The James Tiptree Award Anthology Books

Short fiction, novel excerpts, and essays that have won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award are featured in a anthology of thought-provoking fiction that explores and expands gender roles and includes works by Suzy McKee Charnas, Ursula K. Le Guin, Pat Murphy, and Joanna Russ, among others. Original.

Stories for women, for men, and for the rest of us. Female, male, gay, bisexual, straight, transgender, human, alien, or simply other, the Tiptree Award honors fiction that explores and expands our notions of gender. This anthology includes the most recent Tiptree winners and short-listed stories plus thought-provoking tales from previous years and essays that continue the conversation. As one of the Tiptree judges said, “I’m damned if I know what gender is, but I do know when a story is about it.” This year’s winners, according to juror Cecilia Tan, “stand completely opposed in so many ways—you could almost say they define the opposite edges of what is conceivable for the Tiptree. Haldeman, the well-known, Hemingway-esque, male, very American, hard SF writer at one end, and Sinisalo, the European, not well known (in the U.S. and within our genre, I mean), female contemporary-fantasy writer at the other.” Camouflage by Joe Haldeman considers what would happen if a shape-shifting alien predator became, essentially, human. This ageless, sexless entity can take any form. Initially indifferent to gender, the creature faces a gender choice as it grows more human. Haldeman has previously won five Hugo Awards, four Nebula Awards, and the World Fantasy Award. Johanna Sinisalo’s winning novel was published in the United States as Troll: A Love Story (Grove Press, 2004), in the United Kingdom as Not Before Sundown (Peter Owen, 2003), and in Finland as Ennen päiävanlaskua ei voi (Tammi, 2000). “A deft novel of how human society is ruled by complex territorial relationships,” Cecilia Tan writes of this novel. Sinisalo has previously won the prestigious Finlandia Prize and is known in her home country for her writing for television and comic strips as well as for her science fiction and fantasy.

You will be subverted?and you will like it. In these provocative tales intersecting sexuality and identity, a third-world fashionista masters the Internet, an itinerant poet collaborates with its eight selves, a four-way marriage flouts social conventions, and an ugly duckling is reinvented as a compromised swan. The James Tiptree, Jr., Award is an annual literary prize for speculative fiction that explores and expands gender. The Tiptree Award is named for one of science fiction’s most brilliant writers, Alice B. Sheldon. Sheldon, an ex-debutante turned CIA operative, wrote for ten years as the enigmatic James Tiptree, Jr., until her true identity was uncovered.

This fourth entry in a notable and controversial series continues to celebrate provocative fiction that explores and expands gender. Through their subversive, engaging fiction, Tiptree award–winning authors offer fascinating speculations on the ever-increasing mutability of our identities and desires. The James Tiptree, Jr. Award is an annual literary prize for speculative fiction, named for the pen name of one of science fiction’s most brilliant writers, Alice B. Sheldon. Authors selected for this series include Dorothy Allison, Ted Chiang, Joe Haldeman, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kelly Link, and Joanna Russ.