The Periodic Table of Science Fiction

The Periodic Table of Science Fiction is a collection of 118 very short stories by science fiction author Michael Swanwick. Each story is named after an element in the periodic table, including the then-undiscovered element 117.

The stories were commissioned to run on Eileen Gunn's The Infinite Matrix^[1] but were published in the Sci Fiction section of SciFi.com, between 2001 and 2003.^[2] The stories were published as they were written, about which Swanwick said, "It made the sequence into a kind of performance art, something akin to being a trapeze artist, which is a possibility not normally open to a writer."^[3]

The print edition was published in 2005, in two signed limited editions: one slipcase hardback edition with a print run of 200, and one hardback edition with a print run of 500 books.^[4] In 2009, Swanwick posted the stories on a weblog dedicated to the purpose.^[5]

The theme of each story in the collection is inspired by the element it is named after. The book also includes an afterword by the author, and a foreword by Theodore Gray who was awarded the IgNobel Prize for Chemistry in 2002.

References

External links

• Theodore Gray's Wooden Periodic Table
• Serbian translation
• "'The Periodic Table of Science Fiction". Official site (Sci Fi Channel). Archived from the original on September 24, 2005.