Editorial
A Little Knowledge

It's one of sci-fi's finest clichés that there are some things humans were just not meant to know. This phrase usually refers to mad scientists accidentally blowing up the world or creating new life that wreaks havoc, but the reason my thoughts stray to that often-repeated dire warning has little to do with fictional scientists and everything to do with real-world science-fiction writers.

I've been mulling this over thanks to Julie Phillips' magnificent biography James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. I gave a short opinion of this book several months ago back when I was blogging the Nebulas, but I think it's a topic that deserves to be explored at greater length, particularly now that the book has finally been released and is being reviewed seemingly everywhere, not just in the usual SF outlets, but by mainstream markets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and Salon.

For those unfamiliar with James Tiptree Jr., and his/her career, here are a few brief basics about why you should care about this bio: Tiptree debuted on the scene in the late '60s and soon grew into a writer of award-winning stories such as "The Girl Who Was Plugged In" and "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" "He" was acclaimed for his strong storytelling and realistic portrayals of women. When rumors circulated that Tiptree might be a pseudonym for a woman, Robert Silverberg wrote in an introduction to one of Tiptree's short-story collections that "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing." Tiptree was eventually outed as Alice B. Sheldon. Some believe that once unmasked, she never again wrote as well. When she and her husband grew infirm, they died in the twin suicides they had always promised each other (or so I believed).

While reading James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, I was constantly aware of being in the presence of greatness, on the part of both the subject and the biographer. I had been waiting for this book since the moment I learned from St. Martin's editor Gordon van Gelder that Phillips had been working on it, what had to have been a decade ago. And the book has more than fulfilled its promise.

But after reading the book, I had mixed feelings. Not about the book itself, but about me. My entire picture of how Alice Sheldon had chosen to leave this life had been destroyed, and I wasn't sure that I really wanted it destroyed. Yes, truth is beauty, and beauty truth ... but just how much of that sort of beauty can any of us stand?

I've learned things that I'm not entirely sure I wanted to know. And now that I know them, I can't erase them. Since the world hasn't yet caught up with science fiction, allowing such erasure, I'm going to toss out a ***spoiler warning*** here and tell you that you might not want to proceed, depending on the amount of clay you're willing to accept in the feet of your idol.

Death be not proud

The received wisdom of Alice Hastings Bradley, aka Alice Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., aka Raccoona Sheldon is that she and her husband had made a suicide pact when they were still healthy, agreeing that when the time came, as they began to lose their faculties and live only in pain, they would end it all. [At right: Alice, fall 1945. Credit: Mary Hastings Bradley Papers, University of Illinois at Chicago.]

The subject of suicide in these cases is a touchy one, and I hope I'm not opening too big a can of worms by discussing it here. I've always felt that people have a right to end their own suffering, as long as it is truly chosen and not a decision made in the grip of a deep depression that might pass if given the correct medical treatment. If a person in full control of his or her mental abilities decides that it's time to go, that the agony is too great to continue, we may be sad, but we cannot stop them. We may not agree with it, we may not have made the same decision, but that is the final freedom.

And that is how I always thought it was for Alice Sheldon and her husband, Huntington D. "Ting" Sheldon. Not that suicide should ever be romanticized, but I was at least able to think that what was done was done out of love, two people helping each other out of this world with dignity. That illusion has now been stripped from me.

For it appears that Alice Sheldon was never in a position to make rational decisions about death. She was always fascinated by it, always suicidal, always saved from acting out by the relative strength of those around her. When her husband's health began to fail, he shared with others that he lived in fear of what his wife might do now that he no longer had the fortitude to stop her. And in her depression and despair, she eventually did what Ting feared, shot her husband in the head as he slept, and then took her own life. It was reported in the press that they were found lying side by side in bed, holding hands.

What Julie Phillips showed me is that Sheldon did not lead a happy life. And that this was not mercy. This was murder.

So after having longed for this book for a decade, I am conflicted. I loved the experience of reading it, but I am no longer sure that I want the facts of it in my head. You may feel differently. But I was left disturbed by this book for weeks. And since I am getting worked up discussing it now, I realize I should write, no, not weeks, but months.

This is what happens when we seek to peer beyond the words of our favorite writers to find the living, breathing flawed people lurking beneath. It's a risk we should weigh carefully. James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon is the most compelling book I've read all year, and I recommend it highly.

Now tell me this, though—how do I get it out of my head?