The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
Brooke Bolander's first novella takes two tragic events in American history - the tragedy of the Radium Girls in 1917-1920 and Topsy the Elephant who was electrocuted to death in 1903 - and combines them into an alternate history story that is just as tragic as its component parts....and so so moving. This will easily make my Hugo list for 2018 next year barring some crazy good novellas coming out.
A quick plot summary of this 90 page Novella: in this world, elephants are known to be sentient animals, with long memories and the ability to communicate via sign language. In the early 1900s, when the devastating effects of Radium become known when they poison the girls making radium watches, humans turn to elephants to work with the material, figuring they would be able to withstand more of the radioactive materials. There, a dying poisoned girl named Regan trains the elephant Topsy in working with the Radium, and the two form a bond that will change the world. And in the future, a researcher named Kat attempts to negotiate with the elephant community to use them to mark off sites where radioactive material is buried, due to humanity's association of radioactivity with the creatures.....
Again, this is not a light novella - even if you had no knowledge of the real world inspirations behind the story, the story makes it clear from the start that the main characters in the past are well...doomed, and the only question is how it is going to play out. But the story is still incredibly moving both in the past as events play to their inevitable conclusion, as well as in the future as Kat realizes that the humans really haven't learned or remembered from their tragic mistakes. And interspersed are songs from the elephants, which just add to the poignancy. And yeah the messages here are depressingly relevant to our world today, just as in the best SF/F.
Seriously, this is a must read and at 90 pages, it won't take long for you to read it. But it's well worth the effort.
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