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Darger and Surplus #0.5
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Everything old is new again
Great literature has never been this much fun before. The reigning master of short fiction reinvents science fiction and fantasy in a dazzling new collection unlike anything you’ve ever read. Time-traveling dinosaurs wreak havoc on a placid Vermont town. An ogre is murdered in a locked room in Faerie. An uncanny bordello proves as dangerous as it is alluring. Language is stolen from the builders of babel. Those strangely loveable Post-Utopion scoundrels and con men, Darger and Surplus, swindle their way through London, Paris, and Arcadia.
The Dog Said Bow-Wow includes three Hugo Award-winning stories and an original novelette of swashbuckling romance and adventure, “The Skysailor’s Tale.” Ranging from the hardest of science fiction to the highest of fantasy, this irresistible collection amuses and enlightens as only Michael Swanwick can.
Great literature has never been this much fun before. The reigning master of short fiction reinvents science fiction and fantasy in a dazzling new collection unlike anything you’ve ever read. Time-traveling dinosaurs wreak havoc on a placid Vermont town. An ogre is murdered in a locked room in Faerie. An uncanny bordello proves as dangerous as it is alluring. Language is stolen from the builders of babel. Those strangely loveable Post-Utopion scoundrels and con men, Darger and Surplus, swindle their way through London, Paris, and Arcadia.
The Dog Said Bow-Wow includes three Hugo Award-winning stories and an original novelette of swashbuckling romance and adventure, “The Skysailor’s Tale.” Ranging from the hardest of science fiction to the highest of fantasy, this irresistible collection amuses and enlightens as only Michael Swanwick can.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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754 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
May 23, 2012
I must first off state that I am generally not an avid lover of the short story. There are a few writers that I think really excel in the genre and whose stuff I will read without hesitation (Poe, Ashton Smith, Howard, Doyle, Leiber), but in general I am often underwhelmed by the format. Keep that in mind when I say that Swanwick’s collection _The Dog Said Bow-Wow_ was quite good, but didn’t blow me away or make me into a believer.
The various “Darger & Surplus” tales (“The Dog Said Bow-Wow”, “The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Fun”, and “Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play”), relating the adventures of a pair of con-men in a world suffering the effects of a computer apocalypse and subsequent love-affair with bio-engineering, were all very enjoyable and entertaining, though perhaps sometimes a bit light on substance. “The Skysailor’s Tale” was an enjoyable reminiscence from the titular sailor that had equal parts melancholy, adventure, romance and fun and seemed to occur in a pan-dimensional steampunk setting. “The Bordello in Faerie” read something like a Neil Gaiman tale, if that author had any real edge to him, and was able to fulfil the majority of the possible male sexual fantasies involved with the fae while managing to invert them at the same time; it also had an ending that I totally did not see coming. “Urdumheim” rounds out my set of favourites with a very well done mythic tale of the rise of humanity and its first confrontation with the chthonic demons and monsters from whom they thought they had escaped. Tied in with this is a consideration of language and its power and an ultimate turning on its head of the story of the Tower of Babel.
The remaining stories more or less struck me as fairly “ho-hum” and didn’t strike my fancy, either as exciting stories in and of themselves, or exemplars of outstanding technique. They filled out the collection, but a few of them could easily have been dropped without the whole suffering much of a loss. Happily, there weren’t any glaring examples of my most hated kind of ‘modern’ short stories, namely literary wanking, where the sole point seems to be for the author to dazzle with his literary technique or twist endings with nothing else to show for it (though the first story “’Hello,’ Said the Stick” came close.)
The various “Darger & Surplus” tales (“The Dog Said Bow-Wow”, “The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Fun”, and “Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play”), relating the adventures of a pair of con-men in a world suffering the effects of a computer apocalypse and subsequent love-affair with bio-engineering, were all very enjoyable and entertaining, though perhaps sometimes a bit light on substance. “The Skysailor’s Tale” was an enjoyable reminiscence from the titular sailor that had equal parts melancholy, adventure, romance and fun and seemed to occur in a pan-dimensional steampunk setting. “The Bordello in Faerie” read something like a Neil Gaiman tale, if that author had any real edge to him, and was able to fulfil the majority of the possible male sexual fantasies involved with the fae while managing to invert them at the same time; it also had an ending that I totally did not see coming. “Urdumheim” rounds out my set of favourites with a very well done mythic tale of the rise of humanity and its first confrontation with the chthonic demons and monsters from whom they thought they had escaped. Tied in with this is a consideration of language and its power and an ultimate turning on its head of the story of the Tower of Babel.
The remaining stories more or less struck me as fairly “ho-hum” and didn’t strike my fancy, either as exciting stories in and of themselves, or exemplars of outstanding technique. They filled out the collection, but a few of them could easily have been dropped without the whole suffering much of a loss. Happily, there weren’t any glaring examples of my most hated kind of ‘modern’ short stories, namely literary wanking, where the sole point seems to be for the author to dazzle with his literary technique or twist endings with nothing else to show for it (though the first story “’Hello,’ Said the Stick” came close.)
October 15, 2024
This is a collection of sixteen stories from the early years of the current century, most of which first appeared in Asimov's SF magazine which was edited by Gardner Dozois. It leads off with a hilarious introduction by Terry Bisson... or is it really something else? "Hello," Said the Stick is the first story, a very good one, if a bit of a single-note. The titular story follows, an award-winning one that's the first Darger & Surplus caper. Slow Life is a good hard-sf tale and reminded me of classic Hal Clement. Triceratops Summer is a lovely little Bradbury-esque dinosaur story. Tin Marsh strikes me as a variant of Asimov's famous three laws, with some really nasty characters. An Episode of Stardust swings back to fantasy and is a fun trickster caper. The Skysailor's Tale is original to the book and is a melancholy story of lost worlds and alternatives. Legions in Time isn't much like Jack Williamson's version, but it's cute. The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport brings back the intrepid rogues Darger & Surplus, not to mention a catwoman, in a scam/scheme involving the lost Eiffel Tower. The Bordello in Faerie is about, well, supernatural sex. The Last Geek is about the antiquated carnie profession, not the more modern computer and pop culture enthusiasts. Boys and Girls, Come Out to Play is the third story to feature Darger & Surplus, and they learn a lot about myth and history, and sex and violence. A Great Day for Brontosaurs is another fun dino-romp with an infrastructure of a very old sf trope... (note the characters' names). Dirty Little War is a short Viet Nam parable. A Small Room in Koboldtown was one of my favorites, a noirish Sam Spade-like detective murder mystery with unusual characters. The final story is Urdumheim, the only one I really disliked in the book. I thought it was dull and dismal and way too long, like something Robert Silverberg might have written left-handed when he was asleep. On the other hand, lots of other people have singled it out as superior, and the editors obviously liked it or they wouldn't have given the prized final spot, so your mileage will most likely vary. Overall, it's a very well-rounded and entertaining book, a nice blend of sf and fantasy, with brightly drawn characters and clever, literate prose.
October 4, 2007
A really fun collection by Swanwick, for the most part lighter in tone than his death haunted collection Tales of the Old Earth. These tales use tropes of science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and trickster tales but plays with them and the reader’s expectation of the story. There is great range from dark jokes, pastoral visions, to epic battles. Highlights include all the Darger and Surplus tales (three of them…I hope Swanwick makes of novel on them), who are con men in a flamboyant bioengineering crazed future, following a computer based disaster that is hinted at, that combines our collective myths and history with future shock to craft surreal, dreamlike vision of future London, Paris, and Arcadia. “Slow Life” reads almost like rewrite of his classic “Very Pulse of the Machine”, opening it to a new range of colors. “The Skysailor’s Tale” which could be a lost chapter from Pynchon’s Mason and Dixon or Against The Day is bizarre steampunk fantasia riddled with remorse and dread of our history’s bloodshed. “Legions of Time” reminds me of 30’s pulp fiction (and “Metropolis”) and also Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories. And of special note is “Urdumheim” a bizarre creation myth combining elements of the Old Testament, Tower of Babel, and other Middle Eastern myths in a story almost nonstop invention and frightening beauty. This is one of the best things I have read by Swanwick.
September 2, 2014
Sixteen stories ranging from short story to novelette, from creational mythology to hard science fiction. Three stories in the collection ("The Dog Said Bow-Wow," "Slow Life," and "Legions in Time") won the Hugo, several others were nominated.
The anthology demonstrates Swanwick's sense of humor and inventiveness packed in his literary prose. Not every story is great, some of them I simply didn't get into. But some of them are outstanding and the combination worked very good for me.
I'll start with the last and best story:
★★★★★ Urdumheim
This cosmogonic etiology was one of the strongest stories in the anthology - probably not for everyone but I love those sometimes pathetic sometimes grand tellings. One sample would be The Silmarillion which has a similar theme: How language is central for the world (and there even creates it).
The Bible tells us in the Book of Genesis that the confusion of tongues is a punishment for the hubris of building the Tower of Babel - the word for "confusion".
Swanwick's story tries to accomplish the opposite: A single language is a bad thing because it might be stolen by demons and reduce humans to wild creatures.
We witness the very creation of the world - music, dance, war, aren't introduced with heavy pathos but with unexceptional incidents: An unremarkable straight line scratched in the mud is commented with a dry "thus did history begin". Only death is "invented" with enough pathos referencing Swanwick's anti-war stories.
Acting protagonists are taken from Mesopotamian myths. For example, we see Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and warfare, Enlil, the god of storm, or king Nimrod who is a powerful sorcerer.
The story is quite heavy compared to other stories in the anthology, especially the con-stories of Darger&Surplus. But Swanwick handles it with grace and great imagination. One scene comes to mind when one of the Firsts should describe how Urdumheim was originally. Other authors might have answered that question with a short explanation. But Swanwicks "shows": there was no language at that time, so she opened her mouth and envisions the horrible darkness of the place which they fled.
The ending is quite logically the construction of the Tower of Babel as a defense against the demons.
Swanwick seems to throw everything he has got into this story: romance, schemes, traitors, murder, action, and warfare all combined and mixed with his great imagination.
It is interesting that this pathos concludes the anthology because it is also a beginning.
I choose the collection because I liked his light-hearted story of two conmen Darger and Surplus in Rogues. This collection contains three additional stories with those "heroes": The eponymous and Hugo-winning "The Dog Said Bow-Wow", "The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport", and "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play".
★★★★★ for The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Published in Asimov's October/November 2001 (sorry guys, there is no GR entry for that particular volume), it won the Hugo 2002 and was nominated for Nebula Short Story in the same year (beside of several other nominations).
It is one of several stories following the two con-men Surplus and his partner Darger who is a genetically engineered intelligent and talking dog. They remind me a little bit of Leiber's Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser. Ben nailed it with the "baroque" or Victorian SF: Alone Surplus' longer name "Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux" is a perfect demonstration of that crazy, mixed-up future world. I'd even call it Science Fantasy because technology is so advanced that it might be magic - evident from fashion worn at "Queen Gloriana"'s court: "boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin."
The two protagonists invent cons in several European cities where human won a war with artificial intelligence. They had to shut-down communication devices which even now contain those demonic A.Is.
This time, they are around Buckhingham palace - the queen is one gigantic maggot, her bodyguards are apes.
How I love that setting!
It is full of action, narrow escapes, schemes and James Bond like romance. A distinct narrative voice and intelligent, witty dialogues round it up. Entirely entertaining, though maybe a bit too light of substance.
★★★ for The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
This time, Darger and Surplus are in Paris, conning the recovery of the Eiffel tower. Cat-woman, an intelligent talking pistol, hah!
★★★★ for Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
Darger and Surplus are in Greece. The winner takes it all: think of all the obelisks and statues that the Roman and British and German Empire took from ancient countries. Now, Greece has been a mighty country and stolen Lord Nelson's statue and the Lions from British Empire...
But there always is a bigger fish, and I found it funny that it is (once again) an African country creating those pheromone gods like Dionysos. I loved it and hope to read another con-story located in Istanbul.
At the same time, I am impressed by a much deeper theme Swanwick shows us very briefly at the end of the story: the impossibility to return to the places one loves best.
★★ for "Hello," Said the Stick
This 8 pages story felt more like an overlong, underwhelming joke than a short-story. I didn't get involved with the shallow, dumb protagonist or with the stick to call it "cute". The only thing making it ok for me was the twisted world-building - something like science fantasy. And it was short enough to not regret it.
★★★★★ for Slow Life
Published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2002, this novelette won the Hugo 2003.
Swanwick's stories are set in a broad range of SF styles. This Hard SF starts as an exploration mission on Titan focusing on Lizzy O'Brien ballooning over Titan's surface. They find a chemical soup of ethan, methane, and longer Polysomething chains in the Saturn moon's ocean - leading to musings about possible life. Until one of the crew members begins to dream...
Unusual and elegant start, great science parts, but the best for me where the disturbing insights into human nature and the dream discussions. It is interleaved with witty dialogues with "unintelligent" (illiterate) life on Earth.
★★1/2 for Triceratops Summer
Ben wrote: "Science has pretty much worked out that triceritopses never existed..."
That was 2010 when they found out that Torosaurus and Triceratops are the same genus and Torosaurus is the mature form. But that doesn't mean that Triceratops didn't exist, right? It is a kind of un-learning like scratching out Pluto as a planet. Here is a nice article about saving Triceratops :)
What do you do when there is no tomorrow?
Swanwick takes the sujet of changing time-lines to ask how an elder pair would behave if they knew that nothing they did the next couple of months would matter in the long term because everything will be reverted by a time-machine.
What would you do in such a situation? Go to work? Do the garden? Read books?
Dozois' answer is: It matters more how you spend your time than how much time you have to spend.
Swanwick's answer seems to be "marriage, hard work, community, and simple human kindness".
The other things are the dinosaurs, of course - it starts with them:
The dinosaurs looked all wobbly in the summer heat shimmering up from the pavement. There were about thirty of them, a small herd of what appeared to be Triceratops. They were crossing the road
- don't ask me why - so I downshifted and brought the truck to a halt, and waited.
Waited and watched.
Dumb like sheep. Not green as often illustrated but colorful like butterflies. But they didn't have the awesomeness of Jurassic Park.
The last sentence in the citation demonstrates the slowness and style of the story. No fighting against the time laboratory or against government. Slow and caring about the two protagonists. I don't need action in a story but the tension arc and resolution were just meh.
The story was included in THREE best-of anthologies in 2005/6 - Strahan's, Dozois', and Horton's. And I don't get it. Maybe it is my personal taste. Maybe 2005 wasn't such a good year for SF. Maybe it is favouritism. Maybe it is the money. But I certainly would have selected something else.
In the end I nearly liked it. There certainly is some quality in the narration and the raised questions keep sticking in your head. It might be the case that the story needs time to ripen. But one day after reading it, it was only ok.
And it worked as part of the anthology!
★★★★ Tin Marsh
Prospectors on heat-scoured Venus get a chip implanted which controls in a kind of Asimov's laws their behaviour. When a landslide disrupts one of those chips, one of the space-suited prospectors isn't barred from living out his hatred anymore and a cat-and-mouse play evolves.
I'd call it Western-SF: (spoiler due to profanity)
I feared a basic "how those laws make problems and can be circumvented", but the story turned out differently. A short thriller keeping you on the edge.
★★ An Episode of Stardust
A bizarre con-men feary story on the unseelie court mixed with modern technology. I was tired when reading this and couldn't get into it.
Amusing story but nothing insightful to be found.
It felt more like a bit scratched out from a larger novel - maybe like The Iron Dragon's Daughter or the newer The Dragons of Babel.
☆ for The Skysailor’s Tale
Steampunk set in early 19th century Philadelphia where the indepence war was lost. This story wasn't published before and is the longest in the anthology.
★★★ The Last Geek
Once again, Swanwick demonstrates his diversity - this time with joke in the form of a short story.
A professor of "South Culture" invites the last practicioner of his profession, a carnival geek to talk about good old South and demonstrate his art. He is proclaimed as American as John Wayne or Buzz Aldrin, a living cultural treasure and an acknowledged national icon. Of course, this leads to the pointe of the joke.
I don't want to over-analyze it, but I think, it is not only a joke but also holds up a mirror on strange things that academics investigate.
What I'm wondering is .
In an interview Swanwick tells us
People think I'm having a laugh at my own expense when I say it's autobiographical, but when first I finished it and read it through, I honest to God did think, «Le Geek, c'est moi!»
Interesting, huh?
The framing story starts with a fireside story where an elder skysailor regrets that he mist his mad father's burial, leading to a longish meditation about his father. It carries on with his travelogue of adventures on an airship including piratery, alternate worlds, and some X-rated scene.
I'm sorry, but I didn't get into the story and started skipping pages. It felt longish, weak, not incomplete, a start of a novel that didn't come to life. Some editorial work would have done good.
I'm looking forward if you can get more out of it and I'll have to re-read it when I'm better concentrated.
★★★1/2 for The Bordello in Faerie
After the boys in Ironbrock come of age, they adventure to the faerie bordello across the river - a kind of inverted Dunsany's world-building. Protagonist Ned finally gets to experience what all the fuss is about and he becomes obsessed in faerie sex.
There are some explicit scenes but nothing adult haven't come across. And if you think it is faerie porn, then you have to read it again because it is more than just that: Because Ned could be the neightbour guy obsessed with online gaming, his car or similar. Swanwick develops a very good characterization how he stumbles into it, doesn't recognize his obsession and doesn't know how to get out but needs help.
The story develops very nicely with a good tension arc and a definite ending. I especially liked devious Gilbrig the imp and loved the world-building.
★★★★ A Small Room in Koboldtown
This seems to be a locked room murder mystery, but Swanwick only plays with the genre but doesn't stay true to it: In a locked room mystery, readers should be able to solve the puzzle given the clues. The fantasy aspects of haunts, ogres and kobolds didn't allow to do that, at least not with the world-building he delivered in this story. Maybe his novel The Dragons of Babel (this story is an excerpt) gives more context.
But as I'm not into detective stories, I didn't care about that failed attempt and enjoyed greatly the Harry Potteresque fantasy/detective setting.
★★ A Great Day for Brontosaurs
Short short story turning Jurassic Park in a twist. Similar to "Hello, Said the Stick" but not as predictable but with a less interesting setting. Swanwick didn't get me with this one, but it was brief enough that I could forgive this story.
It worked very well in the anthology - contrast that to a collection of grotesque faerie story after faerie story and you know what I mean.
The anthology demonstrates Swanwick's sense of humor and inventiveness packed in his literary prose. Not every story is great, some of them I simply didn't get into. But some of them are outstanding and the combination worked very good for me.
I'll start with the last and best story:
★★★★★ Urdumheim
This cosmogonic etiology was one of the strongest stories in the anthology - probably not for everyone but I love those sometimes pathetic sometimes grand tellings. One sample would be The Silmarillion which has a similar theme: How language is central for the world (and there even creates it).
The Bible tells us in the Book of Genesis that the confusion of tongues is a punishment for the hubris of building the Tower of Babel - the word for "confusion".
Swanwick's story tries to accomplish the opposite: A single language is a bad thing because it might be stolen by demons and reduce humans to wild creatures.
We witness the very creation of the world - music, dance, war, aren't introduced with heavy pathos but with unexceptional incidents: An unremarkable straight line scratched in the mud is commented with a dry "thus did history begin". Only death is "invented" with enough pathos referencing Swanwick's anti-war stories.
Acting protagonists are taken from Mesopotamian myths. For example, we see Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love and warfare, Enlil, the god of storm, or king Nimrod who is a powerful sorcerer.
The story is quite heavy compared to other stories in the anthology, especially the con-stories of Darger&Surplus. But Swanwick handles it with grace and great imagination. One scene comes to mind when one of the Firsts should describe how Urdumheim was originally. Other authors might have answered that question with a short explanation. But Swanwicks "shows": there was no language at that time, so she opened her mouth and envisions the horrible darkness of the place which they fled.
The ending is quite logically the construction of the Tower of Babel as a defense against the demons.
Swanwick seems to throw everything he has got into this story: romance, schemes, traitors, murder, action, and warfare all combined and mixed with his great imagination.
It is interesting that this pathos concludes the anthology because it is also a beginning.
I choose the collection because I liked his light-hearted story of two conmen Darger and Surplus in Rogues. This collection contains three additional stories with those "heroes": The eponymous and Hugo-winning "The Dog Said Bow-Wow", "The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport", and "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play".
★★★★★ for The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Published in Asimov's October/November 2001 (sorry guys, there is no GR entry for that particular volume), it won the Hugo 2002 and was nominated for Nebula Short Story in the same year (beside of several other nominations).
It is one of several stories following the two con-men Surplus and his partner Darger who is a genetically engineered intelligent and talking dog. They remind me a little bit of Leiber's Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser. Ben nailed it with the "baroque" or Victorian SF: Alone Surplus' longer name "Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux" is a perfect demonstration of that crazy, mixed-up future world. I'd even call it Science Fantasy because technology is so advanced that it might be magic - evident from fashion worn at "Queen Gloriana"'s court: "boots and gloves cut from leathers cloned from their own skin."
The two protagonists invent cons in several European cities where human won a war with artificial intelligence. They had to shut-down communication devices which even now contain those demonic A.Is.
This time, they are around Buckhingham palace - the queen is one gigantic maggot, her bodyguards are apes.
How I love that setting!
It is full of action, narrow escapes, schemes and James Bond like romance. A distinct narrative voice and intelligent, witty dialogues round it up. Entirely entertaining, though maybe a bit too light of substance.
★★★ for The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
This time, Darger and Surplus are in Paris, conning the recovery of the Eiffel tower. Cat-woman, an intelligent talking pistol, hah!
★★★★ for Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
Darger and Surplus are in Greece. The winner takes it all: think of all the obelisks and statues that the Roman and British and German Empire took from ancient countries. Now, Greece has been a mighty country and stolen Lord Nelson's statue and the Lions from British Empire...
But there always is a bigger fish, and I found it funny that it is (once again) an African country creating those pheromone gods like Dionysos. I loved it and hope to read another con-story located in Istanbul.
At the same time, I am impressed by a much deeper theme Swanwick shows us very briefly at the end of the story: the impossibility to return to the places one loves best.
★★ for "Hello," Said the Stick
This 8 pages story felt more like an overlong, underwhelming joke than a short-story. I didn't get involved with the shallow, dumb protagonist or with the stick to call it "cute". The only thing making it ok for me was the twisted world-building - something like science fantasy. And it was short enough to not regret it.
★★★★★ for Slow Life
Published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2002, this novelette won the Hugo 2003.
Swanwick's stories are set in a broad range of SF styles. This Hard SF starts as an exploration mission on Titan focusing on Lizzy O'Brien ballooning over Titan's surface. They find a chemical soup of ethan, methane, and longer Polysomething chains in the Saturn moon's ocean - leading to musings about possible life. Until one of the crew members begins to dream...
Unusual and elegant start, great science parts, but the best for me where the disturbing insights into human nature and the dream discussions. It is interleaved with witty dialogues with "unintelligent" (illiterate) life on Earth.
★★1/2 for Triceratops Summer
Ben wrote: "Science has pretty much worked out that triceritopses never existed..."
That was 2010 when they found out that Torosaurus and Triceratops are the same genus and Torosaurus is the mature form. But that doesn't mean that Triceratops didn't exist, right? It is a kind of un-learning like scratching out Pluto as a planet. Here is a nice article about saving Triceratops :)
What do you do when there is no tomorrow?
Swanwick takes the sujet of changing time-lines to ask how an elder pair would behave if they knew that nothing they did the next couple of months would matter in the long term because everything will be reverted by a time-machine.
What would you do in such a situation? Go to work? Do the garden? Read books?
Dozois' answer is: It matters more how you spend your time than how much time you have to spend.
Swanwick's answer seems to be "marriage, hard work, community, and simple human kindness".
The other things are the dinosaurs, of course - it starts with them:
The dinosaurs looked all wobbly in the summer heat shimmering up from the pavement. There were about thirty of them, a small herd of what appeared to be Triceratops. They were crossing the road
- don't ask me why - so I downshifted and brought the truck to a halt, and waited.
Waited and watched.
Dumb like sheep. Not green as often illustrated but colorful like butterflies. But they didn't have the awesomeness of Jurassic Park.
The last sentence in the citation demonstrates the slowness and style of the story. No fighting against the time laboratory or against government. Slow and caring about the two protagonists. I don't need action in a story but the tension arc and resolution were just meh.
The story was included in THREE best-of anthologies in 2005/6 - Strahan's, Dozois', and Horton's. And I don't get it. Maybe it is my personal taste. Maybe 2005 wasn't such a good year for SF. Maybe it is favouritism. Maybe it is the money. But I certainly would have selected something else.
In the end I nearly liked it. There certainly is some quality in the narration and the raised questions keep sticking in your head. It might be the case that the story needs time to ripen. But one day after reading it, it was only ok.
And it worked as part of the anthology!
★★★★ Tin Marsh
Prospectors on heat-scoured Venus get a chip implanted which controls in a kind of Asimov's laws their behaviour. When a landslide disrupts one of those chips, one of the space-suited prospectors isn't barred from living out his hatred anymore and a cat-and-mouse play evolves.
I'd call it Western-SF: (spoiler due to profanity)
I feared a basic "how those laws make problems and can be circumvented", but the story turned out differently. A short thriller keeping you on the edge.
★★ An Episode of Stardust
A bizarre con-men feary story on the unseelie court mixed with modern technology. I was tired when reading this and couldn't get into it.
Amusing story but nothing insightful to be found.
It felt more like a bit scratched out from a larger novel - maybe like The Iron Dragon's Daughter or the newer The Dragons of Babel.
☆ for The Skysailor’s Tale
Steampunk set in early 19th century Philadelphia where the indepence war was lost. This story wasn't published before and is the longest in the anthology.
★★★ The Last Geek
Once again, Swanwick demonstrates his diversity - this time with joke in the form of a short story.
A professor of "South Culture" invites the last practicioner of his profession, a carnival geek to talk about good old South and demonstrate his art. He is proclaimed as American as John Wayne or Buzz Aldrin, a living cultural treasure and an acknowledged national icon. Of course, this leads to the pointe of the joke.
I don't want to over-analyze it, but I think, it is not only a joke but also holds up a mirror on strange things that academics investigate.
What I'm wondering is .
In an interview Swanwick tells us
People think I'm having a laugh at my own expense when I say it's autobiographical, but when first I finished it and read it through, I honest to God did think, «Le Geek, c'est moi!»
Interesting, huh?
The framing story starts with a fireside story where an elder skysailor regrets that he mist his mad father's burial, leading to a longish meditation about his father. It carries on with his travelogue of adventures on an airship including piratery, alternate worlds, and some X-rated scene.
I'm sorry, but I didn't get into the story and started skipping pages. It felt longish, weak, not incomplete, a start of a novel that didn't come to life. Some editorial work would have done good.
I'm looking forward if you can get more out of it and I'll have to re-read it when I'm better concentrated.
★★★1/2 for The Bordello in Faerie
After the boys in Ironbrock come of age, they adventure to the faerie bordello across the river - a kind of inverted Dunsany's world-building. Protagonist Ned finally gets to experience what all the fuss is about and he becomes obsessed in faerie sex.
There are some explicit scenes but nothing adult haven't come across. And if you think it is faerie porn, then you have to read it again because it is more than just that: Because Ned could be the neightbour guy obsessed with online gaming, his car or similar. Swanwick develops a very good characterization how he stumbles into it, doesn't recognize his obsession and doesn't know how to get out but needs help.
The story develops very nicely with a good tension arc and a definite ending. I especially liked devious Gilbrig the imp and loved the world-building.
★★★★ A Small Room in Koboldtown
This seems to be a locked room murder mystery, but Swanwick only plays with the genre but doesn't stay true to it: In a locked room mystery, readers should be able to solve the puzzle given the clues. The fantasy aspects of haunts, ogres and kobolds didn't allow to do that, at least not with the world-building he delivered in this story. Maybe his novel The Dragons of Babel (this story is an excerpt) gives more context.
But as I'm not into detective stories, I didn't care about that failed attempt and enjoyed greatly the Harry Potteresque fantasy/detective setting.
★★ A Great Day for Brontosaurs
Short short story turning Jurassic Park in a twist. Similar to "Hello, Said the Stick" but not as predictable but with a less interesting setting. Swanwick didn't get me with this one, but it was brief enough that I could forgive this story.
It worked very well in the anthology - contrast that to a collection of grotesque faerie story after faerie story and you know what I mean.
March 19, 2016
A collection of mostly enjoyable and sometimes funny short stories representing a dog’s breakfast of fantasy and science fiction topics. Several Hugo winners, but that means next to nothing these days.
Swanwick’s story telling is often better than his stories. The collection dragged in the later samples. Several stories feature Swanwick’s con artist duo: Darger and Surplus.
Readers beware, many of these stories would be rated R for pornographic scenes. Some are inherent in the subject matter but most seem more graphic than necessary for the telling of the story. Some readers will like the porn; others won’t. You’ve been warned.
(Updated March 19, 2016 to correct typo.)
Swanwick’s story telling is often better than his stories. The collection dragged in the later samples. Several stories feature Swanwick’s con artist duo: Darger and Surplus.
Readers beware, many of these stories would be rated R for pornographic scenes. Some are inherent in the subject matter but most seem more graphic than necessary for the telling of the story. Some readers will like the porn; others won’t. You’ve been warned.
(Updated March 19, 2016 to correct typo.)
June 13, 2020
Lo stile non mi ha convinto molto...
February 2, 2017
With the exception of a couple of stories, I didn't care for this collection at all. But the few stories I liked, I really liked.
"Triceratops summer" and "A great day for brontosaurus" share the dinosaur topic, but have a very different feeling. The first is very sweet, with a hint of nostalgia. The second is very short and a twist ending.
My favourite story was "Legions in time". I can't resist time travelling, and the main character was very good.
Pity the rest of the stories didn't really appeal to me.
"Triceratops summer" and "A great day for brontosaurus" share the dinosaur topic, but have a very different feeling. The first is very sweet, with a hint of nostalgia. The second is very short and a twist ending.
My favourite story was "Legions in time". I can't resist time travelling, and the main character was very good.
Pity the rest of the stories didn't really appeal to me.
February 17, 2008
Swanwick's one of the best science fiction writers around, and perhaps unequalled in the short story there. He is both a blast to read and a genre bomb-thrower, writing stories (like this collections "Legions in Time") which pointedly recreate some generic styles and conventions yet fully inhabit them as well. I find myself fully engrossed (what a story!) and reflexively analyzing (what kind of story?).
April 16, 2008
Absolutely fantastic short stories. Swanwick writes with a verve and imagination I have rarely seen in sf, and his fantasy is always fresh and fiesty. The only story I didn't love was "The Skysailor's Tale," which meandered.
October 21, 2014
A fantastic collection of tours-de-force. Highly recommended.
October 22, 2019
Sizzle but little steak. I checked this out (along with a newer one, NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT) from the local library having read "'Hello' Said the Stick" a while back. That's a clever little story, a twisty mash-up of Prime Directive sf fuckery and high fantasy curses and quests.
Other amusements included the post-apocalyptic biopunk Darger & Surplus stories, and the urban-fantasy stories "An Episode of Stardust," "The Bordello in Faerie," and "A Small Room in Koboldtown," although that last reminded me a bit too much of the Netflix movie BRIGHT... 😬
As for the rest, "Slow Life," "Tin Marsh," and "Legions in Time" had decent ideas but seemed to drop away just as it got interesting. "A Skysailor's Tale" was tantalizing but stretched out and boring. "The Last Geek" and "Dirty Little War" were moody but brief. "A Great Day for Brontosaurs" was at least clever enough to also be short, but is fairly obvious once you read it.
The overall problem is the collision between hype and reality. This book is covered in exuberant praise, from known-good authors to boot: "Great literature has never been this much fun before," says the back cover (jeez); Jeff VanderMeer says it's "funny, clever, mysterious, and possessing hidden depths"; the Kirkus review says Swanwick wrings "fresh, unexpected consequences from standard sf notions." And on and on. I get that every book has blurbs but it seems too much.
Is it because we're in $CURRENT_YEAR and Ted Chiang possibly mounted Swanwick's head on his parlor wall? Far from unexpected, most of the stories seemed like fairly conventional sf/fantasy stuff to me, if sometimes decked out in unusual details ("The Bordello in Faerie," e.g.), and the best of them ("Triceratops Summer" and "Urdumheim") read like Chiang could have done them better.
Of course, from me "this is like a lesser Chiang" is still 3.5 star material, but I'm marking it further down because the sfnal stories ("Urdumheim" partially excepted) don't *develop* the sfnal elements towards a "rational understanding of the (story) universe," my current genre-gold-standard. Moreover, I felt like I didn't "get it" - was there actually something "possessing hidden depths" that I missed? After my tear through the short fiction of Sheckley, Varley, Haldeman, Williams, Chiang, Sprague de Camp, Del Rey, Knight, Wilhelm, Brackett, Kuttner, Moore, Zelazny, Smith, Laumer, Wolfe, Ellison, and others, just in the last couple years?
In short: woof.
Other amusements included the post-apocalyptic biopunk Darger & Surplus stories, and the urban-fantasy stories "An Episode of Stardust," "The Bordello in Faerie," and "A Small Room in Koboldtown," although that last reminded me a bit too much of the Netflix movie BRIGHT... 😬
As for the rest, "Slow Life," "Tin Marsh," and "Legions in Time" had decent ideas but seemed to drop away just as it got interesting. "A Skysailor's Tale" was tantalizing but stretched out and boring. "The Last Geek" and "Dirty Little War" were moody but brief. "A Great Day for Brontosaurs" was at least clever enough to also be short, but is fairly obvious once you read it.
The overall problem is the collision between hype and reality. This book is covered in exuberant praise, from known-good authors to boot: "Great literature has never been this much fun before," says the back cover (jeez); Jeff VanderMeer says it's "funny, clever, mysterious, and possessing hidden depths"; the Kirkus review says Swanwick wrings "fresh, unexpected consequences from standard sf notions." And on and on. I get that every book has blurbs but it seems too much.
Is it because we're in $CURRENT_YEAR and Ted Chiang possibly mounted Swanwick's head on his parlor wall? Far from unexpected, most of the stories seemed like fairly conventional sf/fantasy stuff to me, if sometimes decked out in unusual details ("The Bordello in Faerie," e.g.), and the best of them ("Triceratops Summer" and "Urdumheim") read like Chiang could have done them better.
Of course, from me "this is like a lesser Chiang" is still 3.5 star material, but I'm marking it further down because the sfnal stories ("Urdumheim" partially excepted) don't *develop* the sfnal elements towards a "rational understanding of the (story) universe," my current genre-gold-standard. Moreover, I felt like I didn't "get it" - was there actually something "possessing hidden depths" that I missed? After my tear through the short fiction of Sheckley, Varley, Haldeman, Williams, Chiang, Sprague de Camp, Del Rey, Knight, Wilhelm, Brackett, Kuttner, Moore, Zelazny, Smith, Laumer, Wolfe, Ellison, and others, just in the last couple years?
In short: woof.
January 18, 2026
Michael Swanwick writes (at least, in his short stories) delightfully weird science fiction that often borders on fantasy. This volume has a few of his far-future "Darger and Surplus" stories (one of which the volume is named after), which follow a couple of con-artist rogues on adventures in which they never succeed in obtaining riches, but always end up in trouble and escape by the skin of their teeth. Once you adjust to the quirky 18th century mannerisms, gratituitous bawdiness, and humor, they are a blast to read. Other stories that stood out to me are the opening story "Hello, Said the Stick" about a talking weapon in an apocalyptic wasteland, the elegiac "Triceratops Summer", the tense hard sci-fi thriller "Tin Marsh", and the odd mythic fantasy "Urdumheim" that closes the book.
Only a couple of stories in here would qualify as true hard-sci fi - besides "Tin Marsh", there's a solid astronaut survival story called "Slow Life", and that's about it. The rest are just bizarre, well-written fun. If you are in the mood for hard sci-fi, I would direct you to the excellent work of Ted Chiang, Alastair Reynolds, or Greg Egan. If, however, you are are on-board with Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that any technology, sufficiently advanced, will be indistinguishable from magic, then dive right in to these weird-ass stories.
Only a couple of stories in here would qualify as true hard-sci fi - besides "Tin Marsh", there's a solid astronaut survival story called "Slow Life", and that's about it. The rest are just bizarre, well-written fun. If you are in the mood for hard sci-fi, I would direct you to the excellent work of Ted Chiang, Alastair Reynolds, or Greg Egan. If, however, you are are on-board with Arthur C. Clarke's maxim that any technology, sufficiently advanced, will be indistinguishable from magic, then dive right in to these weird-ass stories.
February 17, 2018
I still remember reading The Iron Dragon's Daughter when I was in Grade Three and the remarkable impressions – for good or ill – that it left on me. The indulgent mixture of mythological categories, nuanced understandings of gender and sexuality, and willingness to push genres into each other until they play nice (or fall apart under the stress) makes for good reading.
I'll be the first to concede that it's not for everyone. (Maybe.) But before anyone else could tell me otherwise, Swanwick told me that fantasy was dark and that it was cruel, but also that it was understandable as a complex and thoughtful reflection of our own world, first and foremost, and that I should never treat banal idealism as if it were natural, or necessary, or good. I had read Tolkein and found out that some people like their fantasy heroic and racist. Reading Swanwick was the remedy to Tolkein's soft and seductive poison: it saw gender, it felt the violence of hierarchies, it tried its hardest to imaginatively invest in lives conceived of as rich, fiercely mythological, but always within comprehension.
Swanwick is always pushing, thinking, and sometimes his writing is riveting. This collection of short stories is a dizzying mixture of genres and plot types; I confess, I skipped one or two but on the whole found it quite entertaining. There are rarely dull moments when he's around.
I'll be the first to concede that it's not for everyone. (Maybe.) But before anyone else could tell me otherwise, Swanwick told me that fantasy was dark and that it was cruel, but also that it was understandable as a complex and thoughtful reflection of our own world, first and foremost, and that I should never treat banal idealism as if it were natural, or necessary, or good. I had read Tolkein and found out that some people like their fantasy heroic and racist. Reading Swanwick was the remedy to Tolkein's soft and seductive poison: it saw gender, it felt the violence of hierarchies, it tried its hardest to imaginatively invest in lives conceived of as rich, fiercely mythological, but always within comprehension.
Swanwick is always pushing, thinking, and sometimes his writing is riveting. This collection of short stories is a dizzying mixture of genres and plot types; I confess, I skipped one or two but on the whole found it quite entertaining. There are rarely dull moments when he's around.
February 6, 2018
When these stories worked for me, Swanwick's imaginative world-building, his humanistic optimism, and his skill as a writer combine beautifully, creating pieces that are memorable and moving (I especially liked "Triceratops Summer" and "The Skysailor's Tale"). When they didn't, the details of his worlds felt inorganic and clever for the sake of cleverness, and the characters felt flat and predictable - his often surprising belief in human kindness is still there, but the stories themselves just left me unmoved. But I might not be the best judge - I found the popular Darger and Surplus stories pretty empty and the graphic sexuality in some of the pieces adolescent and embarrassing, so readers with more of a taste for detailed science fiction set dressing or Elven erotica might have a better time.
September 27, 2022
I bought this book because I enjoyed one of the Darger and Surplus stories in the Rogues collection ed. by George R. R. Martin. It did not disappoint. It has several Darger and Surplus adventures that were all fun, and I loved many of the other stories as well. The variety was a big plus for me. One or two stories were a bit graphic for me, but overall I loved the book.
November 27, 2014
'Science fiction and fantasy's most adept short-story author reinvents some classic themes in an engaging collection that includes three of his Hugo award-winning stories. These smart expansions of traditional themes summon dinosaurs, dragons, peril in space, myths, faeries, and time travel, each undergoing artful alchemy to create serious genre literature that is playful, original, and clever. Comprising 16 imaginative and mischievous adventures, including the previously unpublished novelette, "The Skysailor's Tale," this adroit gathering makes a collection to truly revel in.
The collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow contains the following stories:
"'Hello,' Said the Stick"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"The Dog Said Bow-Wow"
(Hugo Winner for Short Story 2002, Nebula Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2002)
"Slow Life"
(Hugo Winner for Novelette 2003, Locus Nominee for Novelette 2003)
"Triceratops Summer"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2006)
"Tin Marsh"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2007)
"An Episode of Stardust"
"The Skysailor's Tale"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2008)
"Legions in Time"
(Hugo Winner for Novelette 2004, Locus Nominee for Novelette 2004)
"The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"The Bordello in Faerie"
"The Last Geek"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2005)
"Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2006)
"A Great Day for Brontosaurs"
"Dirty Little War"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"A Small Room in Koboldtown"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2008, Locus Winner for Short Story 2008)
"Urdumheim"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2008)'
Blurb from the 2007 Tachyon Publications paperback edition.
A collection of Swanwick's trademark quirky tales from the early to mid Noughties. Very stylish and individual pieces.
"'Hello,' Said the Stick" Analog Mar 2002
An intelligent talking stick is found by a soldier in a futuristic war, but whose side is the stick on?
"The dog said bow-wow" Asimovs Oct 2001
"Slow life" Analog Dec 2002
An exploratory team discover life below the oceans of Titan, a meeting which inflicts drastic change on the Titans, and augurs similar changes for human society.
"Triceratops summer" Amazon.com Aug 2005
Dinosaurs let loose from a University campus entails the world being put into a time-loop. Effectively people can live whatever lives they wish for three months before the world is reset to the point before the dinosaurs escaped.
"Tin marsh" Asimovs Aug 2006
A prospector on Venus is driven crazy by the mentally imposed restrictions and his partner's teasing and tries to murder her.
"An episode of stardust" Asimovs Jan 2006
One of Swanwick's odd and elaborate surreal tales in which a donkey-eared fey tells the tale of how he fell into partnership with a criminal vixen.
"The Skysailor's Tale" (The Dog Said Bow-Wow, 2007)
In a historical US which is not quite ours, a young man enlists on 'The Empire', a vast craft held aloft by individual balloons. Atmospheric and somewhat moving.
"Legions in time" Asimovs April 2003
Another surreal bit of cleverness which features a woman who is paid to sit in a room and watch a cupboard door for 8 hours a day, but one day her curiosity gets the better of her, and she becomes embroiled in a war fought through time.
"The Little Cat Laughed To See Such Sport" Asimovs Oct 2002
Darger and Surplus engage themselves in a con, trying to sell a dying billionaire the location of the lost Eiffel Tower, dismantled after it was occupied by transdimensional demons attempting to invade Earth. A genetically modified cat throws their plans and emotions into disarray.
"The Bordello in Faerie" Postscripts Autumn 2006
A dark and atmospheric erotic fairy tale in which a young man becomes addicted to visiting a bordello where he engages in sex with various supernatural creatures.
"The Last Geek" Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, (Aug 2004,
An odd piece in which the last geek is paid to give a lecture at a university.
"Girls and Boys, Come Out To play" Asimovs July 2005
Another Surplus and Darger tale involving genetically engineered greek mythological figures, including Bacchus
"A Great Day for Brontosaurs" Asimovs May 2002
A scientist proposes a way to genetically backengineer birds in order to create dinosaurs, but is that what is really going on?
"Dirty Little War" In the Shadow of the Wall: An Anthology of Vietnam Stories That Might Have Been, Jul 2002
A dinner party somehow overlaps with a battlefield in one of Swanwick's more surreal stories.
"A Small Room in Koboldtown" Asimovs April 2007
A supernatural detective story, in which a non-human pitfighter is found dead in a hotel room, and the only credible suspect is the ghost janitor. Can Will le Fey solve the case and save his ghost partner's brother from jail?
"Urdumheim" F&SF Oct 2007
Swanwick's variation on a creation myth sees Nimrod creating humans and language and then having to wage a war against the Igigi from Mount Ararat.
The collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow contains the following stories:
"'Hello,' Said the Stick"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"The Dog Said Bow-Wow"
(Hugo Winner for Short Story 2002, Nebula Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2002)
"Slow Life"
(Hugo Winner for Novelette 2003, Locus Nominee for Novelette 2003)
"Triceratops Summer"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2006)
"Tin Marsh"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2007)
"An Episode of Stardust"
"The Skysailor's Tale"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2008)
"Legions in Time"
(Hugo Winner for Novelette 2004, Locus Nominee for Novelette 2004)
"The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2003, Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"The Bordello in Faerie"
"The Last Geek"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2005)
"Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2006)
"A Great Day for Brontosaurs"
"Dirty Little War"
(Locus Nominee for Short Story 2003)
"A Small Room in Koboldtown"
(Hugo Nominee for Short Story 2008, Locus Winner for Short Story 2008)
"Urdumheim"
(Locus Nominee for Novelette 2008)'
Blurb from the 2007 Tachyon Publications paperback edition.
A collection of Swanwick's trademark quirky tales from the early to mid Noughties. Very stylish and individual pieces.
"'Hello,' Said the Stick" Analog Mar 2002
An intelligent talking stick is found by a soldier in a futuristic war, but whose side is the stick on?
"The dog said bow-wow" Asimovs Oct 2001
"Slow life" Analog Dec 2002
An exploratory team discover life below the oceans of Titan, a meeting which inflicts drastic change on the Titans, and augurs similar changes for human society.
"Triceratops summer" Amazon.com Aug 2005
Dinosaurs let loose from a University campus entails the world being put into a time-loop. Effectively people can live whatever lives they wish for three months before the world is reset to the point before the dinosaurs escaped.
"Tin marsh" Asimovs Aug 2006
A prospector on Venus is driven crazy by the mentally imposed restrictions and his partner's teasing and tries to murder her.
"An episode of stardust" Asimovs Jan 2006
One of Swanwick's odd and elaborate surreal tales in which a donkey-eared fey tells the tale of how he fell into partnership with a criminal vixen.
"The Skysailor's Tale" (The Dog Said Bow-Wow, 2007)
In a historical US which is not quite ours, a young man enlists on 'The Empire', a vast craft held aloft by individual balloons. Atmospheric and somewhat moving.
"Legions in time" Asimovs April 2003
Another surreal bit of cleverness which features a woman who is paid to sit in a room and watch a cupboard door for 8 hours a day, but one day her curiosity gets the better of her, and she becomes embroiled in a war fought through time.
"The Little Cat Laughed To See Such Sport" Asimovs Oct 2002
Darger and Surplus engage themselves in a con, trying to sell a dying billionaire the location of the lost Eiffel Tower, dismantled after it was occupied by transdimensional demons attempting to invade Earth. A genetically modified cat throws their plans and emotions into disarray.
"The Bordello in Faerie" Postscripts Autumn 2006
A dark and atmospheric erotic fairy tale in which a young man becomes addicted to visiting a bordello where he engages in sex with various supernatural creatures.
"The Last Geek" Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, (Aug 2004,
An odd piece in which the last geek is paid to give a lecture at a university.
"Girls and Boys, Come Out To play" Asimovs July 2005
Another Surplus and Darger tale involving genetically engineered greek mythological figures, including Bacchus
"A Great Day for Brontosaurs" Asimovs May 2002
A scientist proposes a way to genetically backengineer birds in order to create dinosaurs, but is that what is really going on?
"Dirty Little War" In the Shadow of the Wall: An Anthology of Vietnam Stories That Might Have Been, Jul 2002
A dinner party somehow overlaps with a battlefield in one of Swanwick's more surreal stories.
"A Small Room in Koboldtown" Asimovs April 2007
A supernatural detective story, in which a non-human pitfighter is found dead in a hotel room, and the only credible suspect is the ghost janitor. Can Will le Fey solve the case and save his ghost partner's brother from jail?
"Urdumheim" F&SF Oct 2007
Swanwick's variation on a creation myth sees Nimrod creating humans and language and then having to wage a war against the Igigi from Mount Ararat.
January 5, 2018
(This was a Book Club book, and I didn't read all the stories; of the ones I read, my favorite was the Triceratops Summer.)
December 17, 2017
This tale takes place in a future where animals have been modified into thinking beings.
August 7, 2018
"hello said the stick" alone makes it 5 stars. Never before have I read a short story that does so much in so little.
"Urdumheim" is also a absolute classic.
"Urdumheim" is also a absolute classic.
Want to read
July 19, 2020elibrary
Want to read
May 5, 2024Didn't read this book. The book read was Bow Wow by Spencer Quinn. The Swanick book is a mis posting.
December 10, 2016
3.5 stars.
October 11, 2016
Good stories, some better than others.
January 8, 2012
Finished Michael Swanwick's short story collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow.
Something I find really annoying about short story collections is that it is pretty much impossible to find listings of which stories are in which collection. Not even on the author's homepage, whose bibliography is horribly out of date...if you're stuck in a country where is is almost impossible to buy English books in physical bookshops, and you can't just open the books and compare, that means you end up with having stuff twice...which I don't like. :(
Anyway...the man's a freaking genius. I think he could write stories about anything, but I love three of his themes: dinosaurs, faerie, and a pair on extraordinary conmen. All of them are represented in this collection, and then some...
Honorable mentions:
The Dog Said Bow-Wow, the first of the Darger and surplus stories. Surplus, an anthropomorphically modified dog from America, and Darger, a young British human, end up in post-utopian London, studded with weird and wonderful tech, but no more computers or internet, since AIs tried to take over. They immediately like each other and decide to run a big con together. Things just go a bit awry...as they do. Extremely hilarious.
Slow Life: a group of scientists explore Titan. One of them, Lizzie, gets into some trouble and discovers something incredible, which will have repercussions science, religion, and the definition of life itself.
Triceratops Summer: one day, something goes wrong in a lab dealing with timetravel, and suddenly dinosaurs roam the countryside of Great Britain. Lovely story.
Tin Marsh: a psychological thriller about a duo of prospectors on Venus, who go a bit off the rails in the endless solitude...pretty creepy.
An Episode of Stardust: this is a bit of a prequel to Swanwick's novel The Dragons of Babel (which rocks too), set in a 20th Century version of Faerie, where things are recognisable, but just a bit different than we're used to. We learn a bit of backstory about one of the protagonists of the novel. I just adore that world...I want more stories about it! :)
The Little Cat Laughed To See Such Sport: the second Darger and surplus story. This time, they're in Paris, and trying to con somebody into buying the non-existent remains of the Eiffel Tower. Again, things don't quite come out as expected...
The Bordello in Faerie: about what it says on the can (with a bit of a twist). Very...interesting...'nough said.
Girls and Boys Come Out To Play: the third Darger and Surplus story. This time they're in Greece and meet gods, Jewish satyrs and other weird creatures. Really really good :)
A Small Room in Koboldtown: A murder investigation in Faerie.
Urdumheim: a take on the Summerian myths of the creation of the world and civilisation.
That's 10 really good stories out of 16 in the book. The other ones are not bad in any way either, just a bit unsatisfactorily "WTF" in places.
Highly recommended for a good variation of themes and topics :)
8.5/10
Something I find really annoying about short story collections is that it is pretty much impossible to find listings of which stories are in which collection. Not even on the author's homepage, whose bibliography is horribly out of date...if you're stuck in a country where is is almost impossible to buy English books in physical bookshops, and you can't just open the books and compare, that means you end up with having stuff twice...which I don't like. :(
Anyway...the man's a freaking genius. I think he could write stories about anything, but I love three of his themes: dinosaurs, faerie, and a pair on extraordinary conmen. All of them are represented in this collection, and then some...
Honorable mentions:
The Dog Said Bow-Wow, the first of the Darger and surplus stories. Surplus, an anthropomorphically modified dog from America, and Darger, a young British human, end up in post-utopian London, studded with weird and wonderful tech, but no more computers or internet, since AIs tried to take over. They immediately like each other and decide to run a big con together. Things just go a bit awry...as they do. Extremely hilarious.
Slow Life: a group of scientists explore Titan. One of them, Lizzie, gets into some trouble and discovers something incredible, which will have repercussions science, religion, and the definition of life itself.
Triceratops Summer: one day, something goes wrong in a lab dealing with timetravel, and suddenly dinosaurs roam the countryside of Great Britain. Lovely story.
Tin Marsh: a psychological thriller about a duo of prospectors on Venus, who go a bit off the rails in the endless solitude...pretty creepy.
An Episode of Stardust: this is a bit of a prequel to Swanwick's novel The Dragons of Babel (which rocks too), set in a 20th Century version of Faerie, where things are recognisable, but just a bit different than we're used to. We learn a bit of backstory about one of the protagonists of the novel. I just adore that world...I want more stories about it! :)
The Little Cat Laughed To See Such Sport: the second Darger and surplus story. This time, they're in Paris, and trying to con somebody into buying the non-existent remains of the Eiffel Tower. Again, things don't quite come out as expected...
The Bordello in Faerie: about what it says on the can (with a bit of a twist). Very...interesting...'nough said.
Girls and Boys Come Out To Play: the third Darger and Surplus story. This time they're in Greece and meet gods, Jewish satyrs and other weird creatures. Really really good :)
A Small Room in Koboldtown: A murder investigation in Faerie.
Urdumheim: a take on the Summerian myths of the creation of the world and civilisation.
That's 10 really good stories out of 16 in the book. The other ones are not bad in any way either, just a bit unsatisfactorily "WTF" in places.
Highly recommended for a good variation of themes and topics :)
8.5/10
September 16, 2015
A fairly eclectic anthology from Michael Swanwick. The last thing I remember reading by him was the ultimately forgettable Vacuum Flowers, which must have been before I started reviewing in 2007, since it’s not in my index, and wow, 2007 was eight years ago now.
This collection gathers some of his more notable stories from the 2000s, the most prominent of which are the first three entries in what you might call his “Darger and Surplus series,” featuring the titular partners in crime – an Englishman and an anthropomorphic American dog – as they travel around Europe in a biopunk future. I didn’t particularly like them at first; they take place in an ill-defined world which largely seems to serve as an outlet for Swanwick’s overactive imagination, resulting in a kind of anything-goes setting which inevitably emphasises style over substance. But by the third story I was starting to warm to the characters, and I wouldn’t be averse to reading the novel-length story Swanwick has apparently written (or is writing?) about them.
Other stories of note include “’Hello,’ Said The Stick,” about a wandering soldier who finds a piece of advanced technology which may or may not have his best interests at heart; “The Bordello in Faerie,” about a mill worker who ventures across the river every night to a brothel in the faerie realm and finds himself increasingly enchanted by it, even as he realises he is the prostitute and not the customer; and “Legions in Time,” a creepy sci-fi mystery story which reminded me at first of the early works of Stephen King. But the anthology’s standout is the novelette-length “Urdumheim,” a really fantastic reworking of the Tower of Babel legend, in which a group of people who have escaped an evil, inhuman kingdom find themselves assailed by their old enemies once again, who appear as beasts and steal the words they have invented to communicate. Keep an eye out for the insane king who sometimes quotes Bushisms, a reminder that 2007 was really not so long ago after all…
This collection gathers some of his more notable stories from the 2000s, the most prominent of which are the first three entries in what you might call his “Darger and Surplus series,” featuring the titular partners in crime – an Englishman and an anthropomorphic American dog – as they travel around Europe in a biopunk future. I didn’t particularly like them at first; they take place in an ill-defined world which largely seems to serve as an outlet for Swanwick’s overactive imagination, resulting in a kind of anything-goes setting which inevitably emphasises style over substance. But by the third story I was starting to warm to the characters, and I wouldn’t be averse to reading the novel-length story Swanwick has apparently written (or is writing?) about them.
Other stories of note include “’Hello,’ Said The Stick,” about a wandering soldier who finds a piece of advanced technology which may or may not have his best interests at heart; “The Bordello in Faerie,” about a mill worker who ventures across the river every night to a brothel in the faerie realm and finds himself increasingly enchanted by it, even as he realises he is the prostitute and not the customer; and “Legions in Time,” a creepy sci-fi mystery story which reminded me at first of the early works of Stephen King. But the anthology’s standout is the novelette-length “Urdumheim,” a really fantastic reworking of the Tower of Babel legend, in which a group of people who have escaped an evil, inhuman kingdom find themselves assailed by their old enemies once again, who appear as beasts and steal the words they have invented to communicate. Keep an eye out for the insane king who sometimes quotes Bushisms, a reminder that 2007 was really not so long ago after all…
January 18, 2012
Yet Another Great Collection of Short Stories from Michael Swanwick
One of our great masters of short fiction in any genre, Michael Swanwick demonstrates the artistic depth and range of his talent in his latest short story collection “The Dog Said Bow-Wow”. Included are three Hugo-Award winning stories, amidst a compelling collection of riveting tales about dinosaurs in Vermont (“Triceratops Summer”), a deadly game of hide and seek on inhospitable Venus (“Tin Marsh”), an ogre murdered in the magical realm of Faerie (“A Small Room in Koboldtown”) and a young man’s unusual sexual encounters in Faerie (“The Bordello in Faerie”). Among the most memorable tales are the three chronicling the “post-Utopian” adventures and misdeeds of confidence men Darger and Surplus in London (“The Dog Said Bow-Wow”), Paris (“The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport) and Arcadia (“Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play”). And then there is a most masterful work of steampunk fiction, “The Skysailor’s Tale” which makes its debut in this very collection.
Those doubting that Swanwick is one of the greatest living American writers of fiction should regard this collection as required essential reading, since it reaffirms his status as among the finest prose stylists of science fiction and fantasy. A writer of lesser talent could not pull off Swanwick’s poignantly sweet tale about a herd of Triceratops visiting a Vermont town (“Triceratops Summer”) or have it end like this:
“ So there we stood in the late summer of our lives. Out of nowhere, we’d been given a vacation from our ordinary lives, and now it was almost over. A pessimist would have said that we were just waiting for oblivion. But Delia and I didn’t see it that way. Life is strange. Sometimes it’s hard, and other times it’s painful enough to break your heart. But sometimes it’s grotesque and beautiful. Sometimes it fills you with wonder, like a Triceratops sleeping in the moonlight.”
(Reposted from my 2012 Amazon review)
One of our great masters of short fiction in any genre, Michael Swanwick demonstrates the artistic depth and range of his talent in his latest short story collection “The Dog Said Bow-Wow”. Included are three Hugo-Award winning stories, amidst a compelling collection of riveting tales about dinosaurs in Vermont (“Triceratops Summer”), a deadly game of hide and seek on inhospitable Venus (“Tin Marsh”), an ogre murdered in the magical realm of Faerie (“A Small Room in Koboldtown”) and a young man’s unusual sexual encounters in Faerie (“The Bordello in Faerie”). Among the most memorable tales are the three chronicling the “post-Utopian” adventures and misdeeds of confidence men Darger and Surplus in London (“The Dog Said Bow-Wow”), Paris (“The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport) and Arcadia (“Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play”). And then there is a most masterful work of steampunk fiction, “The Skysailor’s Tale” which makes its debut in this very collection.
Those doubting that Swanwick is one of the greatest living American writers of fiction should regard this collection as required essential reading, since it reaffirms his status as among the finest prose stylists of science fiction and fantasy. A writer of lesser talent could not pull off Swanwick’s poignantly sweet tale about a herd of Triceratops visiting a Vermont town (“Triceratops Summer”) or have it end like this:
“ So there we stood in the late summer of our lives. Out of nowhere, we’d been given a vacation from our ordinary lives, and now it was almost over. A pessimist would have said that we were just waiting for oblivion. But Delia and I didn’t see it that way. Life is strange. Sometimes it’s hard, and other times it’s painful enough to break your heart. But sometimes it’s grotesque and beautiful. Sometimes it fills you with wonder, like a Triceratops sleeping in the moonlight.”
(Reposted from my 2012 Amazon review)
January 28, 2015
С Майклом Суонуиком (в России скрывающимся под фамилией Суэнвик) у меня связаны теплые туманные воспоминания по поводу «Дочери железного дракона», культовой книжки среди любителей фантастики, но это было так давно, что я ничего не помню, конечно. Сборник короткой прозы я взял на распродаже, в общем, на автопилоте, на этом вот ностальгическом ощущении.
А рассказы оказались очень хорошие и, что всегда здорово для сборников, разнообразные и стилистически, и тематически: от плутовских приключений Дарджера и сэра-собаки Блэкторпа Рэйвенскэна де Плас Пресью, твердой фантастики Slow Life и Tin Marsh и чувственной порно-новеллы про бордель фэйри до замечательных лирических историй The Skysailor's Tale и Triceratops Summer (мой любимый рассказ) и интересной интерпретации легендарного сюжета в повести Urdumheim (наверное, самая мощная вещь сборника).
В азбучной серии «Звезды новой фантастики» в 2015-м запланировано три книги Суонуика, в том числе два сборника рассказов. Рекомендую обратить внимание, кто еще не обратил.
А рассказы оказались очень хорошие и, что всегда здорово для сборников, разнообразные и стилистически, и тематически: от плутовских приключений Дарджера и сэра-собаки Блэкторпа Рэйвенскэна де Плас Пресью, твердой фантастики Slow Life и Tin Marsh и чувственной порно-новеллы про бордель фэйри до замечательных лирических историй The Skysailor's Tale и Triceratops Summer (мой любимый рассказ) и интересной интерпретации легендарного сюжета в повести Urdumheim (наверное, самая мощная вещь сборника).
В азбучной серии «Звезды новой фантастики» в 2015-м запланировано три книги Суонуика, в том числе два сборника рассказов. Рекомендую обратить внимание, кто еще не обратил.
July 27, 2016
The Dog Said Bow-Wow, a name of a story in this collection, tells a fair amount about Michael Swanwick as an author. The fact that it refers to a steampunk-like world where the said dog is a well-mannered canine walking, mostly, on two feet and conning aristocrats along side his human partner, tells much more. However, that only gives a glimpse of the humour and cleverness that Swanwick stories so deftly contain, not so much on the variety and depth they equal contain.
Of the sixteen stories, three follows the adventures of the mentioned Surplus and Darger, but aside from these whimsical adventure tales, the reader is also treated with myths, fairy tales and loving marriages all served with portions of fantastic. While humour is ever present as is cleverness in which Swanwick twists often fairly familiar elements into new stories, he also changes pace and moves between genres effortlessly. By the end of the collection one might familiar with his style to a point, but certainly does not feel like had been reading the same story over again or even twice.
Of the sixteen stories, three follows the adventures of the mentioned Surplus and Darger, but aside from these whimsical adventure tales, the reader is also treated with myths, fairy tales and loving marriages all served with portions of fantastic. While humour is ever present as is cleverness in which Swanwick twists often fairly familiar elements into new stories, he also changes pace and moves between genres effortlessly. By the end of the collection one might familiar with his style to a point, but certainly does not feel like had been reading the same story over again or even twice.
January 12, 2015
A delightful collection of science fiction short stories. Swanwick's control of tone in his writing is remarkably precise, and I also liked his essentially sympathetic view of his characters (whether they end up happily or otherwise). The book includes three Darger and Surplus stories - 'The Dog Said Bow-Wow'; 'The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport'; and 'Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play' - and these were my favorites. Darger and Surplus are roguish con-artists in a post-post-Singularity/ steampunk/ Apocalypse (and Surplus is an uplifted dog); the setting would be interesting even if the characters and plot weren't, but they're great too. Most of the others are well-constructed stories, each built around a single clever or insightful idea.
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