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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."^[1]

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.^[2]

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.

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".^[3]

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".^[2] 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."^[2]

The Tiptree award is administered by the Tiptree "Motherboard".^[4]

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").^[5]

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".^[6]

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)

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

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

• Official website