""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 sixty-year-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 blue-ink octopi drawn on them) and was much sadder to lose her because her loss (her death) was permanent. Straight people, however sympathetic they may be, don't know the texture or the difficulties of gay lives. When I heard of her death I determined that she wouldn't go down in history as another happy, heterosexual woman (like Virginia Woolf) whose life was edited because her real desires were held to be somehow an "attack" on her character. Sheldon, like Woolf, was married and happily so but she was a lesbian. Therefore I wrote the above note to Extrapolation and donated her letters to what I considered the appropriate place."