MAMMOTHS OF THE GREAT PLAINS

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Mammoths of the Great Plains is a science fiction novella with very little science in it.  It is an alternate history novel that is almost more secret history.  In fact, putting labels on Eleanor Arnason's story is an exercise in futility, for Mammoths of the Great Plains is simply the story of a young girl relating the stories of her ancestors as the twentieth century grew around them.  Science plays a background as her ancestors included biologists. And Mammoths also play a supporting role.

Mammoths of the Great Plains is a science fiction novella with very little science in it.  It is an alternate history novel that is almost more secret history.  In fact, putting labels on Eleanor Arnason's story is an exercise in futility, for Mammoths of the Great Plains is simply the story of a young girl relating the stories of her ancestors as the twentieth century grew around them.  Science plays a background as her ancestors included biologists. And Mammoths also play a supporting role.

Arnason's narrator, Liza Ivanoff, is a biologist who grew up often traveling from her home in Minneapolis to visit her grandmother in Fort Yates, North Dakota. After years of hearing stories from her grandmother about her ancestors, the narrator is ready to pass all of the stories along as a single narrative that starts when her Native American lands were first infiltrated by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The story is an alternate history in that the explorers encountered not just the native Indians, but also vast herds of mammoths roaming alongside the bison that existed in our own timeline.

Arnason introduces some mysticism with instructions being given by the White Bison Calf Woman and the White Mammoth Calf Woman in dreams instructing the narrator's ancestors in how to ensure that the herds remain.  Unfortunately, history in this world followed a similar path to our own history and the mammoth and bison herds began to thin, and eventually disappear.

In no small part of Liza’s grandmother, Rosa, the mammoths would eventually be able to be saved.  Rosa’s interest in the mammoths was triggered by hearing the stories of the animals and her people and eventually she became convinced that through the use of cryogenics, they could be brought back to life.  Rosa’s life and work took her throughout the northern United States, often working for an industrial benefactor, and to Siberia, where she worked with a Nobel prize-winning scientist.  Her cryogenics study of mammoths was often viewed as a strange hobby, but one which set the path for practical uses of the technology.

Liza’s story is relatively low key.  There are no great mammoth hunts or flashy science. Her characters seem to fall into comfortable positions without really trying to, although once there, they clearly have the ambition and drive to become successful.  The story-telling, however, is riveting and Arnason’s handling of the multi-generational saga manages to turn a recitation of family history into a much broader look at the way America has treated (and mistreated) its environment and its inhabitants.

In addition to Mammoths of the Great Plains, this volume includes an expanded version of Arnason's 2004 Wiscon guest of honor speech and a wide-ranging, and sometimes surprising interview conducted by Terry Bisson.  These two pieces provide insight into Arnason's beliefs about science fiction, its role in the world at large, politics, and more, although neither of them touch on the fiction included in this book.

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