James Morrow

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James Morrow (born 1947) is an award-winning fiction author. A self-described "scientific humanist", his work not only satirises organized religion but also elements of humanism and atheism. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Morrow questions not only religious viewpoints but atheistic and humanistic views as well. For example, his novel Towing Jehovah includes an extended subplot dealing with the evolution of a character's views on ethics and morality as he faces the idea of a post-theistic world.

His cousin is the journalist Lance Morrow.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 The Godhead Trilogy
2 Other novels
3 Selected short stories
4 Short story collections
5 Popular misconceptions
6 External links

[edit] The Godhead Trilogy

Towing Jehovah (1994), in which the corpse of God (a two-mile long white male with a grey beard, as He has often been depicted) is discovered floating in the Atlantic Ocean. 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 Arctic 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.
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 trial for crimes against humanity. God's defense lawyer is a parody of C. S. Lewis. Other biblical figures including Satan and Jesus Christ appear in this book. "Abaddon" 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 Earth, results in a plague of death-awareness.

[edit] Other novels

The Wine of Violence (1981)
The Adventures of Smoke Bailey (1983) - novelization of the computer game In Search of the Most Amazing Thing.
The Continent of Lies (1984)
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".
Only Begotten Daughter (1990) - in which Jesus' half sister, the daughter of God, is born into contemporary society.
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 Newton, Robert Hooke, the young Ben Franklin, and the Salem Witch Trials. In a metafictional twist, the novel is narrated by Newton's Principia Mathematica, which asserts that books are often the authors of other books (albeit with unwitting human assistance).

[edit] Selected short stories

"Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks" (1987)
"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge" (1988) - Nebula Award Winner.
"Abe Lincoln in McDonald's" (1989)
"Daughter Earth" (1991)
"City of Truth" (1991) - Nebula Award Winner. A novella (not a short story) 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.

[edit] Short story collections

Swatting at the Cosmos (1990) Pulphouse Publishing
Bible Stories for Adults (1996)
The Cat's Pajamas (2004) Tachyon Publications

[edit] 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.