Yeah, Tiptree's life makes for fascinating reading. Her parents took her on African safaris when she was a little girl; back at home, her mother was a prominent author and lecturer. When she grew up, she became one of the first US interpreters of aerial reconnaissance photos during the war (and the first and only woman doing such work); right after the war, she tramped about Germany scavenging technology and engineers to send back to the US. Later she helped the CIA set up its photointerpretation branch in the U2 era. Then she got herself a doctorate in psychology, and started writing SF to blow off steam while working on the dissertation.
If you haven't read Tiptree's short stories, you're missing the best part of her work. In addition to collections issued during her life (the introduction to "Warm Worlds and Otherwise," which came out before she was outed as a woman, is a hoot because Robert Silverberg goes on and on about how "masculine" and "manly" Tiptree's writing is), there's a "Best of" posthumous collection, "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever," that I highly recommend.
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Date: 2007-03-25 05:44 pm (UTC)Yeah, Tiptree's life makes for fascinating reading. Her parents took her on African safaris when she was a little girl; back at home, her mother was a prominent author and lecturer. When she grew up, she became one of the first US interpreters of aerial reconnaissance photos during the war (and the first and only woman doing such work); right after the war, she tramped about Germany scavenging technology and engineers to send back to the US. Later she helped the CIA set up its photointerpretation branch in the U2 era. Then she got herself a doctorate in psychology, and started writing SF to blow off steam while working on the dissertation.
If you haven't read Tiptree's short stories, you're missing the best part of her work. In addition to collections issued during her life (the introduction to "Warm Worlds and Otherwise," which came out before she was outed as a woman, is a hoot because Robert Silverberg goes on and on about how "masculine" and "manly" Tiptree's writing is), there's a "Best of" posthumous collection, "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever," that I highly recommend.