James Tiptree, Jr., was actually Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (1915-1987), a fact she kept secret for the first ten years of her meteoric career under the Tiptree pseudonym, as she won awards and acclaim. The truth came out in 1977. She also wrote as Raccoona Sheldon. She was born in Chicago, but spent much of her childhood in Africa and India. Her father was a lawyer and traveler. Her mother, Mary Hastings Bradley, was a well known geographer, traveler, and author of 35 books, who also wrote a successful children's book of which Alice was the heroine. After leaving her first career in the C...