Quoting the link: In 1975, in an introduction to a book of Tiptree's short stories, Robert Silverberg wrote of his friend, "It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing."<p>That is from "Warm World and Otherwise". I have the second printing, from 1979, which is after SF learned that Tiptree is a woman.<p>One of the ways I learned about how views on "masculinity" and "femininity" have changed was to read Silverberg's commentary about the apparently widespread question of "is Tiptree a man or women?", and concluding there is "something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree's writing".<p>Then because I have the <i>second</i> printing, I also saw Silverberg's followup:<p>> "She ... called into question the entire notion of what is "masculine" or "feminine" in fiction. I am still wrestling with that. What I have learned is that there are some women who can write about traditionally male topics more knowledgeably than most men...."<p>This was one of my first steps in learning that 'the entire notion of what is "masculine" or "feminine"' is not the clear binary distinction that I had been brought up with.
Another scifi author with a "secret life" used the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. He was actually Paul Linebarger, a military expert in psychological warfare, close confidant of Chiang Kai-shek, CIA agent, and advisor to JFK.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith</a>
Tiptree’s selected letters to various intellectuals of her time, including Le Guin, were published in 2015, it’s great. It’s a pity that she’s not known more widely, especially in these times.<p>Her story <a href="http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-the-plan-is-death/" rel="nofollow">http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/love-is-the-plan-t...</a> is one of the most moving stories I’ve read, SF or otherwise. “The Women Men Don’t See” could have been written last year.