The Only Harmless Great Thing
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The Only Harmless Great Thing
''The Only Harmless Great Thing'' is a 2018 alternate history story by Brooke Bolander, exploring the conjunction of Topsy the Elephant and the Radium Girls scandal. It was published by Tor.com. The title is taken from John Donne's 1612 poem ''The Progress of the Soul'', and is his description of an elephant.Elephants, and Remembering the Worst of History in ''The Only Harmless Great Thing''
by Alisdair Stuart, at ; published January 24, 2018; retrieved July 5, 2019


Synopsis

In a world where
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Alternate History
Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alternative history stories propose ''What if?'' scenarios about crucial events in human history, and present outcomes very different from the historical record. Alternate history also is a subgenre of literary fiction, science fiction, and historical fiction; as literature, alternate history uses the tropes of the genre to answer the ''What if?'' speculations of the story. Since the 1950s, as a subgenre of science fiction, alternative history stories feature the tropes of time travel between histories, and the psychic awareness of the existence of an alternative universe, by the inhabitants of a given universe; and time travel that divides history into various timestreams. In the Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, and ...
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Hugo Award For Best Novelette
The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novelette award is available for works of fiction of between 7,500 and 17,500 words; awards are also given out in the short story, novella and novel categories. The Hugo Awards have been described as "a fine showcase for speculative fiction" and "the best known literary award for science fiction writing". The Hugo Award for Best Novelette was first awarded in 1955, and was subsequently awarded in 1956, 1958, and 1959, lapsing in 1960. The category was reinstated for 1967 through 1969, before lapsing again in 1970; after returning in 1973, it has remained to date. In addition to the regular Hugo awards, beginning in 1996 Retrospective Hugo Awards, or "Retro Hugos", have been available to be awarded for 50, 75, or 100 years prior. Retro Hugos may only be awarded for years after 1939 in which ...
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Nebula Award For Best Novelette-winning Works
A nebula ('cloud' or 'fog' in Latin; pl. nebulae, nebulæ or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula. In these regions, the formations of gas, dust, and other materials "clump" together to form denser regions, which attract further matter, and eventually will become dense enough to form stars. The remaining material is then thought to form planets and other planetary system objects. Most nebulae are of vast size; some are hundreds of light-years in diameter. A nebula that is visible to the human eye from Earth would appear larger, but no brighter, from close by. The Orion Nebula, the brightest nebula in the sky and occupying an area twice the angular diameter of the full Moon, can be viewed with the naked eye but was missed by early astronomers. Although denser than the space su ...
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Helena Bell
Helena Leigh Bell is an American accountant and author of speculative fiction and poetry, active in the field since 2005. She writes as Helena Bell, with some of her works published under her full name. Biography Bell has five graduate degrees, including a Masters in Accounting, a Juris Doctor degree, a Master of Laws, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and another in Fiction from North Carolina State University. She is a former Scuba instructor and a certified cave diver. She lives in Durham, North Carolina, where she works as a certified public accountant for Robertson CPA Firm, PLLC. Literary career Bell attended the 2013 Clarion West Writers Workshop in Seattle. Her work has appeared in various periodicals, including ''Brain Harvest'', '' Clarkesworld Magazine'', '' Daily Science Fiction'', ''The Dark'', ''Drabblecast'', ''Electric Velocipede'', '' Escape Pod'', ''Fireside Fiction'', '' The Indiana Review'', ''Lightspeed'', '' ...
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Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and 'Reblogging, retweet' tweets, while unregistered users only have the ability to read public tweets. Users interact with Twitter through browser or mobile Frontend and backend, frontend software, or programmatically via its APIs. Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams (Internet entrepreneur), Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. Twitter, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California and has more than 25 offices around the world. , more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion Web search query, search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten List of most popular websites, most-visited websites and has been de ...
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Strange Horizons
''Strange Horizons'' is an online speculative fiction magazine. It also features speculative poetry and nonfiction in every issue, including reviews, essays, interviews, and roundtables. History and profile It was launched in September 2000, and publishes new material (fiction, articles, reviews, poetry, and/or art) 51 weeks of the year, with an emphasis on "new, underrepresented, and global voices." The magazine was founded by writer and editor Mary Anne Mohanraj. It has a staff of approximately sixty volunteers, and is unusual among professional speculative fiction magazines in being funded entirely by donations, holding annual fund drives. Editors-in-chief * Mary Anne Mohanraj, 2000–2003 * Susan Marie Groppi, 2004–2010 * Niall Harrison, 2010–2017 * Jane Crowley and Kate Dollarhyde, 2017–2019 * Vanessa Rose Phin, 2019–2021 * Gautam Bhatia, 2021–present Awards Susan Marie Groppi won the World Fantasy Special Award: Non-Professional in 2010 for her work as Ed ...
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World Fantasy Award—Novella
The World Fantasy Awards are given each year by the World Fantasy Convention for the best fantasy fiction published in English during the previous calendar year. The awards have been described by book critics such as ''The Guardian'' as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and one of the three most prestigious speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo and Nebula Awards (which cover both fantasy and science fiction). The World Fantasy Award—Novella is given each year for fantasy stories published in English. A work of fiction is eligible for the category if it is between 10,000 and 40,000 words in length; awards are also given out for longer pieces in the Novel category and shorter lengths in the Short Fiction category. The Novella category has been awarded annually since 1982, though between 1975—when the World Fantasy Awards were instated—and 1982 the short fiction category covered works of up to 40,000 words. In 2016, the name of the category was changed from Best Novell ...
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World Fantasy Award
The World Fantasy Awards are a set of awards given each year for the best fantasy literature, fantasy fiction published during the previous calendar year. Organized and overseen by the World Fantasy Convention, the awards are given each year at the eponymous annual convention as the central focus of the event. They were first given in 1975, at the first World Fantasy Convention, and have been awarded annually since. Over the years that the award has been given, the categories presented have changed; currently World Fantasy Awards are given in five written categories, one category for artists, and four special categories for individuals to honor their general work in the field of fantasy. The awards have been described by book critics such as ''The Guardian'' as a "prestigious fantasy prize", and one of the three most prestigious speculative fiction awards, along with the Hugo Award, Hugo and Nebula Awards (which cover both fantasy and science fiction). World Fantasy Award nomin ...
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Theodore Sturgeon Award
The Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award is an annual literary award presented by the Theodore Sturgeon Literary Trust and the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas to the author of the best short science fiction story published in English in the preceding calendar year. It is the short fiction counterpart of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, awarded by the Center at the same conference. The award is named in honor of Theodore Sturgeon, one of the leading authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction from 1939 to 1950. The award was established in 1987 by his heirs—including his widow, Jayne Sturgeon—and James Gunn, at the time the Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. From 1987 through 1994 the award was given out by a panel of science fiction experts led by Orson Scott Card. Beginning in 1995, the committee was replaced by a group of jurors, who vote on the nominations submitted for consideration. ...
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Shirley Jackson Award
The Shirley Jackson Awards are literary awards named after Shirley Jackson in recognition of her legacy in writing. These awards for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic are presented at Readercon, an annual conference on imaginative literature. Writing in ''Salon'' in 2010, Laura Miller noted, "The awards are only 3 years old, but have already proved a fitting tribute to a writer who roamed freely over similar ground and has never quite gotten the respect she deserves." Award-winners are selected by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics and academics, with input from a Board of Advisors. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Single-Author Collection and Edited Anthology. The first annual Shirley Jackson Awards were presented July 20, 2007 at the Readercon Conference on Imaginative Literature in B ...
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Locus Award
The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the plaques awarded to the winners, publishers of winning works are honored with certificates, which is unique in the field. Originally a poll of ''Locus'' subscribers only, voting is now open to anyone, but the votes of subscribers count twice as much as the votes of non-subscribers. The award was inaugurated in 1971, and was originally intended to provide suggestions and recommendations for the Hugo Awards. They have come to be considered a prestigious prize in science fiction, fantasy and horror literature. ''The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction'' regards the Locus Awards as sharing the reputation of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Gardner Dozois holds the record for the most wins (43), while Neil Gaiman has won the most awards for works of fic ...
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Hugo Award
The Hugo Award is an annual literary award for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year, given at the World Science Fiction Convention and chosen by its members. The Hugo is widely considered the premier award in science fiction. The award is administered by the World Science Fiction Society. It is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine ''Amazing Stories''. Hugos were first given in 1953, at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention, and have been awarded every year since 1955. The awards were originally given in seven categories. These categories have changed over the years, and the award is currently conferred in seventeen categories of written and dramatic works. The winners receive a trophy consisting of a stylized rocket ship on a base; the design of the trophy changes each year, though the rocket itself has been standardized since 1984. The Hugo Awards are considered "the premier award in th ...
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