The Only Harmless Great Thing
Book description
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette
Finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Sturgeon Awards
The Only Harmless Great Thing is a heart-wrenching alternative history by Brooke Bolander that imagines an intersection between the Radium Girls and noble, sentient elephants.
In the early years of the 20th…
Why read it?
2 authors picked The Only Harmless Great Thing as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Technically, Brooke Bolander's The Only Harmless Great Thing is a novella and not a novel.
But this story, set in an alternate universe in which hyperintelligent elephants are forced into toxic factory work, packs so much pathos, vivid description, and (especially!) the world-building around elephant culture—I swoon over the voice in which the elephants tell their stories and myths to the reader—it may as well be three times as long.
This is the most modern book on my list, and it did get some excellent critical attention, including the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novelette. But Bolander's voice of the…
From KJ's list on starring sentient animals (that not enough people know).
The structure and style of this book might make it the most challenging on my list, but I think it’s worth the effort. Bolander’s novellette takes two obscure events from a century ago and weaves them into a unique alternate history. The first event: a group of factory workers die of radiation poisoning in New Jersey. The second: an Indian elephant is deliberately electrocuted at Coney Island. From there, a community of elephant matriarchs forms an uneasy partnership with a team of scientists. In my day job, I edit articles by historians, and I’m obsessed with our imperfect way of…
From Robert's list on animals becoming sentient.
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