To the Editors:

Veronica Hollinger's essay in 30:2 [on “James Tiptree, Jr.”] (1989) sent me back to Alice Sheldon's letters. The relevant passage is from a letter dated the twenty-fifth of September, 1980, “0400 hours.”

Pre-Stonewall life was hard on homosexual people; our response to the hostility and bigotry around us has often been to associate love with death – or at least love with disaster, which is still a possibility today despite some of the advances of the last two decades. Unrequited love is a way of protecting oneself against the fear that the desire brings and yet expressing that desire. Hence the “stasis & misery.”

I'm sending the letters Tiptree wrote me to the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York. The address is: Lesbian Herstory Archives, P.O. Box 1258, New York, N.Y. 10116.

Author's Note

“James Tiptree, Jr.” was a science fiction writer whose very fine work began appearing in the 1960s. No one had ever met “Tiptree” and theories about “him” were rife. Finally “James Tiptree, Jr.” was revealed to be a sixtyyear- old biologist called Alice Sheldon. We corresponded extensively, both before this revelation and afterwards. I loved James and was sad to lose him but I loved Alice too (she sent postcards typed in blue ink with blueink octopi drawn on them) and was much sadder to lose her because her loss (her death) was permanent.