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The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
by Michael Swanwick
introduction by Theodore W Gray
(PS Publishing, £25, 274 pages, signed, numbered, limited edition
hardback, ISBN: 1904619002. Also available as signed, numbered, limited
edition slipcased hardback, £60, ISBN: 1904619010. Published August
2005.)
Review by Lawrence Osborn
 This
volume is a collection of 118 short-shorts that first appeared weekly
on Ellen Datlow's late lamented Sci
Fiction website. The unifying theme, as the title indicates,
is the chemical elements -- every one of them from hydrogen to the probably
non-existent ununoctium!
Having been duly amazed that anyone (even a science fiction writer
of Swanwick's originality) would come up with the barking mad idea of
such a collection, I was then completely blown away by its content.
In spite of the very clear unifying theme this is an incredibly diverse
collection. The stories range from humorous ('Jane Carter of Mars')
to chilling ('Angels of the Apocalypse'). Some of the stories are simply
based on the properties of the element in question (though sometimes
the property owes more to Swanwick's imagination than to any chemistry
textbook). Others exploit uses of the element (e.g. the entry for barium
is a no holds barred account of the barium enema -- readers may find
it a little disturbing!) or play with infamous misuses of the element
(why did Lucrezia Borgia poison her husbands?). In some cases, the story
is a play on words (e.g. germanium and yttrium) or merely uses the element
as a prop in an otherwise unrelated tale. He even manages to squeeze
the odd alternate history into less than a thousand words (e.g. 'The
Era of the Iron Horse').
Underlying the variety and helping to unify the collection are a variety
of secondary recurring themes. Several of the stories are connected
as they follow the fortunes of Summergarden Specialty Ores and particularly
its star employee Adrienne Wong-Hepworth (affectionately known as the
Dragon Lady). Another recurring theme is artificial intelligence in
various forms.
The stories may be too short for Swanwick to do more than hint at characterization
and description, but he manages to maintain the readers' interest by
varying the style and genre of the stories -- switching between first
and third person, making extensive use of allusion and direct reference
to historical and fictional characters. Among the genres used in the
collection are hard SF, sword and sorcery, fairy tale, myth and folk
tale (e.g. an AI version of the little boy who plugged a hole in a dyke
with his finger). There is a good deal of humour in these stories and
I particularly enjoyed the satirical element in many of them, often
directed at our perennial tendency to think of ourselves as the centre
of the universe.
The icing on the cake is that PS Publishing have made a really nice
book out of the collection. They have taken pains to make the page design
as attractive as possible with a font that is easy on the eyes, attractive
chapter headings that pick up the periodic table theme, and each story
beginning on an odd-numbered page (or fresh recto in the language of
the trade -- an eminently sensible tradition that has been abandoned
by too many publishers in the interests of economizing a little). The
hardback looks and feels good. I wish more publishers took such care
over their products.
In summary, this is a fascinating collection that illustrates what
the short-short is capable of in the hands of a first-rate storyteller.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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