Otherwise Award

The Otherwise Award, originally known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award, is an American annual literary prize for works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. It was initiated in February 1991 by science fiction authors Pat Murphy and Karen Joy Fowler, subsequent to a discussion at WisCon.

In addition to the award itself, the judges publish an Honor List, which they describe as "a strong part of the award's identity and ... used by many readers as a recommended reading list."

The award was originally named for Alice B. Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. Due to controversy over the appropriateness of naming an award after Tiptree, the committee administering the award announced on October 13, 2019, that the award would be renamed the Otherwise Award.

Background

Choice of the Tiptree name

By choosing a masculine nom de plume, having her stories accepted under that name and winning awards with them, Alice Sheldon helped demonstrate that the division between male and female science fiction writing was illusory. Years after "Tiptree" first published science fiction, Sheldon wrote some work under the female pen name "Raccoona Sheldon"; later, the science fiction world discovered that "Tiptree" had been female all along. This discovery led to widespread discussion over which aspects of writing, if any, have an intrinsic gender. To remind audiences of the role gender plays in both reading and writing, the award was named in Sheldon's honor at the suggestion of Karen Joy Fowler.

Controversy and name change

In 2019, controversy arose over the appropriateness of naming an award after Tiptree. In 1987, Alice Sheldon shot and killed her ailing husband Huntington Sheldon before killing herself in the same manner. Although some have called the killing a "suicide pact" based on Sheldon's personal writings, others characterize the act as "caregiver murder"—i.e., the murder of a disabled person by the person responsible for caring for them. In light of these allegations, the Tiptree Motherboard received requests to change the name of the award. On September 2, 2019, in response to these requests, the Motherboard made a statement that "a change to the name of the Tiptree Award is [not] warranted now"; but nine days later, on September 11, they announced that the award "can't go on under its existing name".

On October 13, 2019, the Tiptree Motherboard released an announcement stating that the Tiptree Award would become the Otherwise Award. The name refers to "the act of imagining gender otherwise" at the core of what the award has always honored, as well as being "wise to the experience of being the other". The title also draws from the Black queer scholarship of Ashon Crawley around what is termed "otherwise politics". According to the statement, "Otherwise means finding different directions to move in—toward newly possible places, by means of emergent and multiple pathways and methods."

Administration

The Tiptree award is administered by the Tiptree "Motherboard".

Fundraising efforts for the Tiptree include publications (two cookbooks), "feminist bake sales", and auctions. The Tiptree cookbook The Bakery Men Don't See, edited by WisCon co-founder Jeanne Gomoll, was nominated for a 1992 Hugo Award. Tiptree Award juries traditionally consist of four female and one male juror (the "token man").

In 2011, the Tiptree Motherboard received the Science Fiction Research Association's Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service for its "outstanding service activities – promotion of SF teaching and study, editing, reviewing, editorial writing, publishing, organizing meetings, mentoring, and leadership in SF/fantasy organizations".

Anthologies

Selections of the winners, various short-listed fiction, and essays have appeared in four Tiptree-related collections, Flying Cups and Saucers (1999) and a series of annual anthologies published by Tachyon Publications of San Francisco. These include:

• Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by The Secret Feminist Cabal and Debbie Notkin (1999)
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith (2005)
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith (2006)
• The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3 edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith (2007)

Winners

Main article: List of Otherwise Award winners

Otherwise Award winners

Year	Author(s)	Work	Publisher	Ref.
1991	Eleanor Arnason	A Woman of the Iron People	William Morrow
	Gwyneth Jones	White Queen	Victor Gollancz Ltd
1992	Maureen F. McHugh	China Mountain Zhang	Tor
1993	Nicola Griffith	Ammonite	Del Rey Books
1994	Ursula K. Le Guin	"The Matter of Seggri" in Crank! #3, spring 1994	Broken Mirrors Press
	Nancy Springer	Larque on the Wing	AvoNova
1995	Elizabeth Hand	Waking the Moon	HarperPrism
	Theodore Roszak	The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein	Random House
	Suzy McKee Charnas	Motherlines	Berkeley-Putnam
	Suzy McKee Charnas	Walk to the End of the World	Ballantine
	Ursula K. Le Guin	The Left Hand of Darkness	Walker & Co.
	Joanna Russ	The Female Man	Bantam Books
	Joanna Russ	"When It Changed" in Again, Dangerous Visions	Doubleday
1996	Ursula K. Le Guin	"Mountain Ways" in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1996
	Mary Doria Russell	The Sparrow	Random House
1997	Candas Jane Dorsey	Black Wine	Tor
	Kelly Link	"Travels with the Snow Queen" in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet Volume 1, Number 1, winter 1996–1997	Small Beer Press
1998	Raphael Carter	"Congenital Agenesis of Gender Ideation" in Starlight 2	Tor
1999	Suzy McKee Charnas	The Conqueror's Child	Tor
2000	Molly Gloss	Wild Life	Simon & Schuster
2001	Hiromi Goto	The Kappa Child	Red Deer Press
2002	M. John Harrison	Light	Victor Gollancz Ltd
	John Kessel	"Stories for Men" in Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 2002
2003	Matt Ruff	Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls	HarperCollins
2004	Joe Haldeman	Camouflage	Ace
	Johanna Sinisalo	Not Before Sundown (Ennen päivänlaskua ei voi) Published in the United States as Troll – a love story	Peter Owen Publishers
2005	Geoff Ryman	Air	St. Martin's Griffin
2006	Shelley Jackson	Half Life	HarperCollins
	Catherynne M. Valente	The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden	Spectra Books
	Julie Phillips	James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon	St. Martin's Press
2007	Sarah Hall	The Carhullan Army	Faber and Faber (UK 2007); HarperCollins (US 2008)
2008	Patrick Ness	The Knife of Never Letting Go	Walker & Co. (UK); Candlewick Press (US)
	Nisi Shawl	Filter House	Aqueduct Press
2009	Greer Gilman	Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales	Small Beer Press
	Fumi Yoshinaga	Ōoku: The Inner Chambers	Hakusensha (Japan); VIZ Media (English-speaking world)
2010	Dubravka Ugresic	Baba Yaga Laid an Egg	Canongate Books
2011	Andrea Hairston	Redwood and Wildfire	Aqueduct Press
2012	Caitlín R. Kiernan	The Drowning Girl	Roc Books
	Kiini Ibura Salaam	Ancient, Ancient	Aqueduct Press
2013	N. A. Sulway	Rupetta	Tartarus Press
2014	Monica Byrne	The Girl in the Road	Penguin Random House
	Jo Walton	My Real Children	Tor
2015	Eugene Fischer	"The New Mother" in Asimov's Science Fiction, April/May 2015	Dell Magazines
	Pat Schmatz	Lizard Radio	Candlewick Press
2016	Anna-Marie McLemore	When the Moon Was Ours	Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin's Griffin
2017	Virginia Bergin	Who Runs the World?	Macmillan
2018	Gabriela Damián Miravete	"They Will Dream in the Garden"	Latin American Literature Today
2019	Akwaeke Emezi	Freshwater	Grove Press
2020	Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki	Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon	Aurelia Leo
2021	Ryka Aoki	Light From Uncommon Stars	Tor Books
	Rivers Solomon	Sorrowland	MCD Books

See also

• Gender in speculative fiction
• Sense of Gender Awards
• Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction
• Women in speculative fiction
• Women science fiction authors

Further reading

On James Tiptree, Alice Sheldon and bake sales, archived from the original on November 26, 1996, retrieved February 16, 2013

External links

• Official website