Puss Reboots: Blog: December 2007: Urdumheim

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Urdumheim by Michael Swanwick
Who Brought Tulips to the Moon? by S.L. Gilbow

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Betrayed by Elmo
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Previous month

"Urdumheim": 12/15/07

The October/ November issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction rounds out issue with "Urdumheim", a creation story by Michael Swanwick.

This creation story is told from the point of view of the would be assassin of King Nimrod to prevent the building of the tower of Babel.

As the Babel myth is one of the quintessential language creation stories, Swanwick uses his thirty page narrative to play with language. Although the protagonist is able to clearly relate his history to us, he has lost the ability to communicate with his kith and kin.

The unnamed winged creatures of Urdumheim want to bring the chaos of the prelanguage days back to the People of King Nimrod. Urdumheim isn't a place, as the narrator explains, it is a state of being. It is also a play on words on the author's own neighborhood. Perhaps Swanwick's monsters won after all and we are all living in Urdumheim.