When the story "Then I Woke and Found Here on a Cold Hillside" was first published in 1971, it was widely believed that its author was a man. When James Tiptree Jr.'s first authored collection, Ten Thousand Light Years from Home, was published in 1973, everyone still believed the same. It was only in 1977 that Alice Sheldon finally admitted that Tiptree was her, a native of Chicago, the daughter of a well-known geographer and travel writer. Alice Sheldon was educated in experimental psychology and worked for the American government, part of that time in the Pentagon. Tiptree and her husband died tragically in 1987, but she left behind a legacy of fiction ranging from anthropological SF to space opera, and including some of the most insightful writing on male-female relationships, including the classic tale reproduced here.