Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Tor.com (New York, 2018). 1st edition, 1st printing. 96 pages.
Description
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 in Coney Island. These are matters of historical fact. Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate 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.
User reviews
LibraryThing member greeniezona
I was really annoyed by this book in the beginning. It's set in a world related to our world and history, but different in a few key ways, and told with shifting perspectives and time periods that obscures for quite a while what those differences are -- and what the rules and conventions of this
Personally, I think giving up these tricks would have forced Bolander to tell a stronger story. The elements she's chosen to shape her story around are so fascinating -- the radium girls, the sentience and capacity for memory in elephants, the fight between direct and alternating current, and the electrocution of animals as a spectacle in that fight. But then there is an entire additional layer of long-term nuclear waste storage -- and that element in particular never seemed to serve the story for me -- it added too much confusion and did it ever even get resolved? I wish it had been cut.
This is a lot of complaining for a four-star review.
That's how much I liked the voice given to the radium girls. The voice given to animals who continue to be thought of as things even after they've been taught language. The simmering rage that finds power out of what seems like powerlessness. The criticism of a soulless capitalism that will continue to grind the powerless under its boot as long as there is a profit to be made.
A remarkable little book.
Show More
world are. I'm sure that this was a deliberate choice by Bolander, but it didn't work for me. Had this not been a little novella with a promise that all would have to be made clear fairly soon, I might have given it up.Personally, I think giving up these tricks would have forced Bolander to tell a stronger story. The elements she's chosen to shape her story around are so fascinating -- the radium girls, the sentience and capacity for memory in elephants, the fight between direct and alternating current, and the electrocution of animals as a spectacle in that fight. But then there is an entire additional layer of long-term nuclear waste storage -- and that element in particular never seemed to serve the story for me -- it added too much confusion and did it ever even get resolved? I wish it had been cut.
This is a lot of complaining for a four-star review.
That's how much I liked the voice given to the radium girls. The voice given to animals who continue to be thought of as things even after they've been taught language. The simmering rage that finds power out of what seems like powerlessness. The criticism of a soulless capitalism that will continue to grind the powerless under its boot as long as there is a profit to be made.
A remarkable little book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Petroglyph
Notes for a proper review:
Mainly keeps the interest up because it is told out-of-order, and in two storylines decades apart. The novella would lose its impact if it were told chronologically.
- Alternate history, but far-fetched
- The cool idea at the core is that bioluminescent intelligent elephants will serve as a future-proof warning to stay away from a mountain used as a radioactive waste storage facility, which might be effective even thousands of years in the
Show More
future, after (literate) society has collapsed. Show Less
LibraryThing member iansales
Unlike the other Hugo nominees, this is the only novelette to have been published independently as a book. By Tor.com. Like a novella. All the others appeared in magazines, online or otherwise. Except this is not entirely true: the Connolly and Gregory below may not have been published in
Show More
paperback, but they were published as independent pieces of fiction on the Tor.com website. So that’s five of six novellas and three of six novelettes published by Tor.com. Anyway, during WWI the US used women to paint glow-in-the-dark radium on watch-faces and the like, and many of them died from, or were disfigured by, cancer. Bolander has taken this historical fact and run with it. In her story, elephants were involved – and were smart enough to be communicated with using a special sign language – and an attempt by the US to train elephants to work with radium instead of young women results in the death of a nasty piece of work supervisor and the public execution, by electrocution, of the elephant responsible for his death. This is juxtaposed with a near-future narrative in which a young woman wants to genetically engineer elephants to glow in the dark as a warning of the nuclear waste buried beneath land which will be bequeathed to them. None of this last narrative makes the slightest bit of sense, but it’s presented as if its the anchoring narrative thread. Another thread is told from an elephant’s POV and, well, it doesn’t really work. Or feel necessary. There’s a really cool story somewhere in The Only Harmless Great Thing but the way it’s been presented doesn’t to my mind do it any favours. Too much of it is unnecessary – and while I’m all for writers being clever, in fact I both relish and admire it, the cleverness here lies in the narrative set in the past, which are handled well, and not in the near-future narrative or the elephant POV ones. Which is a roundabout way of saying that The Only Harmless Great Thing really didn’t work for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member lavaturtle
I'd heard good things about this story, and it's even better than I'd heard. I love the voices of the different characters, how different they are from each other, and how much they illuminate. The elephant POV is particularly well-done. The ideas are tied together well; the social commentary is
Show More
well done. Just everything about it is great. Show Less
LibraryThing member amanda4242
Its chief virtue is its length.
LibraryThing member ElleGato
This is above all a story about stories.
I know that sounds cliche but I promise you, this isn't a cliche. This is a novella about how stories are told, remembered and how they're used to create history, to create narratives and feelings and futures. And the story-tellers here aren't human but
Elephants are poignant symbols of how human greed and violence has destroyed so much of the world; we know now that elephants have long memories, cultural memories, and they transfer these memories to their children and grandchildren and so on. They are animals with history, just like us, and humans have fractured the history of elephants as violently as we have fractured our own history.
And that context makes this novella so very powerful. Because Regan and Topsy are both victims of a shattered narrative, a fractured history, a calyx of pain and death and suffering but at the same time they are also blossoms, blooms--violent and angry and powerful even when they are forced to walk together into death. They change the narrative. They fracture the fracture and in so doing make something new, something broken but brave and immense and memorable.
This story isn't so much about its characters but that's the point. The characters themselves know that they aren't the point. The story is the point. And Bolander gets that point across so perfectly and painfully that it never feels like gratuitous suffering or hurt for hurt's sake or shock just for shock value.
It feels like righteousness. Like power. Like the lightning at the heart of all stories, the lightning that laces narrative to past and present and future.
I know that sounds cliche but I promise you, this isn't a cliche. This is a novella about how stories are told, remembered and how they're used to create history, to create narratives and feelings and futures. And the story-tellers here aren't human but
Show More
elephants who, perhaps, are one of the few other mammals we know of that have stories the way we understand stories. Elephants are poignant symbols of how human greed and violence has destroyed so much of the world; we know now that elephants have long memories, cultural memories, and they transfer these memories to their children and grandchildren and so on. They are animals with history, just like us, and humans have fractured the history of elephants as violently as we have fractured our own history.
And that context makes this novella so very powerful. Because Regan and Topsy are both victims of a shattered narrative, a fractured history, a calyx of pain and death and suffering but at the same time they are also blossoms, blooms--violent and angry and powerful even when they are forced to walk together into death. They change the narrative. They fracture the fracture and in so doing make something new, something broken but brave and immense and memorable.
This story isn't so much about its characters but that's the point. The characters themselves know that they aren't the point. The story is the point. And Bolander gets that point across so perfectly and painfully that it never feels like gratuitous suffering or hurt for hurt's sake or shock just for shock value.
It feels like righteousness. Like power. Like the lightning at the heart of all stories, the lightning that laces narrative to past and present and future.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Nadishka
Prose on a Radium high!
Not the easiest to read but the story gets under your skin - once you've deciphered the intertwining and sometimes disjointed threads. On an emotional level, I felt for Topsy and Regan and their predicament. I do not like sad stories, but I ploughed through anyway. On a more
A lot of the elephant related terminology may be lost to those who do not know of these majestic creatures, like 'musth' for example.
Not the easiest to read but the story gets under your skin - once you've deciphered the intertwining and sometimes disjointed threads. On an emotional level, I felt for Topsy and Regan and their predicament. I do not like sad stories, but I ploughed through anyway. On a more
Show More
cultural level, I loved the focus on stories handed down through generations - they are called a Memory of elephants not for nothing!A lot of the elephant related terminology may be lost to those who do not know of these majestic creatures, like 'musth' for example.
Show Less
LibraryThing member sturlington
I thought this was a lovely short book with a strong message of empowerment. The narrative weaves together the perspectives from prehistory, alternate history, and a possible future of both women and female elephants, showing how both have been considered disposable but how they gain power from
Show More
making their own choices about their fates and telling their own stories. Show Less
LibraryThing member LisCarey
This is a grim story, but in its own way a beautiful one. Now, those who know me know I don't do grim. At all. Except on the rare occasions that I do.
You may know the story of the Radium Girls. In the early part of the 20th century, young women were employed painting glowing numbers on watch faces,
Who would be so careless as to ingest it, you ask? Well, see, the women weren't told it was dangerous; they were told it was perfectly safe. And of course the best way to get a good point on your paintbrush to paint those fine, exact numbers, was to put it briefly in your mouth every so often.
They all got very sick and there was a big lawsuit, and they died. There are books about the Radium Girls
This is an alternate history, in which after the employment of young women painting radium onto watch faces ends in that lawsuit, the company didn't give up. Instead, they bought elephants who weren't working out for the circuses. One aspect of this alternate world is that in the 1890s, elephants and people began developing an elephant sign language. This helps make employment of elephants in factory jobs more or less possible. And the elephants, being much larger and stronger than slim young women, take significantly longer than the young women to get sick from radiation poisoning. It's still a much worse idea than what happened in our timeline, where eventually the litigation and the bad publicity made it just not worth the effort to make them in any significant numbers.
And I'm really getting off track with this.
The story follows a former "radium girl" named Regan, who is slowly dying of the radiation poisoning, but in the meantime working with the elephants to teach them to paint watch dials; Topsy, a former circus elephant sold to US Radium after she killed a man who was "teasing" her with a lit cigar end; and Kat, a scientist who, years later, is working on a way to keep the now-buried radioactives safe forever with a warning system that will not fail, erode, or cease to scare people off.
Her solution will involve the willing cooperation of the elephants. The elephants have no obvious reason to cooperate with humans, of course, so Kat has to find an argument to persuade them.
Interspersed are stories from the elephant matriarchs, future and past.
It's a fascinating and absorbing world and story. Highly recommended.
I received this story as part of the 2019 Hugo Voters Packet.
You may know the story of the Radium Girls. In the early part of the 20th century, young women were employed painting glowing numbers on watch faces,
Show More
using radium paint. Yes, radium. Yes, it's radioactive, enough to be really dangerous, especially if you work with it constantly or accidentally ingest it.Who would be so careless as to ingest it, you ask? Well, see, the women weren't told it was dangerous; they were told it was perfectly safe. And of course the best way to get a good point on your paintbrush to paint those fine, exact numbers, was to put it briefly in your mouth every so often.
They all got very sick and there was a big lawsuit, and they died. There are books about the Radium Girls
This is an alternate history, in which after the employment of young women painting radium onto watch faces ends in that lawsuit, the company didn't give up. Instead, they bought elephants who weren't working out for the circuses. One aspect of this alternate world is that in the 1890s, elephants and people began developing an elephant sign language. This helps make employment of elephants in factory jobs more or less possible. And the elephants, being much larger and stronger than slim young women, take significantly longer than the young women to get sick from radiation poisoning. It's still a much worse idea than what happened in our timeline, where eventually the litigation and the bad publicity made it just not worth the effort to make them in any significant numbers.
And I'm really getting off track with this.
The story follows a former "radium girl" named Regan, who is slowly dying of the radiation poisoning, but in the meantime working with the elephants to teach them to paint watch dials; Topsy, a former circus elephant sold to US Radium after she killed a man who was "teasing" her with a lit cigar end; and Kat, a scientist who, years later, is working on a way to keep the now-buried radioactives safe forever with a warning system that will not fail, erode, or cease to scare people off.
Her solution will involve the willing cooperation of the elephants. The elephants have no obvious reason to cooperate with humans, of course, so Kat has to find an argument to persuade them.
Interspersed are stories from the elephant matriarchs, future and past.
It's a fascinating and absorbing world and story. Highly recommended.
I received this story as part of the 2019 Hugo Voters Packet.
Show Less
LibraryThing member g33kgrrl
This book is well written and I'd be perfectly fine if elephants outlived us considering we're doing a pretty terrible job of taking care of ourselves. But it still made me really sad.
LibraryThing member kalky
Brooke Bolander's THE ONLY HARMLESS GREAT THING is not a book you can read in fits and starts. Instead, set aside a bit of time to read it from cover to cover. Immerse yourself completely in the story of Regan, a young woman dying from radiation poisoning, and Topsy, the elephant she's assigned to
Bolander's novella is both brutal and gorgeous. Every sentence has purpose, and even the horrific episodes are beautifully written. The females--both human and elephant--are strong and compelling characters. This is a book that will have more meaning with subsequent readings--in fact, I recommend finishing the book, pausing to reflect, and then starting over again. Repeat as necessary.
Show More
train to do the job that is killing her. Interspersed with their tale are glimpses of the future in the form of Kat, a scientist who has developed a warning system for a nuclear waste dump and is now tasked with selling the idea to the ones who will carry it out: elephants. But that's not all... there's also a fable about the strength and wisdom of the elephant, there are poems and songs, and there are news stories. All of this in less than 100 pages!Bolander's novella is both brutal and gorgeous. Every sentence has purpose, and even the horrific episodes are beautifully written. The females--both human and elephant--are strong and compelling characters. This is a book that will have more meaning with subsequent readings--in fact, I recommend finishing the book, pausing to reflect, and then starting over again. Repeat as necessary.
Show Less
LibraryThing member renbedell
An alternate history novella where elephants reveal that their sentient ability and are now socially involved with human culture. The story is weird and not very engaging. It is well written and has interesting ideas though.
LibraryThing member wyvernfriend
I knew about the Radium girls and this one riffs off that. I had also read about the elephant (Topsy) killed using electricity. Some sources describe the incident as part of the war of the currents (AC vs DC) but whatever else these are real things that happened. This takes those incidents and
It's a story that made me think and I'd be interested in more by this author, but I'd need something quite sunny afterwards.
Show More
wraps them together with elephants having learned a type of sign language and the concept of Elephant stories and it becomes an interesting tale of complicated politics and strange bedfellows who are all being exploited. It does take the concept that in reality some lower-waged workers are treated no better by management than animals, and honestly I find it hard to disagree. It also asks if taking revenge really does improve some people's lives, the women all die horrible deaths, often waiting for monies owed and it's hard to see that en exploited elephant mightn't one day take revenge. Even into the future of the story things remain bleak.It's a story that made me think and I'd be interested in more by this author, but I'd need something quite sunny afterwards.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
No matter what you did, forty or fifty or a hundred years passed and everything became a narrative to be toyed with, masters of media alchemy splitting the truth's nucleus into a ricocheting cascade reaction of diverging alternate realities.
The premise of this book sounds wacky if you try to
The premise of this book sounds wacky if you try to
Show More
explain it to someone: in an alternate reality where elephants are sentient, they are hired to replace the Radium Girls after it comes out how dangerous it is to work in the factories. The book alternates between elephant myths, a former Radium Girl hired to train them, and a researcher in the future, negotiating with the sovereign elephant tribes. But Bolander makes it work, and how. It packs a lot into its short length; it's about history, and labor, and our treatment of animals, and even Disneyfication. Sometime when I read contemporary short science fiction and fantasy, I complain that I want more science fiction specifically, and sometimes I complain that when there is sf, I want the sf elements to be more than props, and this story gave me exactly what I wanted on both accounts. Show Less
LibraryThing member deva1984
So, signing elephants. This story is a bit too American to me. Cannot finish reading.
LibraryThing member elenaj
A sharp, beautiful kick in the pants. Gorgeous, vicious, and utterly original.
LibraryThing member jzacsh
Could not get beyond page 10. Was so confused. Maybe my patience for this writing style is just abnormally low, as a lot of people seem to love this book. To be fair, I also tried to read it in several small moments when I had a chance to read. Seems like it needs a good 30 minutes of cleared
Show More
reading time to crack into (and maybe finish — it's pretty short). Show Less
LibraryThing member Toast.x2
The Only Harmless Great Thing: Prepare yourself for anger and depression.
It is a fine novella you created here, Brooke Bolander. I golf clap in honor of your book and simultaneously accept your apologies for making my soul cry bloody snot tears of angry sad mad.
Not for the weak of heart! Serious.
In this alt-history novella, the horrifically sad history of Topsy the Elephant (electrocuted for entertainment and ticket sales) is merged with the history of the Radium Girls. In this reweaving, the women poisoned by radium in watch factories of the early 20th century have begun replacing their cancer ridden work force with trained elephants. These enslaved Elephants can taste the poison they are ingesting and do what is possible to avoid the whip.
Mixed throughout the novella are vignettes of Elephant history, passed down pack stories, and lore. Along side those are a loose plotline of Humans negotiating with modern Elephants to be pushed to poisoned reservation lands. These lands are offered as penance for past Human crimes, but are a different kind of poison. Humans continue to be fucking assholes.
It is a fine novella you created here, Brooke Bolander. I golf clap in honor of your book and simultaneously accept your apologies for making my soul cry bloody snot tears of angry sad mad.
Not for the weak of heart! Serious.
Show More
In this alt-history novella, the horrifically sad history of Topsy the Elephant (electrocuted for entertainment and ticket sales) is merged with the history of the Radium Girls. In this reweaving, the women poisoned by radium in watch factories of the early 20th century have begun replacing their cancer ridden work force with trained elephants. These enslaved Elephants can taste the poison they are ingesting and do what is possible to avoid the whip.
Mixed throughout the novella are vignettes of Elephant history, passed down pack stories, and lore. Along side those are a loose plotline of Humans negotiating with modern Elephants to be pushed to poisoned reservation lands. These lands are offered as penance for past Human crimes, but are a different kind of poison. Humans continue to be fucking assholes.
Show Less
LibraryThing member wanderlustlover
Summer 2019 (Hugo Award Nominee 2019 - Novelette);
A powerful and sinister retelling of the radium girls, both with women and elephants who speak a form of ASL (and have their own acknowledged society/representation in the World Playing Field). This story is told in three recurring section, by
It's tightknit, which I deeply approved of, but I felt at times that it was too slow for a story only around 100 pages. I need more gold, faster, and deeper. I love best the mythic sections of it. The story of the oldest matriarchal elephant who chased the world to discover The Stories was the part I best beloved of all this story and will take with me from it.
A powerful and sinister retelling of the radium girls, both with women and elephants who speak a form of ASL (and have their own acknowledged society/representation in the World Playing Field). This story is told in three recurring section, by
Show More
three female voices (one female human in the future, one female radium worker & matriarcal elephant in the same period of the past). It's tightknit, which I deeply approved of, but I felt at times that it was too slow for a story only around 100 pages. I need more gold, faster, and deeper. I love best the mythic sections of it. The story of the oldest matriarchal elephant who chased the world to discover The Stories was the part I best beloved of all this story and will take with me from it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member DarthDeverell
Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing is an alternate history, taking as its inspiration the case of the Radium Girls and Thomas Edison's film Electrocuting an Elephant about Topsy, a condemned elephant Edison had electrocuted at Coney Island as part of his propaganda war with Nikola
Bolander's story examines the nature of humanity's place in the world and the damage we leave in our wake. Further, she encourages the reader to consider non-human animals' emotions, a quality now understood to be common to most animals. Her discussion of radiation, industry, and war forces the reader to reconcile the promise of progress with the scars we leave on the natural landscape. Bolander's work is an amazing piece of speculative fiction and rightfully belongs under the Tor imprint alongside works by Philip K. Dick, Nnedi Okorafor, Douglas Preston.
Show More
Tesla. In this alternate history, U.S. Radium enlists elephants to replace the workers suffering from radiation poisoning on the factory floor on the belief that their larger size will forestall their radiation exposure and eventual death. The elephants, fully sentient with their own mythology and ability to use a form of sign language, work and live as slaves with broken spirits. Regan, a woman dying of radiation poisoning, befriends Topsy, an elephant she's training to replace her, and the two seek a way to fight back.Bolander's story examines the nature of humanity's place in the world and the damage we leave in our wake. Further, she encourages the reader to consider non-human animals' emotions, a quality now understood to be common to most animals. Her discussion of radiation, industry, and war forces the reader to reconcile the promise of progress with the scars we leave on the natural landscape. Bolander's work is an amazing piece of speculative fiction and rightfully belongs under the Tor imprint alongside works by Philip K. Dick, Nnedi Okorafor, Douglas Preston.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mmparker
Hell of a first page. The rest is good, too, although the language gets a little too ornate at some moments.
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novelette — 2019)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novelette — 2018)
Shirley Jackson Award (Nominee — Novella — 2018)
Locus Award (Finalist — Novelette — 2019)
British Fantasy Award (Nominee — Novella — 2019)
Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (Finalist — 2019)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2018
Physical description
94 p.; 5 inches
ISBN
9781250169488