In addition to selecting the winner, each jury chooses a Otherwise Award Honor List. The Honor List is a strong part of the award’s identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list.

Honor List

The 2014 jury chose 10 works for the Honor List

Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett (Aqueduct Press, 2014)

A masterfully layered tale of star-crossed lovers, ambiguously situated before, during, and after a devastating alien invasion. Adrian/Adrianne and Antoine/Antoinette move through a liminal, re-creative space that tells spooling variations of an original story we might never see, but can reconstruct. Variously lovers, siblings, and parent and child, these relationships change in subtle and overt ways that are tied to the gender of the characters in each looping iteration.

Work Information

Title: ElysiumAuthor:
Alternate Title:
Title: Elysium Or, The World AfterPublisher: Aqueduct PressCountry: USAYear: 2014
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Aqueduct PressCountry: USAYear: 2014
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

In Her Eyes by Seth Chambers (Spilogale, Inc., 2014)

This excellently written and evocative story is about a woman who is a polymorph, capable of drastically altering her body.  It’s told from the point of view of the man who loves her.  Each week she becomes a different woman for him, until she changes her gender, then her very self.

Work Information

Title: In Her EyesAuthor:
Collection:
Title: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction January-February 2014Editor: Gordon Van Gelder
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Spilogale, Inc.Country: USAYear: 2014
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

A Woman Out of Time by Kim Curran (Jurassic London, 2014)

A fictionalized version of Joanna Russ’s classic How to Suppress Women’s Writing, based on a true history (with very mild adjustments). Time travel paradoxes, complexity theory, and alien intervention are beautifully interwoven in this lyrical exploration of the gendering of scientific discovery. The story’s epigraph will tempt readers to explore what is known of the life and work of Emile Du Chatelet, a contemporary of Voltaire and the translator and commentator of Newton’s work, and to undo the disservice she has been done by history.

Work Information

Title: A Woman Out of TimeAuthor:
Collection:
Title: Irregularity Editor: Jared Shurin
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Jurassic LondonCountry: UKYear: 2014
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta (Harper Voyager, 2014)

This beautifully crafted novel, written simultaneously in English and Finnish, uses a delicately-told coming-of-age tale to examine a future replete with water crises, a totalitarian police state, and suffocating gender roles.

Work Information

Title: Memory of WaterAuthor:
Alternate Title:
Title: Teemestarin kirjaPublisher: TeosCountry: FinlandYear: 2012
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Harper VoyagerCountry: UKYear: 2014
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: FinnishTranslator: Emmi Itäranta

Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi (Masque Books, 2013)

A fun, fast-paced space opera with surprising heft. Its beautifully diverse cast of characters explores intersections of gender and race, class, disability, and polyamory, all while racing to save the universe from certain destruction.

Work Information

Title: AscensionAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Masque BooksCountry: USYear: 2013
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories by Alisa Krasnostein, Julia Rios (eds.) (Twelfth Planet Press, 2014)

An anthology of young-adult stories about diversity, many featuring queer or trans characters or gender issues. This is a book that should be in every middle and high-school library!

Work Information

Title: Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy StoriesEditors: Alisa Krasnostein, Julia Rios (eds.)
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Twelfth Planet PressCountry: AustraliaYear: 2014
Work Type: CollectionOriginal Language: English

The Lightness of the Movement by Pat MacEwen (Spilogale, Inc., 2014)

A solid, well-told alien-contact story about a xeno-anthropologist studying an alien species.  The alien’s gender roles are well described and very alien.  Though the story never enters the aliens’ minds, MacEwen does a fabulous job of making it clear how the aliens think.

Work Information

Title: The Lightness of the MovementAuthor:
Collection:
Title: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction March-April 2014Editor: Gordon Van Gelder
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Spilogale, Inc.Country: USAYear: 2014
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (Hodder & Stoughton, 2014)

This gloriously chaotic look at the day after aliens land in the lagoon off of Lagos, Nigeria’s coast approaches gender with a diversity that intersects with many aspects of modern Nigerian life: age, religion, social class and politics, among others. The character Ayodele, an alien who takes the form of a human woman to make first contact, is particularly noteworthy in how her chosen gender exposes fault lines across the panoply of characters that drive the narrative.

Work Information

Title: LagoonAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Hodder & StoughtonCountry: UKYear: 2014
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English

Neither Witch nor Fairy by Nghi Vo (Crossed Genres Publications, 2014)

Two orphaned brothers try to get by in 1895 Belfast. The story focuses on the younger brother, who thinks he’s a changeling. He asks the fairies to tell him what he truly is. (Saying anything more would be telling.)

Work Information

Title: Neither Witch nor FairyAuthor:
Collection:
Title: Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History Editors: Rose Fox, Daniel José Older
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Crossed Genres PublicationsCountry: USYear: 2014
Work Type: Short FictionOriginal Language: English

The Beauty by Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories, 2014)

A piece of disturbing, thought-provoking horror that explores what happens to a small community of men when sentient mushrooms spring from the graves of women who died years before from a deadly fungus infection. These mushrooms, called “Beauties” by the storytelling narrator, gradually and inexorably shift their roles over the course of the narrative, starting as supposedly mindless providers of comfort and ending with roles more traditionally masculine: inseminating, caring for the male mothers, and engaging in violent battles to protect their progeny. Allegorically explores a variety of aspects of the human experience, including gender and sexuality.

Work Information

Title: The BeautyAuthor:
Publisher:
Publisher Name: Unsung StoriesCountry: UKYear: 2014
Work Type: NovelOriginal Language: English