Brooke Bolander

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 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 show more 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

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander is a novella released by Tor.com and is the first longer thing of the author's that I've read. (She also wrote the Hugo shortlisted story "Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies", which I reviewed here.) Based on this excellent novella, I certainly intend to read more of the author's work in the future.

From the cover and the kind of vague blurb, I didn't know what to expect from this book. What I got was an intricately woven set of stories about radium show more girls, radioactive elephants and elephant folk tales. This novella is set in an alternate timeline where, even a century ago, elephants have been found to be sentient and humans are able to communicate with them via sign language. But they are still exploited and oppressed — by circuses and by the radium watch factories.

The main story here is of the elephant Topsy and the dying radium girl Regan, who has stayed on at the factory to teach the elephants how to paint the dials. Both of them are already doomed. Their story is framed by elephant folk tales and informs a future (present) debate about using glow in the dark elephants as markers for nuclear waste sites. I admit it was that last element that first really grabbed me but in the end all the elements of the book came together nicely. If anything, the conclusion of the future storyline was the least satisfyingly conclusive, while the others had clearer endings.

Anyway, if you don't hate elephants or women, I highly recommend this book. You don't have to come into it knowing anything about the radium girls or the history of elephants in the US (I certainly knew nothing of the latter, and only learned that there was a real elephant named Topsy — who in real life never worked in a radium factory, shockingly — in a blog post by the author after I'd read the book). I will be recommending it to all and sundry at the slightest provocation.

5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. show less

A rather odd mix of the radium girls, elephants and Disney. There’s two intertwined stories: a WWII thread with elephants taking over from the radium girls, and a future thread dealing with nuclear waste and the need to keep warnings going for millennia - and elephants again.

The link between the two stories is Topsy the elephant, executed in WWII for killing one of the foremen at US Radium, and her story produced by Disney and distorting elephant-human relations ever since.

Strange, and show more I’m not sure if I liked it or not. show less

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, show more 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