These days I have the shouty parts of the Internet mostly blocked on social media. It can take me a while to catch up with Drama. I was rather surprised, therefore, to discover from some of my fellow jurors that an evil bunch of cis people had voted a deeply transphobic book as the winner of this year’s Tiptree Award.

Not that I was surprised at being characterized as an evil cis person, of course. But I figured that my fellow jurors had more credibility than that. Besides, how could anyone assume that a jury that had put the Dreadnought books, the Tensorate books and “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” on the Honor List was in any way transphobic?

I am not at liberty to discuss jury deliberations in public, but I did make sure before agreeing to be on the jury that I would be working in a group where I felt I could highlight problematic works and be listened to. During the process I felt that absolutely was the case, and I am very grateful to my fellow jurors for doing me that courtesy. Some of them know enough about trans issues to be able to occasionally question me, and that was useful.

Personally I think that if there had been problems with Who Runs the World? then my fellow jurors would have spotted them. However, as I recommended the book to the jury, it is down to me to explain why I liked the book. This necessitates a spoiler-filled review. If you don’t mind the spoilers and want to see what I think, you can read the review here.