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Book Summary and Reviews of Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow

Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow

Shambling Towards Hiroshima

by James Morrow

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  • Published:
  • Feb 2009, 192 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Paperback Original.

In the tradition of Godzilla 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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The sheer insanity of the premise only makes the eventual payoff even more powerful." - Publishers Weekly.

"Preposterous but somehow almost plausible, skillfully mingling real and imaginary characters with genuinely hilarious moments." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Shambling Towards Hiroshima was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

James Morrow Author Biography

David Tait

Born in Philadelphia in 1947, James Morrow spent his teenage years in Hillside Cemetery, not far from Philadelphia. After receiving degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, Morrow began to produce prose fiction. His first such endeavor, The Wine of Violence, was called “the best SF novel published in English in the last ten years” by the American Book Review. He followed this with The Continent of Lies. Morrow's breakout novel was a satire on the nuclear arms race, This Is the Way the World Ends, which became a Nebula Award nominee and the BBC’s choice as the best SF novel of the year. His next dark comedy, Only Begotten Daughter, shared the 1991 World Fantasy Award with Ellen Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer. Throughout the 1990s Morrow worked on ...

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