Michael Swanwick (born November 18, 1950) is an American fantasy and science fiction author who began publishing in the early 1980s.
Writing career
Swanwick's fiction writing began with short stories, starting in 1980 when he published "Ginungagap" in TriQuarterly and "The Feast of St. Janis" in New Dimensions 11. Both stories were nominees for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1981.The Periodic Prime of Michael Swanwick (interview with Michael Swanwick) accessed January 3, 2014 His first novel was In the Drift (an Ace Special, 1985), a look at the results of a more catastrophic Three Mile Island incident, which expands on his earlier short story "Mummer's Kiss". This was followed in 1987 by Vacuum 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 were wetware.
In the 1990s, Swanwick moved towards the intersection between science fiction, fantasy, and magical 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 a Fairyland based on modern America, with elves wearing Armani suits and dragons serving as jet fighters. The main character, a changeling stolen from the real world, struggles to survive a factory, a high school, and a university, all the while being manipulated by a dragon. In Jack Faust (1997), a retelling of the Faust legend, the scholar does not gain magical power but modern scientific knowledge with which he begins the Industrial Revolution centuries early.
In the 2000s, Swanwick wrote several series of flash fictions, beginning with Puck Aleshire's Abecedary, a collection of 26 stories, each titled for a different letter of the alphabet. Other series included The Periodic Table of Science Fiction, 118 stories each themed about a different chemical element. These were originally published in Sci Fiction. Later, The Infinite Matrix published The Sleep of Reason, in which each story was based on one of Goya’s caprichos. In this period, he won several awards for short fiction; between 1999 and 2003, he had nine stories shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and won in 1999, 2000, and 2002.
He also continued to write novels. Bones of the Earth (2002) is a time travel story involving dinosaurs. The Dragons of Babel (2008) is set in the same world as The 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 the posthuman 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 novel City Under the Stars.
His many works of short fiction have been collected in Gravity'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 in Moon Dogs. He has collaborated with other authors on several short works, including Gardner Dozois ("Ancestral Voices", "City of God", "Snow Job") and William Gibson ("Dogfight").
Stations of the Tide won the Nebula for best 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, and Hugos 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.
Nonfiction writing 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 in The Postmodern Archipelago 1997. A book-length interview with Gardner Dozois, Being Gardner Dozois, was published in 2001. He is a prolific contributor to the New York Review of Science Fiction. Swanwick wrote a monograph on James Branch Cabell, What Can Be Saved From the Wreckage?, which was published in 2007 with a preface by Barry Humphries, and a short literary biography of Hope Mirrlees, Hope-in-the-Mist, which was published in 2009.
Television and film Swanwick's short stories "Ice Age" and "The Very Pulse of the Machine" from Tales of Old Earth were adapted for the Netflix series Love, Death + Robots (2019) for its first and third seasons respectively.
Personal life Swanwick thanks his wife, Marianne C. Porter, in many of his books, referring to her as "the M. C. Porter Endowment for the Arts".
He was a friend of Gardner Dozois and Susan Caspar for many years. From this friendship grew Being Gardner Dozois and several collaborations, including the novel City Under the Stars.
Awards Work Year & Award Category Result Ref."The Feast of Saint Janis"1981 Nebula AwardNovelette1981 Locus AwardNovelette"Ginungagap"1981 Nebula AwardNovelette1981 Locus AwardNovelette"Mummer Kiss"1982 SF Chronicle AwardNovelette1982 Locus AwardNovelette1982 Nebula AwardNovelette"Walden Three"1982 Locus AwardNovelette"The Man Who Met Picasso"1983 World Fantasy AwardShort Fiction1983 Locus AwardShort Story"Marrow Death"1985 Nebula AwardNovella1985 Locus AwardNovella"Trojan Horse"1985 Nebula AwardNovelette1985 Locus AwardNovelette"When the Music's Over..."1985 Locus AwardShort Story"Dogfight" (with William Gibson)1986 SF Chronicle AwardNovelette1986 Hugo AwardNovelette1986 Locus AwardNovelette1986 Nebula AwardNoveletteIn The Drift1986 Locus AwardFirst Novel"The Blind Minotaur"1986 Locus AwardShort Story"The Gods of Mars" (with Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann)1986 Nebula AwardShort Story1986 Locus AwardShort Story"The Transmigration of Philip K."1986 Locus AwardShort Story"A Midwinter's Tale"1988 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story1989 Locus AwardShort StoryVacuum Flowers1988 Locus AwardSF Novel"The Dragon Line"1989 Locus AwardNovelette1989 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story7th Place"The Edge of the World"1990 Hugo AwardShort Story1990 World Fantasy AwardShort Fiction1990 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction1990 Locus AwardShort Story"Snow Angels"1990 Locus AwardNovelette"U.F.O."1991 Locus AwardNoveletteStations of the Tide1992 SF Chronicle AwardNovel1992 Nebula AwardNovel1992 John W. Campbell Memorial Award1992 Hugo AwardNovel1992 Locus AwardSF Novel1993 Arthur C. Clarke AwardScience Fiction Novel1999 Kurd Laßwitz AwardForeign WorkGriffin's Egg1992 SF Chronicle AwardNovella1992 Asimov's Readers' PollNovella5th Place1992 Hugo AwardNovella1992 Locus AwardNovella1993 Nebula AwardNovellaGravity's Angels1992 Locus AwardCollection1999 Kurd Laßwitz AwardForeign Work"In Concert"1993 Locus AwardShort Story"Cold Iron"1993 Asimov's Readers' PollNovella2nd Place1995 Nebula AwardNovella"The Changeling's Tale"1994 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story8th Place1995 World Fantasy AwardShort Fiction1995 Locus AwardShort StoryThe Iron Dragon's Daughter1994 Arthur C. Clarke Award1994 World Fantasy AwardNovel1994 Locus AwardFantasy Novel"The Mask"1995 Locus AwardShort Story"Walking Out"1995 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story6th Place1996 Hugo AwardShort Story1996 Locus AwardShort Story"The City of God" (with Gardner Dozois)1996 Locus AwardNovella1996 Asimov's Readers' PollNovella6th Place"Radio Waves"1996 World Fantasy AwardNovella1996 HOMer AwardNovelette1997 Theodore Sturgeon AwardShort Science Fiction1997 Locus AwardNovelette"The Dead"1997 Hugo AwardShort Story1997 Locus AwardShort Story1998 Nebula AwardShort StoryJack Faust1997 Sidewise Award for Alternate HistoryLong Form1997 BSFA AwardNovel1998 Locus AwardFantasy Novel1998 Hugo AwardNovelA Geography of Unknown Lands1998 World Fantasy AwardCollection1998 Locus AwardCollection"Ancestral Voices" (with Gardner Dozois)1998 Asimov's Readers' PollNovella4th Place1999 Locus AwardNovella"Radiant Doors"1998 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story1999 Hugo AwardShort Story1999 Locus AwardShort Story2000 Nebula AwardShort Story"The Very Pulse of the Machine"1998 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story3rd Place1999 Hugo AwardShort Story1999 Locus AwardShort Story"Mother Grasshopper"1998 Locus AwardNovelette"The Wisdom of Old Earth"1998 Locus AwardShort Story"Wild Minds"1999 Hugo AwardShort Story1999 Locus AwardShort Story"Microcosmic Dog"1999 Locus AwardShort Story"Ancient Engines"1999 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story2000 Hugo AwardShort Story2000 Locus AwardShort Story2000 Nebula AwardShort Story"Archaic Planets: Nine Excerpts from the Encyclopedia Galactica" (with Sean Swanwick)1999 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story3rd Place"Scherzo with Tyrannosaur"1999: Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story4th Place2000 Hugo AwardShort Story2000 Locus AwardShort Story2001 Nebula AwardShort Story"Riding the Giganotosaur"1999 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story7th Place"Moon Dogs"2000: HOMer AwardShort Story2000 Asimov's Readers' PollShort Story6th Place2001 Locus AwardShort Story2001 Hugo AwardShort StoryMoon Dogs (collection)2001 Locus AwardCollection"Green Fire"