The woman the men didn't see

Alice Sheldon, a writer publishing under the male pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr., is not only one of the most famous, but also one of the most controversial faces of fantasy literature. During World War II, she joined the Army Air Force and achieved the exceptionally high rank of major in the Air Intelligence Service for a woman at that time. She used the experience she gained during her post-war work for the CIA, and subsequently earned a doctorate in experimental psychology. She used all of her knowledge and expertise throughout her writing career, choosing a male pseudonym in order to hide from the government she worked for and to highlight the sexism prevalent not only among twentieth-century science fiction authors and editors. In 1987, she first killed her terminally ill husband and then committed suicide. In Czech translation, Alice Sheldon is still relatively unknown at present, with several of her most important, literary prize-winning works appearing in the collection The Woman Men Have Not Seen in Czech for the first time. These eighteen gloomy visions form the highlight of her not very extensive short story output. It touches on human perception and knowledge, metaphysics and sexuality, and foreshadows a world in which humanity is doomed to inevitable fall. It is a book that is a slight debt to one of the most interesting representatives of the fantastic genre and at the same time to the world's top science fiction.