The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

[Falselogic]

The Only Harmless Great Thing is an alternative history by Brooke Bolander that imagines an intersection between the Radium Girls and elephants.
In the early years of the 20th 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 put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

This book explores an alternative history where those two facts intertwine.

Brooke Bolander is an award winning American author of speculative fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy awards. The Only Harmless Great Thing won the Nebula and Locus awards for Best Novelette.

 

[John]

Dang, I remember when Brooke (now also goes by Bo based on social media) helmed the letters column at The GIA. I knew she was now a writer, but I haven't checked out her work. I've got some flights coming up soon, and a small novel looks ideal for that.

 

[lincolnic]

Oh hey, I forgot I chose this one! I remember being really taken with this when it was new, but it seemed like no one had ever heard of it but me, so I wanted to give it a second look. From what I remember, if you're at all interested in Radium Girls, Topsy the elephant, magical realism, animal communication, workers' rights, or any combination thereof, this is probably a book for you! It is also quite short, so hopefully everyone can squeeze it in. I'm really looking forward to reading this again.

 

[Issun]

Dang, I remember when Brooke (now also goes by Bo based on social media) helmed the letters column at The GIA.

That's where I recognize the name from, too. Awesome that she's become a successful writer. I wonder what the other GIA letters peoples are up to these days.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Dang, I remember when Brooke (now also goes by Bo based on social media) helmed the letters column at The GIA.

wait what

I had no idea

I've followed Brooke for years and read a number of things (including the story the thread is about) but it's been so long since I looked back at the GIA that I didn't put it together

 

[lincolnic]

For the record, I also had no idea she was part of the GIA!

 

[John]

Gaming Intelligence Agency - Dossier: Brooke Bolander

 

[Violentvixen]

if you're at all interested in Radium Girls, Topsy the elephant, magical realism, animal communication, workers' rights, or any combination thereof, this is probably a book for you!

This is such a crazy mix of things, I'm excited for this! Just requested this from the library so hope to start soon.

 

[lincolnic]

Waiting on my copy from the library too. I'm the only hold and there are two free copies, so hopefully it'll come in before the end of the week!

 

[Lady]

This is a great book. You'll all love it.

 

[John]

I finished it this morning. After I adjusted my expectations from short novel to longer short story, I liked it better. It was a little sparse, but the prose was well done, especially with the different elephant perspectives.

 

[John]

It's the back half of the month, and I've given it some time to ruminate. As a short story, it works, but I think it fails as a longer piece of fiction. That's probably wholly on the publisher, though, as they need to market it somehow, and short story collections would do worse than having the author add enough pages to get it to "novelette" status. I think this would've worked better as a companion to other stories though, like in Her Body and Other Parties that we read earlier in the year.

 

[Falselogic]

I haven't been able to start this at all yet. Hoping I get some free time pre and post Thanksgiving to sit down and enjoy it.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

TOHGT didn't actually catch with me that hard, but I liked it. I think it was the right length though. I should read it again.

Actually there are TONS of good novellas (mostly put out by Tor) in the last several years. They're a great light meal vs. the bite size of a short story.

 

[John]

I had to look up the definitions of Novelette vs Novella vs Novel, since I was only familiar with the latter two. Novelette's intended to bridge the gap between a short story and a novella, and exact word/page counts differ on who's giving the definition. Novelette's not quite a short story, not quite a novella, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe on the side.

I like the Novella size for my longer works, probably more than full size Novel at this point. You get most of the complexity of a full novel, and all of the space to develop characters, without needing to fill in all the empty pages with Lore or Descriptions. I still liked TOHGT, just wasn't in love with it. I don't have a clear thought to where I would add / subtract, though. The two threads teased enough to tell their stories without overstepping. Maybe it could've used a third angle for balance? I liked the Elephant thread enough as it is, so maybe they could flesh out the human parts a bit more?

 

[Sarcasmorator]

The word count cutoffs between short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels are pretty arbitrary and arcane and largely for marketing purposes. I think a more useful distinction would be between a novel and a MEGANOVEL, which we don't have a real term for. Once you hit "novel" it can be any word count upward of the low end!

 

[Falselogic]

Read it over the weekend. I sort of wish it was longer. I wanted to spend more time in this world where elephants won rights to self-determination and then somehow got genetically engineered to glow. I especially enjoyed the story telling bits of the elephant mothers.

 

[lincolnic]

I read this two weekends ago and have been forgetting to post about it. I enjoyed it just as much as I did five years ago (which is to say, a lot). My thoughts basically echo False's -- I want more of it, I want more elephant stories, I want more time in this world. It doesn't look like Brooke (Bo?) Bolander has published much beyond a few other stories since this one came out, but I keep hoping that I'll see a new novel from her one day.

 

[Violentvixen]

Gonna be a late entry on this one as my exam is Sunday and I want to focus on studying for that, but very excited to read this. I plan to bring it to read in the airport/plane on the way back.

 

[Violentvixen]

I ended up reading this on the flight and really loved it. I absolutely agree that I want more though. You could do a lot of fascinating things with this setup.