In Sunday's Book Review: 'James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double
Life of Alice B .Sheldon,' by Julie Phillips

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Review by DAVE ITZKOFF

Even in a science fiction writer's most inaccurate
predictions, there are sometimes valuable truths to be
gleaned. In an introduction to "Warm Worlds and Otherwise," a
1975 collection of short stories by the elusive and enigmatic
James Tiptree Jr., his editor and fellow author Robert
Silverberg attempted to sketch a portrait of a cult figure
who had never been seen in public, and whose only tangible
connection to the known universe was a steady stream of
letters originating from a post office box in McLean, Va.

Though some fans believed that the mysterious Tiptree was
actually J.D. Salinger or Henry Kissinger, Silverberg
speculated that the writer was probably employed as a federal
bureaucrat, around 50 or 55 years old, and enjoyed the
outdoors. Furthermore, Silverberg wrote: "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. I don't think the novels of Jane
Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of
Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe
the author of the James Tiptree stories is male."

As science fiction readers would learn just a few months
later, Tiptree was closer in age to 61 but was an avid
traveler and gun enthusiast who had worked for the United
States government. Also, James Tiptree Jr. was a woman named
Alice Sheldon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/books/review/20Itzkoff.html?8bu&emc=bu