Meet Me at Infinity (47 page)

NAME:

SHELDON, Alice Hastings Bradley 1915-

(“James Tiptree, Jr.” “Raccoona Sheldon”)

PERSONAL:

Born 24 August 1915, in Chicago, IL 60615: siblings, none

Parents:

Herbert Edwin Bradley, b. Canada; Attorney-at-Law (Ann Arbor); explorer, big-game collector and naturalist by avocation (see Early Travels, below); and

Mary Wilhelmina Hastings Bradley, b. Chicago; Smith Col., Oxford (Engl.); F.R.G.S., PEN; author of over thirty-five books (history, travel, fiction) and many short stories, articles, lectures, etc., some still noteworthy today as first to break the popular media’s taboo on serious feminist issues such as a woman’s right to an abortion. 1919 to 1931 she accompanied husband on all expeditions and hunts (see below); sharing hardship and danger; self-taught, excellent shot; also linguist, collecting hitherto-unknown tribal folk tales; also was first to publicize peaceful nature of gorilla and call for its removal from “game-animal” category. 1944/5, war correspondent, European fronts, sponsored by Collier’s mag., and War Dept., to report on WAC; first American woman to inspect and report on some of most hideous of German death camps. On return to U.S., campaigned vigourosly to convince still-numerous Midwestern disbelievers of the terrible reality of the extermination camps and the Holocaust itself.

Early Travels:

From age 4 to 15, Alice Sheldon’s childhood was dominated by the experience of accompanying her parents on all their (widely reported) explorations and trips. She was plunged into half a world of alien environments all before she was old enough to be allowed to enter an American movie house. This meant exposure to chaotically diverse environments—from the then-unspoiled tropical Ituri rain forest to the corpse-obstructed streets of Calcutta; from the broiling, animal-filled vastness of the Semliki savannahs to the orchid-scented, forested hills that were to become Vietnam; the Towers of Silence of the Parsees, vulture-guarded; the manicured, flowery cemeteries of English towns, the smoky Burning Ghats of Benares, and the then-unrestored desolation of the great Egyptian tombs; the cozy little tree nests of the Batwa pygmies—and the 1912 modernity of “home” in Chicago, Illinois, with its built-in vacuum cleaners. And as with places, so with people. She found herself interacting with adults of every color, size, shape, and condition—lepers, black royalty in lionskins, white royalty in tweeds, Arab slavers, functional saints and madmen in power, poets, killers, and collared eunuchs, world-famous actors with head-colds, blacks who ate their enemies and a white who had eaten his friends; and above all, women; chattel-women deliberately starved, deformed, blinded and enslaved; women in nuns’ habits saving the world; women in high heels committing suicide, and women in low heels shooting little birds; an Englishwoman in bloomers riding out from her castle at the head of her personal Moslem army; women, from the routinely tortured, obscenely mutilated slave-wives of the ‘advanced’ Kibuyu, to the free, propertied, Sumarran matriarchs who ran the economy and brought six hundred years of peaceful prosperity to the Menang-Kabau; all these were known before she had a friend or playmate of her own age. And finally, she was exposed to dozens of cultures and subcultures whose values, taboos, imperatives, religions, languages, and mores conflicted with each other as well as with her parents. And the writer, child as she was, had continuously to learn this passing kaleidoscope of Do and Don’t lest she give offense, or even bring herself or the party into danger. But most seriously, this heavy jumble descended on her head before her own personality or cultural identity was formed. The result was a profound alienation from any nominal peers, and an enduring cultural relativism. Her world, too, was suffused with sadness; everywhere it was said, or seen, that great change was coming fast and much would be forever gone.

Itinerary follows: 1919/1920, Bradleys with Carl Akeley on successful final quest for legendary Central African Mountain Gorilla (see group in Amer. Museum of Nat. Hist., NYC); this and following trips were under auspices of that museum, also Field Museum of Chicago, and National and Royal (Brit.) Geographic Societies. 1924/25, Herbert Bradley led own expedition across Mountains of the Moon and through 200 miles of then wholly unknown territory west of former Lake Edward, making first European Contact with (cannibal) people there. Duration of each expedition about one year, total miles walked, approx. 3,000. It may be helpful to recall that no radios or planes or means of rescue existed then; all roads, phones and electricity ended at the coast, and in the interior of Africa there were no maps, no towns or landmarks, only old foot trails, many made by slavers. Nor were there cars or trucks or Land Rovers nor any powered vehicle or bike or boat, nor lamps, nor saws; no gasoline, nails, woven cloth, matches, paper; no mail, no dictionaries of the languages, no coined money, no medicine or doctors; and no draft animals (because of equine encephalitis). Communication was by runner and unaided Human voice; trade by barter (espec. salt), light from personally imported candles, and transport was on Human heads and legs. Distances were calculated with compass and pedometer.

On leaving Africa in 1925, the Bradleys traveled through India, several SE Asia countries, and to interior of then Indo-China, for tiger and gaur (a whopping great buffalo thing with armor-plated brains [if any]) and to observe the Moi peoples. (Now called “Montagnards”; and virtually destroyed.)

The Bradleys’ last expedition, 1929/30, was the first crossing of the African continent by automobile (two ton-and-a-half Chevrolet trucks). Crossing was at equatorial latitudes. Despite assurances of Colonial authorities, few bridges were found to exist and most rivers were crossed by unloading and constructing wood tracks on canoes. On this trip the speed of Colonial despoilment of Africa’s peoples, land, and wildlife was sadly evident (save in some British territory). Such was the ambience of the last trip to Africa that no one desired to return. (An attempt by the Belgian colonials to silence us permanently before we could tell outsiders what we’d seen—a series of artfully arranged reports of nonexistent elephants damaging crops—led us to go on foot deeper and deeper into lethal drought country, from which all game had fled and where all rivers were dry. Just at the point of no return, Father’s “radar” turned us back. The last days of the march out were made on Vi cup of water each in 110-degree heat. The last night we came to a dry buffalo wallow which yielded filthy water three-feet down; giving us an excellent chance to test the Army’s Halozone… This contributed to the unhappy ambience of colonial Africa.)

There were other minor travels in the same childhood period; a trip across Exmoor, Engl., on horseback with Mary Bradley, and attendance with her at the historic PEN Congress in Scotland when the Nazi delegation walked out; Swiss schooling (Les Fougères, Lausanne) to acquire some vocalizations which were occasionally taken for French.

Marriages:

(1) 1934-38, to Wm Davey, poet, polo player, alcoholic (Princeton), and (2) 1945-on, to Huntington Denton Sheldon (Eton, Yale), Pre-World War II, H. D. S. was president, American Petroleum Corporation of America (not an oil company); commissioned Army 1942, joined Air Force (then a part of Army), working in A2 (Air Intelligence); ultimately Colonel, Deputy Chief of Air Staff A2, for European Theatre. Numerous awards, oak leaves. Two previous marriages had ended by divorce; met present wife (the author) among specialists he had summoned from the States in 1945 to evaluate the defeated Luftwaffe.

Children: None
.

Education:

Sarah Lawrence: U. of Calif, at Berkeley: N.Y.U.: USAAF Photo Intelligence School, Harrisburg, PA (first female attendee); Rutgers Agricultural Col.; School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins; American U. (D.C.) B.A., scl.; George Washington U. (D.C.), where PhD mcl Exper. Psychol., 1967.

Religion:

Atheist: ethical imperatives consonant with Christian New Testament, rationalized on basic principle of striving against entropy. (E.g., greed is more entropic than altruism; truth is less entropic than lies.)

Organizations. Memberships:

A.C.L.U., Friends’ Service Committee, N.O.W., A.P.A., Psi Chi,

Sigma Xi, AAAS; Audubon Society; Smithsonian Associates,

Amer. Museum of Nat’l Hist., S.F.W.A., Esperanto Society of

Washington.

Avocational Interests and Hobbies:

Nishikigoi (ornamental koi); Hydrogen as energy source; bright

young people; learning to speak, read, and write English.

CAREER or Pre-SF Work

1925-1941 Graphic artist: book cover illos., a few designs in New Yorker mag.; then painter, student John Sloan, exhib. Corcoran, D.C. and Chicago Art Inst. “All Americans”.

1941-1942 Art critic new Chicago Sun (weekly full page), while awaiting admission of women to Army under women officers.

1942-1946 U.S. Army,
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WAAC-WAC/AAF. 1943, assigned USAAF/A2 (Air Intelligence); became first female American Photo-Intelligence Officer. (British enlisted women already expert at similar work.)

Author joined a small group at HQ AAF (the Pentagon, in—literally—the cellar) who were developing industrial photoanalysis and targeting, with regard to the Far East, where other-source intelligence was lacking. (Reconnaissance film was flown to DC for interpretation.) Despite the interest of the work, the author, like many Pentagon prisoners, strove by every means to get overseas where the war was, and was just as persistently blocked by the inaccurate label of “indispensable.” Finally in 1945 she was liberated by the requirements of the Air Staff Post-Hostilities Exploitation Project—but only to Europe, where the war was ending. The Project was a large task force of AAF specialists, scientists, and experts in every AAF function, assigned to locate and interrogate their captured Luftwaffe counterparts, in order to extract and evaluate all technology and material of potential use to the USAAF. It was essential to move quickly, for much of the German caches of secret scientific material and personnel (e.g., atomic physicists) were in the forward zone scheduled to be turned over to Russian occupation. (The Project in fact proved highly successful; it started a stream of priceless scientific and military prototypes, concepts and research flowing to the United States—the first operational jet planes, the rockets that became NASA, among them.) It was solely devised by its commander, Col. Huntington D. Sheldon, who had been thinking ahead while his peers thought about going home. The author met with Col. Sheldon in July to explain her total unsuitability for work with the Luftwaffe, and to beg to be sent to the Far East. Instead, on 22 Sep 1945, in a French mayor’s charming office, she found herself becoming Mrs. H. D. Sheldon—after which the report on the Luftwaffe’s photo-intelligence was completed through a long German winter. Both returned to the States for demobilization in Jan 1946, the author with rank of major: WAAC Service Ribbon, and Legion of Merit Award.

1946-1952 Partner with husband in small rural business (custom hatching, N.J.); also worked intermittently as volunteer for civilian anti-Nazi intelligence-gathering orgs., primarily Ken Birkhead’s “Friends of Democracy,” now defunct. (After Birkhead’s tragic death, F.O.D.‘s files went to B’Nai B’Rith.)

1952-1955 Both Sheldons recalled independently to D.C. to participate in development of then-new CIA; H. D. S. at supergrade levels, the author at mere technical level to help start up CIA Photo-Intelligence capability (then faced with evaluation of large caches of German air photography of USSR). In 1954-55, a brief tour of duty on clandestine side working up basic files on Near East. In 1955 resigned CIA to pursue more personally congenial goals.

1955-1968 Hiatus for taking stock: The author’s early graphic arts work had left tantalizing unsolved questions of psychological aesthetics in her mind, and even amid other tasks she had found and followed some of the technical literature. Simply stated, why, for instance, does a certain spot of orange in this area of a painting “look right,” seem to “complete a structure”—while the same patch in, say, blue, or the orange in a different place “looks all wrong?” Why? What is this “structure!” And what about individual variation, the notorious
de gustibus
? Perhaps most tantalizing, why have so many new styles in art been violently rejected by their contemporaries, only to become the visual treasures of later generations? This phenomenon has been common at least since Rembrandt—the night watchmen who commissioned his famous painting refused to pay the few guilders they owed him and sent back the painting, now worth millions. And the story of the Gaugain and van Gogh paintings used to roof chicken coops is well known.
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Why? The whole topic of visual values is beset by windy theories devoid of factual base, and loud with substanceless argument. The author was fired with the urge to understand everything that could be known about visual perception and value, and to devise some experimental benchmarks in the murk.

To do this work required a doctorate. The author was then in her forties, with only forty-seven recorded undergraduate credit-hours to her name. Nevertheless she returned to college (at American Univ. in D.C.), and perhaps because it was unusual to come on a student driving for the PhD for the sake of knowledge rather than as a means to a job, a grant—a fine high-status NIH Pre-Doctoral grant—was secured by the Psychology Dept. Chairman, Dr. True-blood (dec). Thus helped, the B.A. (scl) came in 1959, and after a change to Geo. Wash. Univ, D.C., the coursework and exams for the PhD were completed in the early 1960s, and the author was into a full-scale experimental work for the dissertion—and attempting to defer the actual degree as long as possible, to maintain the grant.

The incoming “baby boom” was then overloading all college faculties; teachers were urgently needed. So while working up the final experimental paradigms (in an ex-coal cellar on H St.), the author taught experimental psychology and psychological statistics at American and G.W.U.