In mainstream-land, today is the day of the Orange Prize Longlist, which I always think should be more amenable to the speculative than other awards, but never is. (I suppose you can count The Little Stranger, this year, but really, they couldn’t find room on a 20-book longlist for Lavinia? Or White is for Witching? Or…?) On the upside, in SF-land we have the Tiptree Award winners and honor list:

Winners

• Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales, Greer Gilman (Small Beer Press)
• Ooku: The Inner Chambers (volumes 1 & 2), Fumi Yoshinaga (Viz Media)

Honor List

• “Beautiful White Bodies”, Alice Sola Kim (Strange Horizons)
• Distances, Vandana Singh (Aqueduct Press 2008)
• “Galapagos”, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Eclipse 3, Night Shade Books)
• Lifelode, Jo Walton (NESFA Press 2009)
• “Useless Things”, Maureen F. McHugh (Eclipse 3, Night Shade Books)
• “Wives”, Paul Haines (X6, coeur de lion)

There’s also a special citation for L Timmel Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle. Judges this year were Karen Joy Fowler (chair), Jude Feldman, Paul Kincaid, Alexis Lothian, and Victor Raymond.

I’ve read the entire honor list, which seems pretty strong to me, but neither of the winners. I’m still not a fan of having tied award-winners, actually, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well make the two works as different as you can. And it’s interesting — though perhaps not surprising, given the indie-press lean of the list — that Ooku is the only work mentioned that’s available in the UK.

EDIT: And the website has been updated with details, including judges’ comments on the honor list, and the longlist. Pleased to see Helen Keeble and Xiaolu Guo there.