"Elle nous a épargné une Troisième Guerre mondiale"

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I'm in print again! Well, sort of. The French SF magazine Bifrost  has a special section in issue 115 dedicated to James Tiptree, Jr./Alice Sheldon with many articles about her work and life. One of which,  titled "Elle nous a  épargné une Troisième Guerre mondiale: Gardner Dozois se souvient," is an excerpt from an interview I did with Gardner about his friendship with Alice Sheldon, by correspondence until her pen name was stripped away from her and she was revealed to be a woman, and also by phone afterward. (She would call him up occasionally late at night when holding a gun and contemplating suicide.) The full interview appeared as a chapbook by Henry Wessells' imprint, Temporary Culture, under the title She Saved Us from World War Three.

The title is not an exaggeration.  Sheldon was working as a photo analyst for the CIA when suddenly missile launchers started appearing across the Siberian tundra. The experts were panicking and prepared to recommend a defensive first strike against the USSR. But Sheldon was able to prove that the "missile launchers" were actually hay ricks.

Which may make her the most important science fiction writer ever--though not for her science fiction, impressive as it was.

 

And if you're curious . . .

 There are still, as of this posting, 26 copies available of the Temporary Culture chapbook. It's an interesting item, containing not only my interview with Gardner but also two letters that Sheldon wrote, one revealing her gender and another expressing her relief that he was still her friend.  The letters are also reproduced (with Tiptree's signature purple typewriter sink) in fold-out form.

If this is the sort of thing that interests you, can find more information here.  

 

And, incidentally . . .

I interviewed Gardner about his relationship with Tiptree and Sheldon in 2015. Three years later, Gardner Dozois was dead. If you know someone whose memories should be preserved, I urge you to hop to it. The years slide by more quickly than you'd think.

 

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