Books Read: The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick
New Weird King… never crowned
Michael Swanwick’s The Iron Dragon’s Daughter is one of the great New Weird1 novels of any century. The Dragons of Babel is also good, but nowhere near as thrilling as TIDD. (I have yet to get around to The Iron Dragon’s Mother...). Those two novels are as far as I’ve gone with Swanwick. I own books like Dancing With Bears (a Darger and Surplus novel), Stations of the Tide and Jack Faust, but--do I need to say it? Do I need to tell you that there’s simply too much to read?
Swanwick has published more than ten collections, including two best ofs (which is no mean feat). The Universe Box is his most recent, featuring stories from the last decade. It’s not everything he wrote during that period, but a good chunk of it. As such, the quality across the collection does vary. But, if you enjoy Swanwick’s blurring of genre boundaries, where a machine gun might pop up in an epic fantasy or a hard science fiction story might include orcs (neither of which happens... but you get my point), then there’s plenty here to enjoy.
Starlight Express, the title story, is a good example. The heading refers to a defunct matter transmitter — a sort of Bifrost bridge — that once connected the galaxy to Rome. An earth tremor bumps the transmitter into action, spitting out from its buffers a woman in a luminous white gown. She’s a copy of a woman who visited Rome two thousand years previously, and is shocked to find herself on Earth. The conceit is very Star Trek, but the plot is more a bittersweet love story, as Flamino, the water carrier and the first to encounter the woman in white, immediately falls for her. There’s also a strong hint of fantasy with the appearance of an all-knowing giant oracle known as the Great Albino.
There are other great stories, all powered by Swanwick’s quirky imagination including “The Last Days of Old Night,” (featuring three giant trolls and a terrific, albeit flawed, female hero) “The White Leopard”, (a twisted love story involving killer bots) “The Warm Equations” (a funny take on an SF canard), “Requiem for a White Rabbit” (I’m not sure the ending works, but getting there is fun), and the title story “The Universe Box” (Swanwick in full madcap mode).
I had fun reading the collection. You probably will as well.
New Weird was a sub-genre that existed for about eight years from the turn of this century. The term was coined by M. John Harrison, and China Mieville was one of the main proponents. If you go by Wikipedia, Swanwick is not viewed as a New Weird writer. And yet, I would argue that The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (which, back in the day, was classified as “Science Fantasy”) is as New Weird as Perdido Street Station and predates that novel by seven years. This is not a hill I will die on, given New Weird is effectively dead as a sub-genre.
Thanks for this. I'm a great admirer of Swanwick's work, and I liked this one a lot.
I also loved "The Iron Dragon’s Daughter."
Glad he's still going strong, and that you like (some of) his writing too!
Yes. A brilliant writer I've long admired. The so-called "new" may have something to do with the relative ages of the writers. Swanwick seems to have a youthful attitude!