The Only Harmless Great Thing
Jan 2018 · Macmillan
4.4star
9 reviews
eBook
96
Pages
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About this eBook
A heart-wrenching, Nebula Award–winning alternative history imagining an intersection between the Radium Girls scandal and Topsy the elephant.
Early in the twentieth century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey, slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately and publicly put to death by electricity.
These are matters of historical fact.
Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternative history of rage, radioactivity, and wrongs crying out to be righted. Brace yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling cruelties both grand and petty while searching for meaning and justice.
Praise for The Only Harmless Great Thing
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Sturgeon Awards
“The Only Harmless Great Thing . . . feels like an alternate Just So Story revealed to us by an ecstatic punk oracle. I can’t stop thinking about it. Nor will you.” —Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
“This handcrafted arrow of a novella becomes more absorbing with each read. . . . A rich, poetic novella.” —Kirkus Reviews
Early in the twentieth century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey, slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately and publicly put to death by electricity.
These are matters of historical fact.
Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternative history of rage, radioactivity, and wrongs crying out to be righted. Brace yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling cruelties both grand and petty while searching for meaning and justice.
Praise for The Only Harmless Great Thing
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Sturgeon Awards
“The Only Harmless Great Thing . . . feels like an alternate Just So Story revealed to us by an ecstatic punk oracle. I can’t stop thinking about it. Nor will you.” —Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk
“This handcrafted arrow of a novella becomes more absorbing with each read. . . . A rich, poetic novella.” —Kirkus Reviews
Ratings and reviews
4.4
9 reviews
Yevgeny Kopman
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26 July 2018
One of the most beautiful written things I've ever read
About the author
BROOKE BOLANDER writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy or general all-around weirdness. She attended the University of Leicester 2004-2007 studying History and Archaeology and is an alum of the 2011 Clarion Writers’ Workshop at UCSD. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons,Nightmare, Uncanny, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus, and the Theodore Sturgeon awards, much to her unending bafflement. The Only Harmless Great Thing is her first project with Tor.com.
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