James Morrow
Encyclopedia
James Morrow is a fiction
author
. A self-described "scientific humanist", his work satirises organized religion and elements of humanism and atheism.
He lives in State College, Pennsylvania
with his wife, Kathryn Smith Morrow, his son, Christopher, and their dogs. His cousin is the journalist Lance Morrow
.
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
. A self-described "scientific humanist", his work satirises organized religion and elements of humanism and atheism.
He lives in State College, Pennsylvania
State College, Pennsylvania
State College is the largest borough in Centre County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is the principal city of the State College, Pennsylvania Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Centre County. As of the 2010 census, the borough population was 42,034, and roughly double...
with his wife, Kathryn Smith Morrow, his son, Christopher, and their dogs. His cousin is the journalist Lance Morrow
Lance Morrow
Lance Morrow is professor of journalism and Fellow of the University Professors at Boston University, a writer for Time Magazine, and author of several books. He won the 1981 National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and was a finalist for the same award in 1991.Morrow joined Time in 1965...
.
Godhead Trilogy
- Towing Jehovah (1994), in which the corpse of GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
(a two-mile long white male with a grey beard, as he has often been depicted) is discovered floating in the Atlantic OceanAtlantic OceanThe Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
. The captain of a supertanker is dispatched by the Vatican on a secret mission to tow the Divine Corpse to a tomb carved out of the ArcticArcticThe Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...
ice. A group of atheist extremists plan on destroying the body, as although God is dead, his corpse proves that they were wrong and he existed at some point in time. An extended subplot deals with the evolution of a character's views on ethics and morality as he faces the idea of a post-theistic world. Towing Jehovah won the World Fantasy Award for Best NovelWorld Fantasy Award for Best NovelThis World Fantasy Award is given to the fantasy novel or novels voted best by a panel of judges, and presented each year at the World Fantasy Convention.-1975:...
in 1995.; was nominated for a Nebula Award in 1994; and received Hugo, Clarke, and Locus Fantasy Award nominations in 1995. Terri WindlingTerri WindlingTerri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. Windling has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award...
selected it as one of the best fantasy books of 1994.
- Blameless in Abaddon (1996), in which God's body is now part of a religious theme park. A small-town magistrate, who has suffered many personal troubles, including the death of his wife and prostate cancer, decides to literally put God on trialLawsuits against GodLawsuits against God have occurred in real life and in fiction. Issues debated in the actions include the problem of evil and harmful "acts of God".- Ernie Chambers :In the U.S...
for crimes against humanity. God's defense lawyer is a parody of C. S. LewisC. S. LewisClive Staples Lewis , commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was a novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist from Belfast, Ireland...
. Other biblical figures including SatanSatanSatan , "the opposer", is the title of various entities, both human and divine, who challenge the faith of humans in the Hebrew Bible...
and Jesus Christ appear in this book. "AbaddonAbaddonAbaddon in the Revelation of St. John, is the king of tormenting locusts and the angel of the bottomless pit. The exact nature of Abaddon is debated, but the Hebrew word is related to the triliteral root אבד , which in verb form means "to perish."...
" is a small fictional township in Pennsylvania and an obscure Biblical word for Hell. - The Eternal Footman (1999), in which the absence of God, save for his skull orbiting the EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, results in a plague of death-awareness. The Eternal Footman was nominated for a Locus Fantasy Award in 1997.
- A special limited run (26 copies) leather-bound set was published by Dimension House and contained a fourth book that contains previously unpublished material containing short stories and plays by James Morrow. This volume is called "Reflections and Refractions", and contains three plays purportedly written by a character within the main novels. Two of these have appeared in short-story collections by Morrow, while the third is available on the author's web site.
Other novels
- The Wine of Violence (1981) - First published novel. A space expedition crash lands on an undiscovered planet. Landing in a veritable utopia the survivors discover a dark and viscous secret that is the source of the murky moat that surrounds the walled Utopia and fends off the cannibalistic hordes that threaten its tranquility
- The Adventures of Smoke Bailey (1983) - novelization of the computer game In Search of the Most Amazing Thing.
- The Continent of Lies (1984) - Dealing with the future medium of "Dream Apples" entertainment that is eaten so that the experience of the entertainment goes straight into the viewers mind. A "Dream Apple" reviewer is lured into a dark and horrific world akin in many ways to Joseph ConradJoseph ConradJoseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties...
's Heart of DarknessHeart of DarknessHeart of Darkness is a novella written by Joseph Conrad. Before its 1903 publication, it appeared as a three-part series in Blackwood's Magazine. It was classified by the Modern Library website editors as one of the "100 best novels" and part of the Western canon.The story centres on Charles... - This Is the Way the World Ends (1985) - deals with Nostradamus, a nuclear war, and the trial which sees the survivors of the war prosecuted by "the Unadmitted", or those who would have existed had the Protagonist of the novel never signed away his complicity of the nuclear arms raceNuclear arms raceThe nuclear arms race was a competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War...
that lead to Mutually Assured Destruction -- nominated for a Nebula Award in 1986, and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1987. - Only Begotten DaughterOnly Begotten DaughterOnly Begotten Daughter is a 1990 fantasy novel written by James Morrow, setting the stage for his later Godhead Trilogy. The book shared the 1991 World Fantasy Award with Ellen Kushner's Thomas the Rhymer. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1990, and both the Locus and...
(1990) - in which Jesus' half sister, the daughter of God, is born into contemporary society—winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best NovelWorld Fantasy Award for Best NovelThis World Fantasy Award is given to the fantasy novel or novels voted best by a panel of judges, and presented each year at the World Fantasy Convention.-1975:...
in 1991; nominated for a Nebula Award in 1990; nominated for Campbell and Locus SF Awards in 1991. - City of Truth (1990) - a dystopian novel about a society (Veritas) in which everyone is conditioned to tell only the literal truth. The story revolves around an art critic whose son is infected by a rare illness after being bitten by a rabbit at Camp Ditch-the-Kids. The protagonist comes to believe that his son's only hope is for him to come to (falsely) believe that he will recover. With the help of subversives from "Satirev", he must learn how to deceive again.
- The Last Witchfinder (2006) - a historical novel in which Jennet Stearne, daughter of England's last Witchfinder General, sets out to end the persecution of witches by proving that witchcraft is not logically possible. The book addresses the shifting of world view from the medieval/renaissance viewpoint to the Enlightenment. The story travels from England to America during the late 17th and early 18th century, and features fictional portraits of Isaac NewtonIsaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
, Robert HookeRobert HookeRobert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...
, the young Ben Franklin, and the Salem Witch TrialsSalem witch trialsThe Salem witch trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693...
. In a metafictional twist, the novel is narrated by Newton's Principia MathematicaPrincipia MathematicaThe Principia Mathematica is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, written by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913...
, which asserts that books are often the authors of other books (albeit with unwitting human assistance). The Last Witchfinder was nominated for a BSFA Award in 2006, as well as the Campbell and Locus Fantasy Awards in 2007. - The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008) formerly titled Prometheus Wept - (taken from Amazon.co.uk book description) The Philosopher's Apprentice tells the story of Londa Sabacthani, a celebrity saint who is determined to change society for the good - whatever it takes. And whatever it takes includes building a utopian metropolis, hijacking a reconstructed Titanic, and subjecting its wealthy passengers to a very steep learning curve. After crashing and burning during his PhD viva, Mason Ambrose is offered a large amount of money to come to the Isla de Sangre to instruct the daughter of wealthy Edwina Sabacthani. He is to use his skills and knowledge as a philosopher to instil a conscience, a moral compass, in Edwina's daughter Londa following a diving accident which has supposedly destroyed her sense of right and wrong. Mason happily instructs her in schools of thought, from the Stoics to the Epicureans. But it is when he introduces her to the Beatitudes that the seeds of a rampaging sense of justice are sown and Londa becomes determined that the meek really shall inherit the Earth!
- Shambling Towards Hiroshima (2009) - In the tradition of GodzillaGodzillais a daikaijū, a Japanese movie monster, first appearing in Ishirō Honda's 1954 film Godzilla. Since then, Godzilla has gone on to become a worldwide pop culture icon starring in 28 films produced by Toho Co., Ltd. The monster has appeared in numerous other media incarnations including video games,...
as both a playful romp and a parable of the dawn of the nuclear era, this original satire blends the destruction of World War II with the halcyon pleasure of monster movies. In the summer of 1945 war is reigning in the Pacific Rim, while in the U.S., Syms Thorley continues his life as a B-movie actor. But the U.S. Navy would like to use Thorley in their top-secret Knickerbocker Project, putting the finishing touches on the ultimate biological weapon: a breed of gigantic, fire-breathing, mutant iguanas. Thorley is to don a rubber suit that will transform him into the merciless Gorgantis and star in a film that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japan—if the demonstration succeeds, the Japanese will surrender, sparing thousands of lives; if it fails, the mutant lizards will be unleashed. Godzilla devotees and history buffs alike will be fascinated by this conspiratorial secret history of a war, a weapon, and an unlikely hero who will have to give the most convincing performance of his life.
Selected short stories
- "Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks" (1987) On a planet populated by robots who worship Charles Darwin, two 'science missionaries' have a hard time convincing them that they did not in fact evolve, but were intelligently designed at Harvard University.
- "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge" (1988) - Nebula AwardNebula AwardThe Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
Winner. The tale of the Flood, told from the perspective of one of the sinners.
- "Abe Lincoln in McDonald's" (1989) A time-travelling Abe Lincoln gets the opportunity to visit present-day America if the Civil War had never happened.
- "Daughter Earth" (1991) A man and woman must learn to care for a most unusual offspring.
- "City of Truth" (1991) - Nebula AwardNebula AwardThe Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year...
Winner. A novellaNovellaA novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...
which pursues the premise of a future "utopian" society in which people are incapable of lying, and of a protagonist who, to save his terminally ill son's life, must somehow learn to not tell him the truth.
Short story collections
- Swatting at the Cosmos (1990) Pulphouse PublishingPulphouse PublishingPulphouse Publishing was an American small press publisher based in Eugene, Oregon and specializing in science fiction and fantasy. It was founded by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch in 1988. The press was active until 1996...
- Bible Stories for Adults (1996)
- The Cat's Pajamas (2004) Tachyon PublicationsTachyon PublicationsTachyon Publications is an independent press specializing in science fiction and fantasy books. Founded in San Francisco in 1995 by Jacob Weisman, Tachyon books have tended toward high-end literary works, short story collections, and anthologies....
Anthologies
- Nebula Awards 26 (1992)
- Nebula Awards 27 (1993)
- Nebula Awards 28 (1994)
- The SFWA European Hall of Fame: Sixteen Contemporary Masterpieces of Science Fiction from the Continent, with Kathryn Morrow (2007)
Popular misconceptions
- Sláinte is a novel authored by a neurologist who lives in Northern Ireland, not by the James Kenneth Morrow discussed here who was born, and still lives, in the USA.
External links
- James Morrow's Homepage
- The Passionate Rationalist, James Morrow's Live Journal.
- War of the World-Views: A Conversation with James Morrow by Fiona KelleghanFiona KelleghanFiona Kelleghan is an American academic and critic specializing in science fiction and fantasy; she is also the metadata librarian at the University of Miami's Otto G...
, Science Fiction Studies, #89, Volume 30, Part 1, March 2003. - Excerpts from an interview with James Morrow, LOCUS Magazine, 2006.
- Interview with James Morrow by Faith L. Justice, Strange Horizons, 2001.
- Interview with James Morrow by Nick Gevers, SF Site, 2000.
- interview in 2000 et interview in 2003 sur Actusf.com (in French)
- Interview on the SciFiDimensions Podcast
- Interview: From Dead Gods to Guys in Lizard Costumes, Clarkesworld MagazineClarkesworld MagazineClarkesworld Magazine is an American online fantasy and science fiction magazine. The first issue was published October 1, 2006 and it has maintained a regular monthly schedule since, publishing fiction by authors such as Sarah Monette, Catherynne Valente, Elizabeth Bear, Caitlin R...
, April 2009 - Interview by Michael A. VentrellaMichael A. VentrellaMichael A. Ventrella founded Animato! in the mid 80s. He sold it in the early 90s. Under the pseudonym "Thelma Scumm" he wrote the gossip column and later continued that for fps magazine...
, October '09