Some juries decide to provide a “Long List” of works they read during the year that they thought were worth mention. Long List works might be really good works with less direct examination of gender than a Winner or Honor List work would need, or they might be works that explore and expand gender but which the jurors found wanting in other ways. Lots of great reading can be found on the Otherwise Award Long Lists.

Long List

The 2004 jury chose 17 works for the Long List

The Other Angelas by Christopher Barzak (Pindeldyboz, 2004)

Only semi-tiptroid, but it’s a brilliant and charming story. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Work Information

Title: The Other AngelasAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: PindeldybozCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

This Tragic Glass by Elizabeth Bear (SciFi.com, 2004)

What if we could determine the biological gender of poets based on something measurable in their words? Even if that poet’s outwardly expressed gender differed? This story was part Shakespeare In Love part Connie Willis’ Fire Watch, and anyone who is a sucker for “writer stories” will like it, too. — Cecilia Tan

A relatively straightforward but intricate story with sound scholarship and moving characterizations. Keats is kind of a bore, but on the whole, this story strikes at the heart of how gender informs authorship, and vice versa. — Alan DeNiro

Work Information

Title: This Tragic GlassAuthor:
Collection:
Title: Sci Fiction April 7, 2004Editor: Ellen Datlow
Publisher:
Publisher Name: SciFi.comCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Burning Day by Glenn Grant (Vehicule Press, 2003)

I love a story that goes right through exploring what it means to be male or female and ends up getting at what it means to be human. This is a stylish, action-laden science fiction story, not a navel-gazer. — Cecilia Tan

A well-plotted story in Hardboiled Mode — people smoking cigarettes even though they’re androids, and cracking wise, and driving cars in cities, all very TV-cop show. More about species than gender, but has an original twist in the emphasis on the desire/compulsion to reproduce one’s kind. — Ursula K. LeGuin

An interesting examination of sexuality and gender-how do expectations still influence “post-humans”-with film noir detective-story tropes. — Margaret McBride

Work Information

Title: Burning DayAuthor:
Collection:
Title: Island Dreams: Montreal Writers of the Fantastic Editor: Claude Lalumière
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Vehicule PressCountry: CanadaYear: 2003
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Unspeakable Vitrine by Victoria Garcia (Claw Foot Bath Dog Press, 2004)

To me, the story that qualifies this uneven, entertaining collection as of interest to Tiptreers is “Wally’s Porn,” which is funny and touching. — Ursula K. LeGuin

“Anthropology” is a fun look at relationships too. — Margaret McBride

Work Information

Title: Unspeakable VitrineAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Claw Foot Bath Dog PressCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: CollectionOriginal Language: English

Hopeful Monsters by Hiromi Goto (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004)

Goto writes with vigor and energy, in a voice very much her own. “Night” and “Tales from the Breast,” are both real Tiptroid fantasies, though you mightn’t think so till right towards the end of both. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Work Information

Title: Hopeful MonstersAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Arsenal Pulp PressCountry: CanadaYear: 2004
Work Type: CollectionOriginal Language: English

Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand (William Morrow / HarperCollins, 2004)

A gorgeous and rococo (at times) set piece of a novel — could have used more exploration of the vampiric femme fatale for Tiptree purposes. — Alan DeNiro

Work Information

Title: Mortal LoveAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: William Morrow / HarperCollinsCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Inventing Memory by Anne Harris (Tor Books, 2004)

A message of hope about the possibility of inventing a new world by understanding one’s own history and the history of the larger world. . . Goddesses in a science fiction context. — Margaret McBride

Work Information

Title: Inventing MemoryAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Tor BooksCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Even the Stones by Marie Jakober (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2004)

No gender bending, but a serious, realistic, and grown-up novel of male-female power relationships, which is so unusual in “high fantasy” as to be practically invisible to many readers. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Work Information

Title: Even the StonesAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy PublishingCountry: CanadaYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

River of Gods, India 2047 Book 1, by Ian McDonald (Simon & Schuster, 2004)

“Nutes”, a third sex, have had their sex organs removed and a sex-command centre placed in subtle ridges down “yt’s arms. The same Dream Surgeon who performed these operations also does operations for AIs, called Aeais. The plot works interestingly around the world of Nutes and Aeais and humans plugging into the Aeai’s communication lines by “lighthoeks.” — Judith Clute

In addition to looking at how women might fare in India when the male/female ratio has become skewed with so many more males than females, a whole new gender is possible, surgically brought about. — Margaret McBride

Work Information

Title: River of GodsAuthor:
Series:
Series Title: India 2047Series Number: 1
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Simon & SchusterCountry: UKYear: 2004
Original Language: English

Sleep by Kat Meads (Livingston Press, 2004)

This is a fierce, unrepentantly experimental, somewhat raw novel about motherhood in a highly gray utopia. The societies depicted are pitch perfect and the entire narrative is filled with edginess and a great sadness as we see how families become molten in a postmodern economy. — Alan DeNiro

Work Information

Title: SleepAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Livingston PressCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Monstrous Regiment, Discworld Novel 31, by Terry Pratchett (Doubleday, 2003)

Terry Pratchett is very good at making fun of things, and in this book he makes fun of archaic gender roles through a tried and true method: by dressing up his heroine as a male and marching her off to war. Only it being Pratchett, the farce escalates as quickly as the war, and we soon discover that not only are the other soldiers in the “monstrous regiment” vampires and trolls and the like, most of them are cross-dressing too. It’s vintage Pratchett, which you will either love or hate depending on whether he is funny or tiresome to you. Now if only we could be so sure that those archaic gender roles are actually a thing of the past. — Cecilia Tan

Some nice perceptions of maleness and femaleness; genuinely funny when not merely facetious; charming and plausible when not glib and overconfident. Heterosexuality is assumed as the norm, to the point of sniggers and cute innuendoes about homosexuals. Is this 1944? That, and a certain artificiality or calculation in the central gender concern, are bad flaws in a good read. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Work Information

Title: Monstrous RegimentAuthor:
Series:
Series Title: DiscworldSeries Number: 31
Publisher:
Publisher Name: DoubledayCountry: UKYear: 2003
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Romance for Augmented Trio by Tom Purdom (Dell Magazines, 2004)

Feels almost like a challenge story to lead to this concluding statement: “…the obsolete human and the future human had to start reconstructing the relationship they had been fashioning before the aberrant human interrupted them. — Judith Clute

Work Information

Title: Romance for Augmented TrioAuthor:
Collection:
Title: Asimov's Science Fiction February 2004Editor: Gardner Dozois
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Dell MagazinesCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Time's Swell by Victoria Somegyi, Kathleen Chamberlain (strangehorizons.com, 2004)

An eerie, very disturbing piece about prostitution and mysterious time travelers. Maybe a little bit too elliptical but the characters’ dulled reactions spoke a lot to the objectification of bodies. — Alan DeNiro

Work Information

Title: Time's SwellAuthors: ,
Collection:
Title: Strange Horizons 15 November 2004Editor: Susan Marie Groppi
Publisher:
Publisher Name: strangehorizons.comCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Tongkat: Een Verhalenbordeel by Peter Verhelst (Prometheus, 1999)

This novel is structured with colliding, disorienting stories which act like a string of chants to keep us from the base-line of the book: the awfulness of war. And there’s an exploration of gender in the stress of this urban violence: Ulrike, Prometheus’s lover and guide through the underworld, is also Tonguecat the prostitute who can tell and retell stories. — Judith Clute

Work Information

Title: Tongkat: Een VerhalenbordeelAuthor:
Alternate Title:
Title: Tonguecat
Publisher:
Publisher Name: PrometheusCountry: USYear: 1999
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: DutchTranslator: Sherry Marx

Master of None by N. Lee Wood (Aspect / Warner Books, 2004)

A gender-exploration tale in the classic mold: lone man on the planet of women. Wood manages to find a few patches of fresh ground here, in a branch of the sf genre that was once a staple but now is rarely explored without irony — that of the self-consciously Utopian world. If you like a dash of up-front politics in your science fiction, this book is for you. — Cecilia Tan

This novel reminds me how much our beliefs about gender are cultural-a role reversal of power from male to female with some subtle side plots and interesting minor characters.— Margaret McBride

Epic planetary gender-reversal with good world-building and empathic characters of all stripes. But the main character is straight out of central casting for Male Scientist Who Saves Planet.— Alan DeNiro

Work Information

Title: Master of NoneAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Aspect / Warner BooksCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America by Will Roscoe (St. Martin's Griffin / Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)

Nonfiction that would be of interest to anybody interested in the Tiptree. It is about “berdache”  —  men who took/take women’s roles and women who took/take men’s roles, or as Roscoe calls it, third and fourth genders, in Native American societies and cultures, from first contact through the present. I have never read anything that gave me so many and such useful different ways to think about sex/gender. (It involves in fact a total, non-European, non-binary redefinition of gender.) It is extremely well written; the scholarship and research is as careful as it is readable. It is generous-hearted (he never sneers at anybody because they didn’t know what we know, or were benighted for one reason or another). It is tough-minded. It is a splendid book. — Ursula K. LeGuin

Work Information

Title: Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North AmericaAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: St. Martin's Griffin / Palgrave MacmillanCountry: USYear: 2000
Work Type: OtherOriginal Language: English

Stars in my Pockets like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany (Wesleyan University Press, 2004)

20th anniversary republication

The prologue has images that have stayed in my head since I first read it (my memory was accurate when I reread it too). The rest of the book will “play with your head” — a culture with the ability to decode your perfect sex partner down to precise details and what an amazing variety of sex and gender partners they have! “When there are so may paths and parameters along which and around which women — young, old, human, evelm, male, female, and neuter — can develop both community and communion to be passed on to others, why should you restrict yourselves to direct egg-and-sperm relations?” — Margaret McBride

Work Information

Title: Stars in my Pockets like Grains of SandAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Wesleyan University PressCountry: USYear: 2004
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English