Here
Bones of the
Earth by Aaron Bergman
"Swanwick's answers to the questions of life and humanity won't
come as a surprise to any reader, but his skill lies in how he
answers them through the recognizably human actions of the
characters rather than through the pages of philosophical
verbiage that seems so common in SF."
Bones of the
Earth by Richard Horton
"It combines several well-integrated (and rather original) SFnal ideas
with some neat scientific speculation, interesting characters, a compelling
plot, and a powerfully argued theme about the nature of science and the
human urge to do science."
Bones of the
Earth by David Kennedy
"I think I just read a classic. [...] This reviewer (living in the Cenozoic
era, Quaternary period, Holocene epoch, Modern age) suggests that this novel
is a significant addition to the SF literature on time travel, and recommends
it very highly."
A Geography
of Unknown Lands by Nick Gevers
"Michael Swanwick's second collection, A Geography of Unknown
Lands, is like a master class in literary alchemy."
Gravity's
Angels by James Nicoll (caution - spoilers)
"If my comments seem sparse, it is because I find it a lot
harder to talk usefully about stories which are generally
flawless."
Griffin's
Egg by Peter D. Tillman (caution - mild spoilers)
"This is Swanwick at his hard-SF best, in a setting that's a
prequel to «Trojan Horse» and Vacuum Flowers."
The Iron
Dragon's Daughter by Roz Kaveney (caution - spoilers)
"Anyone picking up Swanwick's first fantasy novel expecting
comfort will soon find their fingers seared; there are many
themes in this expertly complex book, but one of them is
that of refusal, a refusal embodied not least in the attitude
to cliched handling of generic tropes."
Jack
Faust by Nick Gevers
"Having deconstructed, inverted, and reinvented various subgenres
of SF and Fantasy in his previous works, Swanwick now goes straight
for SF's jugular."
Moon
Dogs by Nick Gevers
"That Moon Dogs is in a real sense a clean-up collection
of work that failed to fit in elsewhere, and yet is of such a high standard
anyway, is a tribute to Swanwick’s consistently great skill at shorter
lengths ..."
Informal Remarks on Stations of the Tide
by Michael Andre-Driussi (caution - heavy spoilers)
"... there is a recurrence of the theme that planet-based data
systems are bad [...] and orbital-based data systems are good ..."
Tales
of Old Earth by Nick Gevers
"The nineteen stories gathered here ... are restless,
cogent, sardonic, precise, superb examples of
narrative craftsmanship in miniature ..."
Swanwick on The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Analysis (caution - spoilers)
The Elf Lord, the triune Goddess, and Jane's dilemma
Swanwick on The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Analysis (caution - spoilers)
Nested metaphors, dog's tails, needle-boys, and more!
Swanwick on The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Analysis (caution - spoilers)
Philip Pullman and the Spiral Castle
Swanwick on The Iron Dragon's Daughter - Analysis
Is The Iron Dragon's Daughter elfpunk?
Elsewhere
Being Gardner Dozois by Paul Di Filippo at SciFi.com
"What could have all too easily under lesser hands become a
tedious vanity project has instead blossomed into an essential,
captivating, authentically human text, one that will appeal to a
large audience."
Being Gardner Dozois by Nick Gevers at Locus Online
"What Being Gardner Dozois does present is a complete
picture of Dozois the Writer, by means of a blow-by-blow,
text-by-text discussion of his each and every work of
fiction, short and long, major and minor. This is very
effective criticism, personal, systematic, candid."
Bones of the Earth by John Clute at Infinite Matrix
"Here is another slippery fish from Michael Swanwick [...] just when
you finally work out what kind of SF or fantasy novel you're reading,
just when you begin to understand why what's happening how to whom,
the floor caves in and your mind falls through."
Cigar Box
Faust by John Toon at infinity plus
"What unites these various pieces is a lively sense of humour, to say nothing of
the fertile imagination needed to produce so much material..."
Cigar Box
Faust by Eileen Gunn at Fantastic Metropolis
"In each story, the author seems to be completely at your disposal, with no goal
other than your amusement... -- there's no sugar here, rather, an intoxicating,
slightly tart, effervescence."
Cigar Box
Faust by Greg L. Johnson
"What sets Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures apart is how often Swanwick
is able to transcend that tendency and create little stories that are complete and
whole in themselves, and not just a set-up for the final sentence."
Field Guide to the Mesozoic Fauna
by Marianne Plumridge at infinity plus
"Mesozoic Megafauna is a delightful collection of dinosaur stories exposing these
reptiles to a myriad of entertaining, if highly improbable, situations."
Gravity's
Angels by David Kennedy (caution - spoilers)
"Gravity's Angels presents a Baker's Dozen of Swanwick's short stories from the
1980s. They're good. They're very, very good."
Gravity's
Angels by James Schellenberg (caution - spoilers)
"In Gravity's Angels, I can see some of the ideas that Swanwick developed more fully
later; some of the stories are rough and interesting, others not polished enough...
a way to trace the development of the career of a major writer in the genre."
In
the Drift by Michael Rawdon
"The final effect of [In the Drift] is to produce a sort of dark side of
The Lord of the Rings, as characters struggle to save
what they can in a land which cannot be saved ..."
Iron
Dragon's Daughter by David Langford (caution - spoilers)
"... let's say that, like Little, Big yet far removed from it,
The Iron Dragon's Daughter gives one hell of a jolt to received
ideas of what is possible in fantasy."
Iron
Dragon's Daughter by James Schellenberg
"The experience of reading this book is a shock of the first
order, and I was left feeling uneasy [...] Swanwick has no
signposts to reassure the reader ..."
Iron
Dragon's Daughter by Jeff Topham at Fantastic Metropolis (caution - spoilers)
"Swanwick's vision is relentlessly innovative, and much of the
excitement of the novel comes from the synergy created from the
juxtaposition of the fantastic and the contemporary."
Jack
Faust by Keith Brooke at infinity plus
"No-one can accuse Michael Swanwick of lack of ambition:
[Jack Faust] compresses the history of the last
five centuries into only a decade or so of the sixteenth century."
Jack
Faust by John Clute at Science Fiction Weekly
(includes a short review of A Geography of Unknown Lands)
"[Jack Faust is] all about the cost of getting what you
want. 'Do anything, take anything,' the old saying has it:
'Take anything. And pay for it.'"
Jack
Faust by Steven Silver
"On a personal front, the [...] Faust at the beginning of the
novel is much more interesting and sympathetic than the Faust
shown at the end ..."
Periodic
Table of Science Fiction by RM Harman at Strange Horizons
"...speculative fiction is, at its roots, a literature of ideas, of daring what-ifs.
These shorts draw on the rich imagination of one author, and distill his ideas into
their most elemental forms."
Stations
of the Tide by Eric Raymond
"This is a spectacularly good SF novel which plays all the approved
literary games with a sure and controlled hand [...] There's more
resonance and idea content in the 252 pages of this book than in most
Hugo-winning meganovels."
Tales of Old Earth
by Lisa Dumond
"The surprising thing, really, is that some of the stories in this collection have
not been nominated [for major awards]."
Vacuum
Flowers by Peter D. Tillman at infinity plus
"Vacuum Flowers remains an exemplary modern space-opera,
one of the best in the extraordinary reinvention of my favorite
subgenre during the past two decades."