JAMES TIPTREE JR was one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1970s. His powerful stories about sex, death, aliens and the future of humanity won a devoted readership and led him into intense epistolary friendships with writers including Philip K. Dick, Ursula Le Guin, Harlan Ellison and Joanna Russ.

He had an “ineluctably masculine” style according to one editor but women admired his insight into female experience, and his most famous story, The Women Men Don't See, written in 1973, is a feminist classic. In 1977 the science fiction community was startled to learn that Tiptree was really “an old lady in Virginia”.

But Alice Sheldon was hardly the “suburban housewife” that she disparagingly implied she was. The adventurous, masculine career that Tip alluded to was hers in reality: war-time experience as an army officer, a job with the CIA, a doctorate in psychology. She was also an artist (one of her paintings hung next to an Edward Hopper in a 1939 group show) and had been an art critic and a chicken farmer. Men found her attractive, and she had a long and loving marriage but struggled all her life to repress the desire she felt for women, while battling depression and addiction.

Julie Phillips’s biography, James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (St Martin’s Press, £14.99/offer £13.99) is the best book I have read this year. Phillips’s sympathetic understanding of Tiptree and the worlds she inhabited — and imagined — seems almost miraculous, her narrative as compelling as a novel.

As for my favourite sci-fi novel of the year, I can’t decide between Darkland by Liz Williams (Tor, £10.99/

£9.99) and End of the World Blues by Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Gollancz, £12.99/£11.99). Both are sure to be contenders for the big awards, and are sophisticated fare with a sinister edge — thoughtful escapism for grown-ups.

For its sheer story-telling verve, Scott Lynch’s The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gollancz, £12.99/£11.99) is my best fantasy of the year. This accomplished first novel is a big, rollicking read, a swashbuckling adventure set in a city resembling 16th-century Venice.

It’s hard to imagine a book-lover who won’t adore Susanna Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (Bloomsbury, £16.99

/£15.29). This handsome book offers eight elegant and witty variations on the fairy-lore of her bestseller Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, perfectly illustrated by Charles Vess.

For Terry Pratchett fans (who are legion) the perfect present must be The Illustrated Hogfather Screenplay (Gollancz, £20/£18), by Mr Vadim Jean, mucked about with by Mr Terry Pratchett (well, that’s what it says on the cover). Lavishly illustrated with photographs from the film and sketches by Stephen Player, this is not just for Hogswatch, but for Christmas.

Bestsellers

THUD!
Terry Pratchett (Corgi, £6.99)
2006 sales 121,490

DOCTOR WHO: THE STONE ROSE
Jacqueline Rayner 63,782

DOCTOR WHO: THE RESURRECTION CASKET
Justin Richards 53,455

DOCTOR WHO: THE FEAST OF THE DROWNED
Stephen Cole 52,712 (all BBC, £6.99)

TROY
David A. Gemmell (Black Swan, £6.99) 43,289

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