudonym of the masculine persuasion." 
 
                          Collection of Novellas
 
    The Washington Post in a March 1986 review called the author one
of the finest writers of short fiction in the 1970s. 
 
    Mrs. Sheldon's most recent work was STARRY RIFT, a collection of
three novellas, published in 1986.  The New York Times called it a
"latter-day space opera, replete with daring interstellar action,
life-saving (and life-threatening) technology, and a general air of
wide-eyed wonder at the vast playground we call the Universe." 
 
    Other recent books include UP THE WALLS OF THE WORLD, published in
1978, her first book after two decades of writing short stories, and
BRIGHTNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR, published in 1985. 
 
    Mrs. Sheldon served in the Army Air Corps in World War II and
later worked in photo intelligence for the Central Intelligence
Agency, her agent said.  [I understand her husband also had worked for
the CIA.] 
 
    She started writing science fiction as a way to relax after
working on her doctoral dissertation.  She taught experimental
psychology and statistics at American University and at George
Washington University, both in Washington, D.C., from 1955 to 1968. 
 
    She was the daughter of Mary Bradley, a World War II correspondent
who reported on German death camps and sold more than 35 books in her
lifetime as a travel writer, said Ms. Kidd. 

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!ames!oliveb!sun!plaid!chuq
Subject: Re: The latest news....
Posted: 21 May 87 16:34:56 GMT
Organization: Fictional Reality, uLtd
  
>I don't know the author, but the poem is old....
>
>Brightness falls from the air,
>Queens have died young and fair,
>Dust hath closed Helen's eye,
>I am sick, I must die--
>     Lord have mercy on us!
 
    Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) in "In Time of Pestilence"
 
    Well chosen work.  When I heard the news, there was shock, there
was pain. There was also, I think, understanding. We, the readers of
SF, have lost someone wonderful and dear to us, and that causes pain
and grief.  But don't let it cause jealousy that keeps you from
appreciating that those two were so much in love that the thought of
separation was unthinkable. You may not approve of suicide (I don't
approve of suicide, for that matter), but you must not forget that
along with life there is also quality of life, and if there is no
quality, life becomes meaningless. They did what they felt they had to
do. Cherish them for what they were. 
 
chuq
 
Chuq Von Rospach	[email protected]		[I don't read flames]
 
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.

    RE: .4
    
    "Beam Me Home," was not so much a "Star Trek" story, as a "trekkie"
    story - perhaps the best story ever done on fans' love of the TV show.
    I believe it's in "Tiptree's" first collection of short stories,
    "Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home," originally issued in the early `70s.
    It's well worth your time to find this collection if you haven't
    read it.
    
    I think one of the reasons I was so shocked by Sheldon's actions
    was that many of her stories' themes center around a protaganist
    who faces impossible odds - and who somehow still overcomes them.
    "Painwise," "The Man Who Walked Home," and the aforementioned "Beam
    Me Home," are all examples of this recurring theme. I'm - of 
    course - in no position to make a judgment on her actions, and I'm
    intelligent enough to realize that real life seldom, if ever, resembles
    the neatness of fiction - even as much as we could hope otherwise. 
    
    Still ... Such a complete, final act of desperation from a person
    whose characters always went down fighting seems such a *total*
    disavowal of what she apparently believed in. 
    
    I don't know about you. It's hard for me to deal with.
    
    Fred  

    The first story of hers that I ever read was either Your Haploid
    Heart or the Women that Men Never See....I will miss her...when
    I read of her death I felt as if I had lost a friend....I hope
    that the Creator has accepted her home and let her loose in the
    company of those who are free to explore the universe..
    
    Bonnie

    Add my voice to the mourners. Sheldon/Tiptree was unique ---
    *nobody* wrote like she did. I've treasured most of the stories
    of hers I've read, particular favorites being "Beam Us Home",
    "Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & The Alien", "Love is
    the Plan, the Plan is Death", "The Man Who Walked Home", "Birth
    of a Salesman", "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?", "Your Haploid
    Heart", and especially "The Women Men Don't See".
    
    SF has lost a major talent.
    
    --- jerry

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers
Path: decwrl!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!ames!hao!oddjob!gargoyle!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!
Subject: Tiptree suicide not surprising
Posted: 28 May 87 17:50:00 GMT
Organization: 
Nf-ID: #N:uicsrd:50600029:000:1997
Nf-From: uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU!hsu    May 28 12:50:00 1987
  
    [email protected] (Laurence R. Brothers) writes:
 
>-- just read today in the Times -- James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon[?])
>killed her husband and herself...
>Just kinda blew me away -- from her work, I wouldn't expect anything like
>that at all, under any circumstances.
 
    Tiptree/Sheldon is one of my favorite writers, and I was very
unhappy to learn that she killed herself, but I can't say I'm
surprised.  She was very candid about her pessimistic world view in
interviews; she felt that Earth is overpopulated, and people are
generally too screwed up to handle their problems, and the future
looks bleak; and this was from a mature, experienced, intelligent
woman who was living a quiet life with her husband. 
 
    If you are familiar with Tiptree's (earlier) works, I doubt if
you'd be surprised either.  As a whole, it's one of the darkest
oeuvres in what is normally classified as science fiction.  In story
after story, Tiptree tells of human failings and bigotry, the futility
of any kind of solution to global problems, and the pain of human (or
quasi-human) relationships. 
 
    For example, "The Women That Men Don't See" is the ultimate
Feminist separatist fantasy:  Women are so sick of their mistreatment
by men that they would risk running off with mysterious aliens. 
Similar themes are developed within the framework of space opera in
the classic "Houston Houston Do You Read?" and "The Girl Who Was
Plugged In", is a cold and negative examination of the modern
obsession with physical appearance.  The black humor of "The
Night-Blooming Sauran" hides similar themes and feminist concerns. 
"The Screwfly Solution" postulates an almost mundane, and hence all
the more terrifying, way to end the world.  "A Momentary Taste of
Being" laughs at the insignificance of human achievement and human
problems; it plays with the same imagery as Vonnegut's "The Big Space
F*ck" but with much more finesse. 
 
    I, too, am very sad to see Tiptree leave us; but I didn't find it
unexpected. 
 
Bill Hsu

      Fiwolf?   Could that be "FIAWOL" -- Fandom is a way of life?
      
      Dave C.

    RE: .10
    
    I have it on excellent authority that it was an April Fool's joke
    and that the poster was *not* Weemba. I also agree it was pretty
    tasteless, given the circumstances of Sheldon's death.
    
    Fred

    I didn't know whether I wanted to reply to this conference, and
    I'm still not sure I do, because James Tiptree Jnr. meant a lot
    to me. I mean this only in the sense of a reader, I never met her
    and indeed the first time I realised that Alice Sheldon was Tiptree
    was when I read an obituary to her in a SF magazine.
    
    I think Sheldon's short story "The Man Who Walked Home" was the
    most profoundly frightening thing I have ever read, it really did
    shake me to the very core. The odd thing is, I am not sure I know
    why I was so affected. It was perfectly crafted as a piece of fiction,
    as was almost all of Sheldon's work (that I have read, at least),
    it just never left me. I can truly say that this is writting that
    has changed the way I feel about the world.
    
    I don't wish to comment on her death further than I am sure it was
    the thing she and her husband wanted so I don't think anyone of
    us has the right to question her decision. I can only say that I
    was sad when I heard she had died, I truly believe she was a great
    writer.