The Only Harmless Great Thing

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best NoveletteFinalist 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 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 are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage radioactivity and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.