Artwork by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
32 pages
Published 2004
Read March 13
Rating: 2.5 out of 5
This chapbook — scarcely more than a pamphlet — collects two sequences of dinosaur-themed microfiction. The first, “Michael Swanwick’s Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna,” was published in 2003 as a promotional tie-in for Swanwick’s Bones of the Earth. The second, “Five British Dinosaurs,” was originally published in Interzone in 2002. I spent $9 on a secondhand copy — that’s almost 30 cents per page.
“Guide” includes thirteen vignettes, each centered on a particular extinct genus or species. “The Thief of Time: Eoraptor: early Carnian” was an out-of-the-gate highlight. Most of the vignettes are delightful, but a few of them are dated by the kind of sweeping nationalist assumptions certain authors liked to include twenty-odd years ago.
Each fic is scarcely a morsel, a scene-setting plus a punchline. It’s a shame they were written to promote a book that took place mostly in boardrooms, because Bones of the Earth would have benefited immensely from some colorful interstitials along these lines, while these yarns would benefit from just a bit more room to breathe.
“Five British Dinosaurs” is a more focused sequence of, well, British punchlines: pixies inadvertently leading Mary Ann Mantell to the first Iguanodon teeth, a bone-headed pachycephalosaur sitting in Parliament, a Megalosaurus stopping by for tea, and so on. I’d love to see more stories along these lines, fleshed out and given more life than this tasting-menu format permits.
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