Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary (2000) by Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick is an American science fiction author. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he began publishing in the early 1980s.-Biography:...

, a collection of short-short stories (one for each letter of the alphabet), initially ran in The New York Review of Science Fiction

The New York Review of Science Fiction

The New York Review of Science Fiction is a monthly literary journal of science fiction that was established in 1988. It includes works of science fiction criticism, essays, and in-depth critical reviews of new works of fiction and scholarship. It is published by Dragon Press and the managing...

at a rate of one per month for 26 months starting with Issue 111, November 1997. Each story was accompanied by a collage illustration by the journal's editor Kathryn Cramer

Kathryn Cramer

Kathryn Elizabeth Cramer is an American science fiction author, editor, and literary critic.- Life :Cramer grew up in Seattle, and currently lives in Pleasantville, New York with her husband David G. Hartwell and their two children. She is the daughter of physicist John G. Cramer...

. Dragon Press collected these stories in a single volume entitled Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary.

There were two editions, a carefully handbound edition produced for Dragon Press by Henry Wessels with linen cloth spine with handmade paper-covered boards and endpapers with deckled edge and a trade paperback edition printed by Odyssey Press in New Hampshire.

Cover art, interior illustration, and book design of both editions are by Kathryn Cramer. Swanwick published a subsequent volume of short-shorts, which initially appeared on the website The Infinite Matrix and were collected as The Periodic Table of Science Fiction

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 Ununseptium....

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