The Periodic Table of Science Fiction possibility not normally open to a writer." The print edition was published in 2005, in two signed limited editions: one slipcase hardback edition with a print run of 200, and one hardback edition with a print run of 500 books. In 2009, Swanwick posted the stories on a weblog dedicated to the purpose. The theme of each story in the collection is inspired by the element it is named after. The book also includes an afterword by the author, and a foreword by Theodore Gray who was awarded the IgNobel Prize for Chemistry in 2002. The Periodic Table of Science
Chemical element than the current estimated age of the universe, bismuth-209 has the longest known alpha decay half-life of any naturally occurring element. The very heaviest 24 elements (those beyond plutonium, element 94) undergo radioactive decay with short half-lives and cannot be produced as daughters of longer-lived elements, and thus they do not occur in nature at all. The properties of the chemical elements are often summarized using the periodic table, which powerfully and elegantly organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ("periods") in which the columns ("groups") share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties. The current standard table contains