James Tiptree, Jr

James Tiptree Jr (24 August 1915 – 19 May 1987) was the pen name of American science fiction author Alice Bradley Sheldon, used from 1967 to her death. She also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Raccoona Sheldon (1974–77).

Quotes

 * You can understand why a system would seek information - but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?
 * "I'm Too Big But I Love To Play" in Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home (1973)


 * Anyone who shoots a real gun at you when drunk and angry is simply not husband material, regardless of his taste in literature.
 * Letter quoted in "James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon" (2006) by Julie Phillips


 * Our fellow passenger was Major Grogan, who thirty years before had been the first white man to go from the Cape to Cairo. It took him three years, one whole year in the marshes of the Sudd; his two companions died. It is said he ate them; I think so. He looked like a sensible man.
 * As quoted in "James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon" (2006) by Julie Phillips

The Women Men Don't See (1973)

 * What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.


 * Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like—like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see.