FSF, January-February 2010 by Spilogale Authors Read Free Book Online Page A

have a whole armful of pretty shiny new books for you. Interestingly, however—and this was completely unintentional on my part—none of them are by pretty shiny new writers. If this month's column has a theme, it's that old dogs still have plenty of tricks left in them.
    In fact, the overload of new books from old favorites was so great that I'm having to put one off—and it's a big one. So here's fair warning for the faint-hearted: my next column will be a C. J. Cherryh extravaganza, not limited to currently in-print books (after all, why should it be, when we all have internet booksellers at our fingertips?) and centering on this year's Regenesis —the eighteen-year-awaited sequel to Cherryh's dark masterpiece, Cyteen .
    Actually, I'm a bit regretful about the postponement because Regenesis offers fascinating parallels with Greg Bear's City at the End of Time. Both books showcase great hard sf writers revisiting the settings and themes that defined their most ambitious mid-career books. In Bear's case I find this backtracking particularly satisfying because I've always felt that the Campbellian cyberpunk-fantasy mythos of Queen of Angels was an underrated pivotal moment in our genre.
    But more on that later. In the meantime, we have other fish to fry. They are big fish, dear reader, and we won't be gentle with them. So take these reviews with a bushel of salt. These are all phenomenal writers working at the absolute top of their game. No need for kid-glove first-novel treatment here. When you're dealing with gods, honesty is always the safest policy.
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    I know it's an accepted reviewing cliche to call any remotely humorous book a “romp,” but Shambling Towards Hiroshima actually is one. In every sense of the word.
    James Morrow, if you haven't yet encountered him, is the exasperatingly yet charmingly quirky author of a long line of metaphysical satires like Towing Jehovah, The Eternal Footman , and The Last Witchfinder . In Shambling Towards Hiroshima , he is up to his usual mischief. He parachutes us into the bizarro underworld of B-movie monsters and their groupies. When Syms Thorley, a.k.a. Gorgantis, is press-ganged onto a top-secret navy project to secure Japan's surrender with fake movie footage of the destruction of Tokyo by fire-breathing reptiles, he sees Operation Fortune Cookie mainly as an interruption of his “serious” monster oeuvre . However, things turn grim when the movie fails to convince the Japanese High Command and Truman is forced to use the A-bomb. Thorley plunges into a morass of regrets and self-recrimination. Was he somehow responsible for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? If his shambling had been better, would history have unfolded differently? In the midst of his existential despair, Thorley experiences a sudden improvement in his professional fortunes: rediscovered top-secret footage of Thorley's performance sparks a monster movie revival in Japan, including a slew of new Gorgantis movies. He becomes an international B-movie star, toasted at sf conventions around the globe. And yet, he stays true to his principles, accepting Guest of Honor invites only to harangue his bewildered fans with impassioned anti-nuke speeches in which he likens himself to the hibakusha , the “burned people” of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
    Does this all sound unbelievably tasteless yet? If so, then I've probably done a decent job of describing the book.
    None of which changes the fact that this book was a ridiculously fun read. God only knows why. I certainly don't. This is the sort of folderol that only James Morrow could pull off. Which he does. With a full measure of his usual exasperating charm.
    The one flat note in this otherwise pitch-perfect satire is its curiously dated feel. It reads like a book that was written back in the Reagan era. The framing narrative pays lip service to the idea of a “lost” manuscript, but there is no real thematic heft to the conceit. Morrow's