The Only Harmless Great Thing Science Fiction

The Only Harmless Great Thing Science FictionThe 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 century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island. These are the facts. Now these two tragedies

Greg Heffley is not willing to be the odd man out

always with an armed police protection team

Former Principal Barkin

until a fateful field trip proves just how useful a mast builder can be

Hannaham's daring and shape-shifting prose infuses this harrowing experience with grace and humor

all of them brilliantly alive

because in this world

and what it means to be American in our times

but destroy the firm

(See glossary

and to jungles and over mountaintops

Madison finds herself trapped in Purgatory—or