Michael Swanwick

Other novels & collections:

In the Drift — (1985) Publisher: Set in America in the 21st century, this is a generation-spanning saga of the fight for power and survival after a nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island. One man must find the power to become the new ruler of a society where radiation has created human mutations and a death zone known as the Drift.

Vacuum Flowers — (1987) Publisher: In a world of plug-in personalities and colonized asteroids, daring fugitive Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark seeks refuge on Earth orbiting settlements, where evil, self-interest, and greed flourish in the vacuum of space.

Griffin's Egg — (1990) Publisher: Two people fall in love and a community fights for its life against a backdrop of thermonuclear war and a hi-tech repressive government in this science-fiction story written by the author of "In the Drift" and "Vacuum Flowers".

Stations of the Tide — (1991) Publisher: From author Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction — comes a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions. The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. A man from the Bureau of Proscribed Technologies has been sent to investigate. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and charismatic bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting, dying world in his own evil image — and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying and astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence. This novel of surreal hard SF was compared to the fiction of Gene Wolfe when it was first published, and the author has gone on in the two decades since to become recognized as one of the finest living SF and fantasy writers.

Stations of the Tide

It’s the Jubilee Year on the planet Miranda. Every 200 years the planet floods and humans must leave until Miranda’s continents are reborn. Miranda used to be the home of an indigenous species of shapeshifters who, during Jubilee, would return to their aquatic forms until the waters receded, but it seems that humans have killed them off.

Gregorian, who lives on Miranda but was educated off-planet by a rich and distant father, now styles himself a magician and is telling the citizens of Miranda that he can transform them into sea creatures so they can stay on the planet. He has stolen a piece of proscribed technology from Earth and our protagonist, who we know only as “the bureaucrat,” has been sent to find out what Gregorian has up his sleeve. The bureaucrat must track down Gregorian before the Jubilee tides flood the planet. During his quest he learns about the exotic planet’s history, meets several strange residents, does a lot of hallucinating, has a lot of sex, worries about his job back home, and gets hooked on a local soap opera. The middle of the book bogs down in a haze of drugs and sex which feels slightly self-indulgent, but Swanwick manages to make it fit the plot. In the end, it’s not just Miranda that changes.

Stations of the Tide, which has been compared to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is often surreal and confusing, but this seems to fit the dark exotic planet. The setting was my favorite part of the story — Miranda is both beautiful and frightening. I especially loved the Grandfather Tree which has many trunks descending from its huge branches and houses a café and a shipwreck.

Then there’s the technology: the bureaucrat has a walking talking briefcase and can split his consciousness into surrogate electronic forms that can run errands for him. He’s very surprised to find that the Mirandans had even higher forms of technology until they were made illegal by the bureaucrat’s agency. The Mirandans resent this.

Some readers are likely to be put off by the nameless bureaucrat because he’s somewhat flat and emotionless for much of the novel, but Oliver Wyman, the narrator of Audible Frontier’s version, made him feel like a real person rather than a nameless entity. I liked Wyman’s interpretation of the bureaucrat’s epigrammatic business-like style. His aloofness made it all the more moving when he rarely but suddenly was overwhelmed with emotion.

This is the second novel by Michael Swanwick that I’ve tried. I didn’t at all like the first one, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter, but I liked Stations of the Tide even though it had some of the same issues. Both novels are original and inventive with exotic settings but the plot of Stations of the Tide was at least comprehensible most of the time. It reminded me most of Robert Silverberg’s fantasy, especially his novel Downward to the Earth.

Stations of the Tide was originally published in two parts in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1990 but was published as a book in 1991. It won the Nebula Award for best novel that year and was also nominated for the Hugo Award, the Campbell Award, and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Try Stations of the Tide if you like lushly exotic alien settings and don’t mind feeling like you’ve taken the same hallucinogens that the protagonist took. —Kat Hooper

Gravity's Angels — (1991) Publisher: Gravity's Angels is a showcase for a decade's worth of Swanwick's shorter fictions, from his first published short story, "The Feast of Saint Janis," to a descent past the edge of a flat Earth otherwise very like our own in "The Edge of the World," which won the 1990 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The stories collected here are luminous with the promise of his ambition, smart and allusive, dense with ideas and images, sacred and profane.

Tales of Old Earth — (1992) Publisher: From pure fantasy to hard science fiction, this finely crafted offering by one of the greatest science fiction writers of his generation promises to stretch readers' minds far beyond ordinary limits. Nineteen tales from Michael Swanwick's best short fiction of the past decade are gathered here for the first time, including the 1999 Hugo Award-nominated "Radiant Doors" and "Wild Minds" and this year's winning story, "The Very Pulse of the Machine." The collection also features "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O," written especially for this volume.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter — (1993) Publisher: A slave in a dragon factory thatmanufactures flying fighting machines, Jane changes her destiny when a voice from a dragon promising freedom and revenge prompts her to escape and challenge the foundations of the world.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Some people don't like to admit that they didn't "get" a book, but I'm secure enough with myself to say that I didn't get this one.

The Iron Dragon's Daughter started off well. Jane is a human changeling who works in a Faerie factory that makes flying iron dragons for weapons. Jane and the other child slave laborers (who are a mix of strange creatures) are entertaining and bring to mind Lord of the Flies and that scene in Sid's room from Pixar's Toy Story. Michael Swanwick's writing style is fluid and faultless. There are flashes of Valente-esque creativity: a timeclock with a temper, a meryon (whatever that is) civilization similar to that in A Bug's Life, a conniving jar-bound homunculus, gryphons who dive for thrown beer cans. I truly enjoyed these parts of the book and understand why Mr. Swanwick has won so many prestigious awards.

But, after Jane escapes from the dragon factory, the whole thing plummets like a lead dragon and it never returns to its former glory. The writing style is still lovely, but the plot is — I don't think I've ever used this word in a review before — awful. I hated it.

Jane was never a sympathetic heroine, but after her escape she turns into a remorseless foul-mouthed thief, drug-user, slut, and murderer. I didn't like her or any of her acquaintances. The plot had no order, the world had no rules, everything that happened seemed random, chaotic, and senseless.

Knowing that other people have praised this novel and that it's sequel (The Dragons of Babel) was nominated for a Locus award, I pressed on. About two-thirds of the way through, I figured out that there was a method to the madness, but the chaotic nihilism was so disturbing that even though I realized it contributed to the entire philosophy of the novel, I still hated it. I think perhaps if I'd dropped some acid, the plot would have arranged itself better in my mind, but alas, I had none to hand.

I think Michael Swanwick is a great writer, but The Iron Dragon's Daughter was weird, disjointed, obtuse, and inaccessibly bizarre. —Kat Hooper

Jack Faust — (1997) Publisher: At the turn of the 16th century, Magister Faust is made an offer he cannot refuse by the demon Mephistopheles — to know all there is to know. Faust believes that humankind will use this knowledge only for good, but in only a few years the nuclear weapons of our 20th century have been created

Bones of the Earth — (2002) Publisher: World-renowned paleontologist Richard Leyster's universe changedforever the day a stranger named Griffin walked into his office with a remarkable job offer... and an ice cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. For Leyster and a select group of scientific colleagues an impossible fantasy has come true: the ability to study dinosaurs up close, in their own era and milieu. But tampering with time and paradox can have disastrous effects on the future and the past alike, breeding a violent new strain of fundamentalist terror — and, worse still, encouraging brilliant rebels like Dr. Gertrude Salley to toy with the working mechanisms of natural law, no matter what the consequences. And when they concern the largest, most savage creatures that ever walked the Earth, the consequences may be too horrifying to imagine...

Bones of the Earth

Paleontologist Richard Leyster works for the Smithsonian. It’s his dream job, so naturally he scoffs when a strange man named Harry Griffin offers him a new job whose description and benefits are vague. But when Griffin leaves an Igloo cooler containing the head of a real dinosaur on Leyster’s desk, Leyster is definitely intrigued. A couple of years later, when Griffin finally contacts him again, Leyster is ready to sign on to Griffin’s crazy project. He and a team of scientists are sent back to the Mesozoic era to study, up close and personal, the animals that, previously, had only been known by their bones. When a Christian fundamentalist terror group disrupts the project, things get very dangerous for Leyster and his colleagues. There are also concerns about the whole time-travel technology. How does it work? Where did it come from? What is the government hiding?

Bones of the Earth gleefully revels in paleontology and paradoxes. Readers will go to science conferences, watch grad students do field work, and listen to lengthy discussions about the classification of dinosaurs, the evolution of fringe ecological niches, and the event that caused dinosaur extinction. Some of this gets a little dry. There’s an entire chapter called “Peer Review” in which several scientists work together to write up a paper that, due to being stuck in the Mesozoic era, they know will never be published. (Even though this went on too long, I loved this idea!) But it’s not all stuffy science, because this is Michael Swanwick, so there’s also a paleontologist orgy — probably the first one ever.

Most people, if they had the chance to move around in time, would be tempted to use this ability to profit financially — get the lottery numbers from the newspaper, find out who won a horse race and go back and bet on it... But not a paleontologist. Swanwick speculates that they’d prefer prestige over money (and I think he’s right about that). Thus, Dr. Gertrude Salley, who’s both a hero and a villain in this story, gleans facts instead of dollars during her time travels. Later, when Salley creates a time paradox and is forced to meet herself, she’s chagrined to learn that she’s not much fun to be around. Swanwick also takes us to the far distant future and speculates about the future of the human species. Humanity’s prospects are grim, but we’re left with a deep admiration for the human mind, its insatiable curiosity, and the science that allows us to fulfill our desire to understand our world.

I’ll mention, since I’ve seen some negative reviews of Bones of the Earth, that some readers have accused the book of being anti-Christian because the terrorists are creationists. I am both a Christian and a scientist and I did not feel that the book was anti-Christian. Yes, there is a villain who identifies as a Christian creationist, but two of the small group of paleontologists are also specifically identified as practicing Christians. A Christian who refuses to consider the possibility that creation and evolution are not mutually exclusive probably won’t like this book. For everyone else, it’s fine.

Bones of the Earth, originally published in 2002, is an expansion of Michael Swanwick’s 1999 short story “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur” which was published in Asimov’s Science Fiction and won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2000. Bones of the Earth was nominated for a Nebula, Hugo, Campbell, and Locus Award. Kevin Pariseau narrates Audible Frontier’s version which has recently been released. He was a great choice for this book. During my life I’ve listened to hundreds of scientists talking about their research. There’s a certain reserved enthusiasm and eagerness they display and Mr. Pariseau has this down perfectly — he would fit right in at any scientific conference. —Kat Hooper

The Dragons of Babel — (2008) Publisher: A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner! A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey's brain to get a measure of what his subjects think. Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel — infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City — Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love — a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You've heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.