Michael Swanwick
Swanwick in 2019
Born	(1950-11-18)November 18, 1950 (age 75)
Occupation	Author
Citizenship	United States
Period	1980s–present
Genre	Science fiction, fantasy
Website
michaelswanwick.com

Michael Swanwick (born November 18, 1950)^[1] is an Americanfantasy andscience fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s.^[2]

Swanwick's fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published "Ginungagap" inTriQuarterly and "The Feast of St. Janis" inNew Dimensions 11. Both stories were nominees for theNebula Award for Best Short Story in 1981.^[3]His first novel wasIn the Drift (anAce Special, 1985), a look at the results of a more catastrophicThree Mile Island incident, which expands on his earlier short story "Mummer's Kiss". This was followed in 1987 byVacuum Flowers, an adventurous tour of an inhabited Solar System, where the people of Earth have been subsumed by a cybernetic mass-mind. Some characters’ bodies contain multiple personalities, which can be recorded and edited (or damaged) as if they werewetware.

In the 1990s, Swanwick moved towards the intersection betweenscience fiction,fantasy, andmagical realism.Stations of the Tide (1991) is the story of a bureaucrat's pursuit of a magician on a world soon to be altered by its 50-year tide swell; it is set far in the future, blurring the line between magic and technology.The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993) is a fantasy set in aFairyland based on modern America, with elves wearing Armani suits and dragons serving as jet fighters. The main character, achangeling stolen from the real world, struggles to survive a factory, a high school, and a university, all the while being manipulated by a dragon. InJack Faust (1997), a retelling of theFaust legend, the scholar does not gain magical power but modern scientific knowledge with which he begins theIndustrial Revolution centuries early.

In the 2000s, Swanwick wrote several series offlash fictions, beginning withPuck Aleshire's Abecedary, a collection of 26 stories, each titled for a different letter of the alphabet. Other series includedThe Periodic Table of Science Fiction, 118 stories each themed about a different chemical element. These were originally published inSci Fiction. Later,The Infinite Matrix publishedThe Sleep of Reason, in which each story was based on one ofGoya’scaprichos. In this period, he won several awards for short fiction; between 1999 and 2003, he had nine stories shortlisted for theHugo Award for Best Short Story, and won in 1999, 2000, and 2002.^[4]

He also continued to write novels.Bones of the Earth (2002) is atime travel story involvingdinosaurs.The Dragons of Babel (2008) is set in the same world asThe Iron Dragon's Daughter, although the setting and characters are different;The Iron Dragon's Mother (2019) was a third volume in the series. He has written two novels featuring theposthuman rogues Darger and Surplus, who had already appeared in short stories:Dancing with Bears (2011) concerns their adventures in post-Utopian Russia, and in “Chasing the Phoenix” (2015) they travel to China. After Gardner Dozois's death, Swanwick completed his unfinished novelCity Under the Stars.

His many works of short fiction have been collected inGravity's Angels (1991),Moon Dogs (2000),Tales of Old Earth (2000), and others. A novella,Griffin's Egg, was published in book form in 1991 and is also collected inMoon Dogs. He has collaborated with other authors on several short works, includingGardner Dozois ("Ancestral Voices", "City of God", "Snow Job") andWilliam Gibson ("Dogfight").

Stations of the Tide won theNebula forbest novel in 1991, and several of his shorter works have won awards as well: the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for "The Edge of the World" in 1989, the World Fantasy Award for "Radio Waves" in 1996,^[5] andHugos for "The Very Pulse of the Machine" in 1999, "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" in 2000, "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" in 2002, "Slow Life" in 2003, and "Legions in Time" in 2004.

Swanwick has written about the field as well. He published two long essays on the state of the science fiction ("The User's Guide to the Postmoderns", 1986) and fantasy ("In the Tradition...", 1994), the former of which was controversial for its categorization of new SF writers into "cyberpunk" and "literary humanist" camps. Both essays were collected together inThe Postmodern Archipelago 1997. A book-length interview with Gardner Dozois,Being Gardner Dozois, was published in 2001. He is a prolific contributor to theNew York Review of Science Fiction. Swanwick wrote a monograph onJames Branch Cabell,What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage?, which was published in 2007 with a preface byBarry Humphries,^[6] and a shortliterary biography ofHope Mirrlees,Hope-in-the-Mist, which was published in 2009.

Swanwick's short stories "Ice Age" and "The Very Pulse of the Machine" fromTales of Old Earth were adapted for the Netflix seriesLove, Death + Robots (2019) for its first and third seasons respectively.^[7]

Swanwick thanks his wife, Marianne C. Porter, in all his books, referring to her as "the M. C. Porter Endowment for the Arts".^[8]

He was a friend ofGardner Dozois and Susan Caspar for many years. From this friendship grewBeing Gardner Dozois and several collaborations, including the novelCity Under the Stars.^[9]

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(November 2023)

• In the Drift (1985)
• Vacuum Flowers (1987)
• Stations of the Tide (1991)
• Jack Faust (1997)
• Bones of the Earth (2002)
• City Under the Stars (2020), withGardner Dozois

Iron Dragon's Daughter series

• The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993)
• The Dragons of Babel (2008)
• The Iron Dragon's Mother (2019)

Darger and Surplus series

• Dancing With Bears (2011)
• Chasing the Phoenix (2015)

Collections

• Gravity's Angels (Arkham House Publishers, 1991)
• A Geography of Unknown Lands (1997)
• Moon Dogs (2000)
• Puck Aleshire's Abecedary (2000)
• Tales of Old Earth (Tachyon Publications, 2000)
• Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures (Tachyon Publications, 2003)
• Michael Swanwick's Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna (Tachyon Publications, 2004)
• The Periodic Table of Science Fiction (2005)
• The Dog Said Bow-Wow (Tachyon Publications, 2007)
• The Best of Michael Swanwick (2008)
• It Came Upon a Midnight: Three Brief Midwinter Tales (2011)
• Midwinter Elves: Three Brief Midwinter Tales (2012)
• Solstice Fire (2013)
• Season's Greetings (2014)
• Not So Much, Said the Cat (Tachyon Publications, 2016)
• The Best of Michael Swanwick: Volume Two (2023)

Stories^[a]

Poems

• Hooray for Eileen! (1994)
• Cigar-Box Faust (2003)

• The Postmodern Archipelago (1997)
• Being Gardner Dozois: An Interview by Michael Swanwick (2001)
• What Can Be Saved from the Wreckage?: James Branch Cabell in the Twenty-First Century (2007)
• Hope-in-the-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees (2009)
• October Leaves (2010)
• Hunting the Phoenix (2015)
• Being Gardner Dozois (2018) (with Gardner Dozois)
• 'She Saved Us From World War Three': Gardner Dozois Remembers James Tiptree, Jr. (2020)

Chasing the Phoenix

• Sakers, Don (September 2015). "The Reference Library".Analog Science Fiction and Fact.135 (9):105–108.

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Notes

Wikimedia Commons has media related toMichael Swanwick.

Wikiquote has quotations related toMichael Swanwick.

• Swanwick's weblog
• Michael Swanwick at theInternet Speculative Fiction Database
• Michael Swanwick's online fiction at Free Speculative Fiction Online
• "October Leaves", a photo-story atFlickr

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