James Morrow

Towing Jehovah

James Morrow

• 1995 WFA–Novel winner
• 1995 Clarke shortlist
• 1995 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1994 Nebula nominee
• Score: 28.45

The irreducible strangeness of the universe was first made manifest to Anthony Van Horne on his fiftieth birthday, when a despondent angel named Raphael, a being with luminous white wings and a halo that blinked on and off like a neon quoit, appeared and told him of the days to come.

What Raphael tells Van Horne is that God, for unknown reasons, has died. “Died and fell into the sea.” Soon Van Horne is charged with captaining the supertanker Carpco Valparaiso (flying the colors of the Vatican) as it tows the two-mile-long divine corpse through the…

Only Begotten Daughter

James Morrow

• 1991 WFA–Novel winner
• 1991 Campbell 3rd
• 1991 Mythopoeic-Adult finalist
• 1990 Nebula nominee
• Score: 28.41

Morrow explores the difficulties facing God’s twentieth-century offspring, complete with virgin birth. Julie Katz is a New Jersey girl—the miracle child of a celibate Jewish recluse whose sperm sample, donated to an Atlantic City baby bank, spontaneously gestates.

This Is the Way the World Ends

James Morrow

• 1987 Campbell 2nd
• 1986 Nebula nominee
• Score: 14.37

George Paxton was an ordinary man until something extraordinary happened—nuclear holocaust. Now George Paxton is about to discover what happens after the end of the world.

“Astute, highly engaging, and finally moving”.—Los Angeles Times.

The Last Witchfinder: A Novel

James Morrow

• 2006 Campbell 2nd
• Score: 8.56

Jennet Stearne’s father hangs witches for a living in Restoration England. But when she witnesses the unjust and horrifying execution of her beloved aunt Isobel, the precocious child decides to make it her life’s mission to bring down the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act. Armed with little save the power of reason, and determined to see justice prevail, Jennet hurls herself into a series of picaresque adventures—traveling from King William’s Britain to the fledgling American Colonies to an uncharted island in the Caribbean, braving West Indies pirates, Algonquin Indian captors, the machinations of the Salem Witch Court, and the sensuous love of a young Ben Franklin. For Jennet cannot and must not rest until she has put the last witchfinder out of business.

Bible Stories for Adults

James Morrow

• 1997 WFA–Collection nominee
• Score: 6.47

Job’s back on the old dung heap, and he wants a rematch with God. A Series-700 computer successfully reconstructs the tablets with the Ten Commandments from a million indecipherable shards—only to have second thoughts. Sheila, the lascivious sinner fished from the Flood by the captain of the Ark, has an agenda all her own. A congregation of sexless androids believes Darwin’s theory of evolution applies to them and awaits the Great Genital Coming. And God justifies why he once beset mankind with an unusual plague. Why? Spare the rod, spoil the species, He says.…