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    Shambling Towards Hiroshima
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    Shambling Towards Hiroshima
    Unavailable
    Shambling Towards Hiroshima
    Ebook182 pages4 hours

    Shambling Towards Hiroshima

    By James Morrow

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Theodore Sturgeon Award winner
    Nebula and Hugo Award nominee

    It is the early summer of 1945, and war reigns in the Pacific Rim with no end in sight. Back in the States, Hollywood B-movie star Syms Thorley lives in a very different world, starring as the Frankenstein-like Corpuscula and Kha-Ton-Ra, the living mummy. But the U.S. Navy has a new role waiting for Thorley, the role of a lifetime that he could never have imagined.

    The top secret Knickerbocker Project is putting the finishing touches on the ultimate biological weapon: a breed of gigantic, fire-breathing, mutant iguanas engineered to stomp and burn cities on the Japanese mainland. The Navy calls upon Thorley to don a rubber suit and become the merciless Gorgantis and to star in a live drama that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japanese metropolis. If the demonstration succeeds, the Japanese will surrender, and many thousands of lives will be spared; if it fails, the horrible mutant lizards will be unleashed. One thing is certain: Syms Thorley must now give the most terrifyingly convincing performance of his life.

    In the dual traditions of Godzilla as a playful monster and a symbol of the dawn of the nuclear era, Shambling Towards Hiroshima unexpectedly blends the destruction of World War II with the halcyon pleasure of monster movies.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTachyon Publications
    Release dateJan 12, 2009
    ISBN9781616960445
    Unavailable
    Shambling Towards Hiroshima
    Author

    James Morrow

    Born in 1947, James Morrow has been writing fiction ever since he, as a seven-year-old living in the Philadelphia suburbs, dictated “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. This three-page, six-chapter fantasy is still in the author’s private archives. Upon reaching adulthood, Jim produced nine novels of speculative fiction, including the critically acclaimed Godhead Trilogy. He has won the World Fantasy Award (for Only Begotten Daughter and Towing Jehovah), the Nebula Award (for “Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge” and the novella City of Truth), and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award (for the novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima). A fulltime fiction writer, Jim makes his home in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife, his son, an enigmatic sheepdog, and a loopy beagle. He is hard at work on a novel about Darwinism and its discontents.

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    Reviews for Shambling Towards Hiroshima

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    • 5/5
      A successful b-movies star Syms Thorley is at the peak of his career: he stars in films with such titles as "Corpuscula", "Lycanthropus", "Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra" and their many sequels, writes his own script, which is already predoomed to success, and generally has fun life. Hollywood is Hollywood, but that is the early summer of 1945, Japan still resists in the Pacific Ocean, but the military plans are maturing how with minimal losses to end the war. For plan realization they need someone who knows how to convincingly play in the costume of the reptile. This is Thorley. After listening to a plan of U. S. Navy, Thorley could not believe his ears: there is a secret project that America wants to use to intimidate the Japanese without using nuclear bomb. A team of U.S. scientists raised in the laboratory dragon-like terrible lizards, like Godzilla, to release them on the Japanese cities. However, the reptiles were not dangerous than kittens, besides they don’t live long. The plan had to be adjusted: in a secret hangar an exact copy of one of Japan's cities had been built, the delegation of embassy had been invited, and the role of the lizard would have to play Thorley, especially for him the suit of mighty lizard had been stitched. According to the plan Thorley with stage effects would destroy the city to scare the ambassadors so that they would run to the Emperor to beg him to stop immediately the war to save innocent people from the giant reptiles.If in retelling it looks just funny when you read this book this is very funny. It's not just an ability of Morrow to construct convincing despite its seemingly absurdity and impossibility plot, but that’s Thorley himself. That b-movies star jokes as good as Chandler’s Marlowe, besides he has a dig at Hollywood celebrities of that time (cinephiles will get a special pleasure), Thorley is witty and resourceful.This brilliantly written short novel has, it seems, only one flaw: for all his playfulness and irrationality, Thorley is too contrite. But without actor's contrition this book which is the longest suicide note in the world as well wouldn’t appear.
    • 4/5
      This novel is about an audacious plan to end World War II in the Pacific, without invading Japan. It involves a man in a rubber monster suit.In mid-1945, Germany has already surrendered. A Top Secret American project involves the creation of a trio of mutant, bipedal, fire-breathing lizards, and unleashing one of them on a Japanese city. A total Japanese surrender is the only way to cancel the attack. It is decided that the Japanese should first witness a demonstration of the potential devastation. A miniature mockup of the city of Shirazuka is created at an isolated Army base in the California desert. The hope is that the visiting Japanese delegation will be so horrified by what they see, that they will run to the Emperor, and beg him to surrender.Enter Syms Thorley, veteran B-movie actor. He is most known as the living mummy Kha-Ton-Ra, and the monster Corpuscula. Thorley is assured that just one rehearsal is needed, with a less-detailed mockup of Shirazuka, and there will be just one performance, so he can work it around his current movie. He has to get used to the rubber suit, so he takes it to the beach a couple of times, and almost gets arrested. He also drives around Los Angeles with the suit strapped to the roof of his car.Performance day has come. The miniature Japanese ships and planes are firing bits of actual gunpowder at him, to make it look as real as possible. As the mock-devastation goes on, Thorley is supposed to act "injured," but he really is injured. Does Thorley give the performance of a lifetime? Is it enough to force a Japanese surrender?I really enjoyed this story. It's short, and easy to read, and it is very well done, from a veteran author. It is very much worth reading.
    • 3/5
      This has a little bit of the Vonnegut flair (and I mean that in a very good way) in that it travels with a quirky character across absurd circumstances but by the end drops one unceremoniously back into reality viewed from a deeply moral (not to mention outraged) perspective, but Morrow is his own author with his own style. Yes, this was not his best work; I felt a little bogged down somewhere in the middle, wishing I were more of a monster movie enthusiast. That said, I read anything (and will continue to read anything) that is published by Morrow. His God trilogy is definitely worth the time. Oh, and I love this title!
    • 3/5
      Can you satirise B movies? Shambling has a damm good go at it, but I'm really not sure that choosing the US Governments plans to atomic bomb Hiroshima was the best backdrop that could have been chosen. It does come across as very insensitive. The 'plot' such as it is, is that rather than bomb the Japanese people the US navy had a second better plan which was to develop GM style Godzillas that could do the job instead. And in order to not have to actually release their Behemoths' they would stage a show for the ambassadors to terrify them into surrendering. Our 'hero' is the actor chosen to play the monster instead of the scaled down version which didn't live long enough. It might have been funnier if I'd watched more B movies and had more idea about the history f some of the films and concepts but mostly it is just silly.
    • 4/5
      This short novel is a delightful melange of Weird Science, Old Hollywood, and Monster Movies. It will forever change the way you think about Godzilla (who was always a product of the atomic age). The book is an entertaining ride that will leave you thinking — as any book that deals with nuclear destruction should.
    • 4/5
      One of James Morrow's lighter works, Shambling Towards Hiroshima could also have been aptly titled Theater of War, as the monster movie machine of Hollywood meets the war machine of the Pentagon. An epistolary tale in the form of a lengthy suicide note written by screenwriter and rubber-monster-suit actor Syms Thorley, in which he laments his involvement in a failed attempt to use the threat of military-controlled giant monsters to end World War 2. There is much in Morrow's novel about monsters of war both real and imagined, but this morose contemplation on horror as entertainment in the Hiroshima shadows of truly monstrous acts is playfully wrapped up in a Hollywood satire. In fact, Morrow does such a good job of blending real film history with the films and filmmakers of his alternate universe that it can be hard separating truth from fiction, and considering the backdrop of propaganda-driven fictions attempting to manipulate the real world, this is probably meant to enhance/enforce the novel's overall metaphor.This isn't Morrow's first book to tangle with the dark realities of nuclear war, but it is far less morose than This Is the Way the World Ends, and possibly even a tad more hopeful.
    • 4/5
      While reading Morrow's latest, I thought it was a light but amusing spoof, but after I finished, I realized he had delivered a very subtle but very pointed condemnation of nuclear weapons and our collaboration in the insanity of the ongoing weapons race.
    • 4/5
      I spent most of this book feeling profoundly entertained, and finished it feeling terribly moved. The latter parts are a bit heavy-handed for my taste, but then they struck a chord with me so I can't fault them too much for that. Overall, I was riveted pretty much from start to finish.
    • 5/5
      A unique cross-genre masterpiece. Morrow crafts a novel that is original, funny, and sorrowful all at once.
    • 3/5
      It is the golden age of Hollywood monster movies and actor Syms Thorley is riding high, famous for his portrayals of such beasties as the Frankenstein-esque Corpuscula and the lumbering mummy Kha-Ton-Ra. However, Thorley’s skill at shambling and lumbering and groaning have won him some attention he would rather have done without…that of the US Navy. The Navy, hoping to end the war in the Pacific against the Japanese, have been developing the ultimate super-weapon: giant, mutant, fire-breathing lizards. In hopes of intimidating the Japanese into surrender rather than being forced to unleash the behemoths, they hire Thorley to don the rubber suit and portray a juvenile “Gorgantis” monster. They’ve built a miniature Japanese city and invited the Japanese delegates for a demonstration. If Thorley’s performance is convincing enough, they believe, the war will end without further bloodshed and neither the Navy’s lizards nor the Army’s atom bombs will have to be deployed. So Thorley knows he’d better put on the performance of a lifetime! Unfortunately, his greatest movie-making rival has plans to steal his thunder…and his screenplay!Humorous, though dealing with its driving conceit in a straight-faced fashion, the seemingly ridiculous concept becomes entirely plausible in the author’s capable hands. However, the plot is slightly too thin to support the full weight of the satire being attempted. Still, an enjoyable satire with layers of real moral quandary woven through the romp.
    • 5/5
      presented as a memoir written as a suicide note (with interruptions), this is a delightful story of a washed up monster movie actor who is surviving on his fame as a has been, and the top secret pivotal role that he nearly played for the US in WWII. Larger than life, as only a rubber suit monster can be, the details pile on and on in a never-ending sequence of nearly inconceivable happenings. Never quite farce, as it is far too true to the B-movie feel that is lovingly recreated.