Towing Jehovah

Godhead #1

by James K. Morrow

God is dead, and Anthony Van Horne must tow the corpse to the Arctic (to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition). En route Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, sabotage both natural and spiritual, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas. Winner of a 1995 World Fantasy Award.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Religion, Humor, Satire, Science Fiction Fantasy

386 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Born in 1947, James Kenneth 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.

Reviews

[Tom Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

God is dead, and something has got to be done about His corpse! This book drops the bombshell of this very unique premise, and then it's off to the races. It's hard to miss the metaphor. In fact, the whole novel is in-your-face-allegorical from the get-go, featuring a cast of superstitious sailors led by a guilt-ridden former captain who has never gotten over the massive oil spill his negligence caused. He in turn is supervised by a modern-day priest/particle physicist who bridges the holy mysteries of ancient Rome with the scientific mysteries of subatomic physics. Their main opposition? A World War II air force reenactment squad hired by militant atheists to sink the Lord in hopes that nobody will find out about it. If you already have a background in Catholicism or nautical shipping, it will help. If you don't, prepare to hear a lot about the minutae of these niche interests.

Much has been said comparing Morrow to Vonnegut, but other than an absurdist plot and overtones of humanism, I don't think the comparison is apt. Vonnegut dealt in broad generalities that are universal to all people whereas Morrow delves deeply into specific lifestyles and professions. We get to a similar ending place as far as satire, but the routes are wildly different. And where Vonnegut wielded his satire with the deft precision of minimalism, Morrow bludgeons us about the head and shoulders. The plot advances by lurches and surges, and a lot of the characters' decisions seem poorly explained, their motivations too strained to be credible: the feminists take quick offense upon learning that God is male, the atheists immediately decide to destroy the evidence rather than admit they were wrong. Heavy-handed is an understatement. It's all too pat, too one-dimensional.

Maybe the satirist Morrow should be compared to is William Golding. There's a lot of "Lord of the Flies" to be found--in the near-immediate loss of morality and increasing savagery the crew shows, for example. "No eyes on us", so why not just start murdering people? Hell, the lead female paints her face with blood in the bathroom mirror as she vows to sink God's corpse in the name of rationality. That's kind of funny, but it doesn't hold up long under scrutiny.

Don't get me wrong--it's still a strong narrative that grips your attention at times. I was tearing through almost a hundred pages a day and still asking "What happens next?" But it also grows repetitive and very, very silly in the second and third acts. And there were pages with writing so hackneyed I cringed. All in all, an interesting thought experiment but not executed well enough to tempt me to continue with the next two in the series. 2 stars out of 5, rounded up to 2.5 since it did get me thinking.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember when I last read a book as delightfully satirical, exciting, and brilliantly multi-layered as this.

It's very firmly couched in bloody-minded literalism, but don't let that fool you. This is one SMART COOKIE.

Yes, God is a main character. But unlike so many other humorists, this version is dead. But unlike any number of humorist novels out there, Morrow throws out all the lame ideas and goes ahead and picks the most interesting choices. Every Single Time. Like choosing a God that is FREAKING HUGE before dumping him in the ocean.

Add the Vatican with some really anxious and embarrassed angels hiring a disgraced captain to tow the Godhead to his makeshift burying ground, throw the boat into a rather awesome reversal of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, raise an island that is a crude, glitsy porn palace as a post-deist playground of unnatural selection, some mutineers, a hardcore rationalist subplot, and a bunch of nutty WWII re-enactment hobbyists, and you might get a tiny idea about where this might be headed.

This ain't philosophy. But then again, maybe it is. Hardcore philosophy behind a leering, jeering, madcap Monty-Pythonesque prose. Including the parrot.

I will never forget the parody of the transubstantiation.


I have found my next best favorite book. No holds were barred. Everyone, no matter who you are, is invited up to the table to get a punch in the nose. :)

All this aside, you know what I really, really want?

I want this book done as an Amazon Prime or a full-budget HBO miniseries. Including the gigantic corpse. All the frantic sailors trying to keep the predators off God's body. The air battle. The quiet, desperate times with full close-ups for the actors to show the deep conflict, the absurdist humor, the pathos.

It works on SO many levels.

This book has the probability to become one of the most brilliant adaptations ever.

I just wish.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is difficult to rate. I had definitely fun listening to it, but I will readily admit that it was over the top and quite heavy handed on religious philosophy and gimmicks. So I'm torn between the serious me and the having-fun me.
I guess I will rate it 3.5 stars and round up because of the craziest idea I've ever come across in an SFF story.

[Brian Steed]

By the time I’d finished this book, Morrow had become one of my favorite writers. The philosophy he espouses in his writings is perfectly in tune with my own. He’s a champion of rationality, and I wish not only that there were more like him, but that they also had a more visible platform from which to vocalize (I wrote these comments in 2005, at the height of Bush’s America, in which ignorance is equated with integrity, and level-headed, nuanced thinking is considered “elitist” at best and dangerous erosions of our cherished values at worst). Anyway, Morrow’s “Trojan Horse” technique of using humor and absurd imagery to get across his thoughts on religious belief works for me, especially as both sides of his writing are so well done. His religious musings are so fair-minded that he apparently has fans among the clergy, despite the fact that this is essentially atheist literature. This kind of honest assessment of one’s own beliefs is rarely practiced by the believers, who generally would rather fool themselves and others before giving up the ridiculous beliefs they were raised on.

[Doc Opp · Rating 1 out of 5]

I seem to be having bad luck with books recently. This is one more in a series of books with amazing potential that are poorly executed.

This book has a fabulous conceit - G-d is dead, and the angels hire a shipping captain to tow the corpse to the burial site. There are all sorts of opportunities to explore the nature of morality, religion, free will, the meaning of life, etc. But while the author does explore those concepts, he's clearly not a philosopher, and there isn't much in the way of novelty, or sophistication in the ideas he explores.

The characters are the kind that you don't want to read about. They are arrogant, stupid, extremist, and morally bankrupt. Morrow doesn't spare any group for this treatment - rationalist atheists, the vatican, working class folks, wealthy folk, new agers, traditionalists... the only characters you don't spend the whole book wanting to strangle are minor characters that you don't know enough about to care about and the ship's priest (you only want to strangle him for half of the book)

The plot is straightforward enough, but the twists don't really make any sense, and the ending in particular is a terrible disappointment. I won't go into detail and provide spoilers, but suffice it to say there's little to be spoiled. The whole of the book is building to the mystery of how and why G-d died, and the 'answer' to those questions is an unsatisfying cop out.

That would be bad enough, but the frustration is compounded by the fact that the book is written crudely. Gratuitous and graphic descriptions of sex and violence, constant swearing, and generally a writing style that is unpleasant to read.

I waded through this book based on the promise of a climactic ending that would bring it all together and make it worth it. In the end, I wish I had my time back.

[Paul Sánchez Keighley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not bad - plotwise, it did everything right! - but it is such a waste of a good idea.

I went into it blindly because I fell in love with the premise: God dies and His body falls into the sea. Knowing nothing more than that, my mind went wild considering the myriad implications this would have for humanity at large. Sadly the book sidesteps global chaos by circumscribing the plot to the naval adventure of the selected few tasked with towing the body to the North Pole for burial.

Three things spoiled the experience for me: 1) I don't like Morrow's writing at all. He’s one of those writers who tries to spice up his otherwise dry prose by using brands as adjectives (sure, it was a very nineties thing, but it still makes my skin crawl). 2) It took me several chapters to pinpoint what this book was trying to be, and I was somewhat deflated to find out it is a satire. On what? Who knows. A vague old nineties satire filled with jokes on feminism and environmentalism that hit quite differently when read in 2021. 3) The whole World War Two Reenactment Society subplot, which easily takes up a quarter of the book, was an absolute snoozefest and didn’t connect thematically in any way with the novel’s main ideas…

As I said at first, it’s not all bad. I quite liked some of the characters, most notably those with some religious stakes: Father Ockham and Niel Weisinger. I also liked the instances when the story pushed the boundaries of good taste, such as the chapters dealing with theophagy. This is more of what I expected going into this. Even the zany humour also sometimes worked by virtue of being so over the top it cannot be taken seriously, vide warding off sharks with bazookas. But the fine lines the book treads were too often crossed or forgotten to the point that I feel the author didn’t realise the potential of what he was handling.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

God is dead, and his two-mile long corpse is floating in the Atlantic, right around the equator. Anthony van Horne, a disgraced oil tanker captain is tapped by the Vatican to haul God's body up to the North Pole, where the grieving angels have prepared a cave for his internment and preservation. Van Horne is joined by a priest with a Kantian bent, a sensual nun, and Cassie Fowler, an atheist marooned after the crash of the Beagle II. Cassie has plans of her own for God's body, which she sees as a direct assault on the ideals of the Enlightenment and feminism and gets her rich boyfriend (the son of a famed condom manufacturer) to enlist a group of hapless WWII re-enactors in a full-fledged assault on the corpse. Meanwhile, realizing that if God is dead then anything is permitted (to borrow from Dostoevsky), the crew is getting more than a little restless.

Yes, this book is every bit as insane as it sounds. It is also very funny and surprisingly thoughtful. Recommended for any brave reader.

[Paul Perry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never judge a book by its cover, right? Does going on the title count?

We all do that, of course, and it was the title that first grabbed me, then the description made it a must read. Morrow is a writer that I was only vaguely aware of, but the reviews appealed to me immediately. So when the Atheist Book Club group were looking for fiction recommendations I just had to put it forward, and am very glad I did – although I was slightly worried that the book was perhaps less atheistic than I had anticipated.

The initial set up just sounds so inventive and funny: The archangels come to the Vatican to tell them that god has died and his two mile long corpse is floating in the mid Atlantic. They have hollowed out an iceberg off Svalbard and want it towing to this tomb before corruption sets in, so the Vatican hires a former super tanker Captain, disgraced since being in charge when his vessel caused the world's most damaging oil slick – along with his former ship – to do the job.

I confess that what I expected was fairly straightforward, irreverent humour and plenty of digs at the absurdities of religion, but I was somewhat wide of the mark. Don't get me wrong, it is a very funny book (although more in way of later Pratchett with the humour leavening more serious episodes than early, slapstick Pratchett) and I'm sure that many people would consider it irreverent simply because of the subject, but Morrow does much, much more than take the easy option. What he gives us is an incredibly smart book about how we define our beliefs as much as they define us, about the roots of morality (of course), about hypocrisy, about how people react when their most cherished beliefs are threatened and the ends that they'll go to to protect those beliefs and, most of all, about personal redemption in the face of an uncaring universe.

The author draws his cast of characters superbly well – all, arguably and to varying degrees, caricatures perhaps, but also with subtlety and humanity. And as often as not, any cartooning of characters or situations is there to wrongfoot us, to show up our own assumptions. For instance, when the crew of the tanker begin to lose all moral perspective I admit that I was initially disappointed that Morrow seemed to be showing the collapse of morality without an omnipresent god but, as at every turn of the novel, he had of course anticipated me and lead me down a path that would bring me to a far more thorough – and entertaining – discussion of the questions than I had given him credit for.

This is one of those rare books that not only kept me gripped and entertained from cover to cover, but kept me thinking more profoundly than I could have before I read it for long after. An instant favourite, and I think I will be spending quite some time in Mr Morrow's company.

[Whitney (SecretSauceofStorycraft) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Irreverant satirical story without much depth. Gotta be in the mood for it, which i wasnt.

God is dead and his body falls into the sea. The dying angels appear to thomas tasking him with the job of towing his body to the burial site they have prepared, only not everyone wants proof to leak out.

Not as much depth as their should have been for my tastes. This story is fine, but nothing special.

[HeavyReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yesterday at work, I got an ILL request for this book. The title did not ring any mental bells. I pulled the book from the shelf. No mental bells rang. It wasn't until I was checking the book out to the borrowing library that I looked at the cover and heard the faintest mental ding. The illustration on the cover was familiar.

I read the story description on the back of the book. Oh yes, that sounded familiar. It was familiar. I had read this book.

But I can't remember where I was when I read the book or why I chose to read it or if someone suggested it to me. Such mystery.

Of course, I can't really remember if I liked it, but if it didn't leave much of an impression on me, I must not have liked it very much.

[Lowed · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first take of the author James Morrow. True, this was a light reading, but this book asked the big questions. The premise being 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 real thought- provoking read. But note that this book is definitely NOT for everybody. When I was discussing this with a friend (a not-so-religious-but-someone-who-believed-in-the-Almighty), I got a high brow reaction.

Compared to Lamb by Christopher Moore. Nah! forget I said that. I cannot compare this with that book.!

[Mitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong 4.0 Stars
This felt very similar to a Christopher Moore novel but slightly more serious, slightly less funny and slightly more heart. A very fun and strange odyssey of an oil tanker and it's crew as it tows the body of Jehovah to the arctic for his last rest. I think where the book really shines is in its characters. It wasn't until I finished the novel that I came to realize how attached I had become to them and their stories.
I think were the book falls short is in the sad fact that the humor isn't as funny as it thinks it is and I think the themes could have been expanded on a little more.
Overall, a well written and bizarre but very fun odyssey of a book.

[trickgnosis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I came to this with the wrong expectations. It's pretty light on the theology in favor of some Pythonesque absurd humor, which of course would please most folks. I enjoyed it but coming in the midst of the dark 900 pg doorstoppers I seem to be specializing in these days I was not in the best place to fully appreciate the humor. That said, I would certainly recommend this to certain of my friends.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ehhhhh okay fine, four stars, because I'm in a good mood from having had delicious waffles for brunch. Also I've never read anything like this before. The characters seemed small somehow and they mostly annoyed me, but the concept was fascinating. It's a gross and very weird book, though.

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

Van Horne, a disgraced oil tanker captain whose ship was responsible for a terrible oil spill, is approached by a dying angel, who tells him that God has a physical body and that the body is dead, floating in the ocean off Gabon. He is directed to take command of a supertanker and tow the Divine Corpse to a tomb the angels have made for him in the Arctic Circle. Paired with a scientifically-minded Jesuit, Van Hone takes on the job, the staggering theological implications of which start to have an unsavory effect on their crew. This is exacerbated when they pick up a stranded woman who turns out to be a militant feminist atheist, appalled at the idea of a physical male God. Getting in contact with her fiancé, millionaire scion of a condom empire, she directs him to stop the journey and send proof of the patriarchy to the bottom of the ocean. This entails hiring some rather gung-ho WWII reenactors who want to play out the Battle of Midway.

As you can see from the summary, while this idea would have played out very differently in the hands of Poul Anderson or Larry Niven, James K. Morrow is more like Douglas Adams crossed with Tom Sharpe, and a hint of Kurt Vonnegut. Witty and full of dark humor, this book doesn't concern itself so much with the eschatological and existential upheaval such events would actually have as much as savagely satirizing the mayhem caused by zealots of all stripes. The deadpan insanity of the prose is what keeps it going, and without spoiling too much, let me just say, at one point the sailors take part in a rather unique Communion.

[Beth G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"So what do you think, Father? A miracle, or the North Atlantic Drift?"
"I think it's all the same thing."

~~~

In Towing Jehovah, the author takes Nietzsche literally: God is dead. He passed away with a smile on his face, fell from heaven, and splashed down in the ocean. At the behest of His moribund angels, a supertanker flying the Vatican's flag must surreptitiously tow the two-mile-long Corpus Dei to its final resting place in the Arctic. Along the way, the captain and crew contend with foes ranging from the Catholic Church to an atheist Enlightenment League, both of whom are equally passionate about covering up the evidence that God is
(a) real, and
(b) dead as a doornail.

This satire doesn't limit itself to lampooning religion (and lack thereof). Morrow reminds me a bit of Vonnegut or Heller in the way he parodies every subject his plot touches upon: grown men with daddy issues, sophomoric New York playwrights, feminists who believe in crystals, feminists who don't believe in crystals, condom magnates, Marxists who insist Marxism will solve every woe, overzealous WW2 reenactors...

The shipboard setting is a laboratory for human nature, as its crew goes through all the stages of grief in Anno Postdomini One, then ultimately develops their own humanistic faith.

My biggest complaint was that the character who is presented as the feminist moral center of the story serves an antifeminist role, getting paired off with a male character who apparently needs the love of a good woman to "save" him. I *choose* to interpret this as intentional satire of the parts women so often play in stories.

I would recommend this book to any Vonnegut fan, or anyone who has a sense of humor about religion, atheism, and everything in between.

[Ignacio Senao f · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un disparate de historia contada en tono serio.
Unos ángeles reclaman la ayuda del capitán de un petrolero, pues Jesús ha muerto y es necesario que lo lleven a un iceberg que han amoldado para meterlo y se conserve congelado. Aquí esta sinopsis da mucho juego, pues es interesante saber que pasa luego de la muerte y descubrimiento de alguien tan dubitativo en nuestra sociedad. Pero es que aún queda algo mejor: necesitan un petrolero porque Jesús es como una montaña de grande y para mas disparate, este petrolero remolcándolo, se perderá y pasaran mucha hambre, con las implicaciones tan interesante como que se esta descomponiendo Jesús, tiene mucha carne…

[Derrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could understand some thinking this book is terribly blasphemous, but I didn’t find it that way at all. Some of the most devoutly religious come through it the best. The book imagines what it would be like if God died and he was literally as he appears in paintings and sculptures, a giant, towering god that has been been found floating in the ocean. It looks at a boat that is towing him to his final resting place and using that to talk about faith, atheism and human nature. I found it pretty engaging.

[Melissa Ruhl · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise of Towing Jehovah is fascinating to me. What if God died? What if he descended from heaven, lifeless and floating aimlessly in the Atlantic ocean, with his falling angels announcing to Earthly religious leaders that they must bury him in an icy Arctic cave? How would people respond?

While I thoroughly enjoyed Morrow's creative, yet clear writing and his bold questioning of possibility, traits I always look forward to in his stories, I felt Towing Jehovah to be lacking. Throughout the novel, a handful of different characters showed a variety of responses to God's death: a sea captain who just wants to reclaim a bit of honor, a deeply reflective religious scholar who must weigh Vatican imperatives with his own moral searching, a Jewish deckhand who struggles who the anti-Semitic prejudice of his evangelical peer...through these stories we see the struggle to live ethically in Anno Postdomini One.

But there is one set of characters that make no sense to me. How would atheists respond to the sudden appearance of a large mass identified as God's body? I would imagine one prominent response would be validation through the knowledge that God was in fact some sort of giant humanoid and, if this giant humanoid also facilitated or inspired some Biblical stories, he certainly didn't create the universe or control life or death, as evidenced by his current state. God's death, should the term "god" still apply, would reveal him to have been far from omnipotent. The book's two atheists, Cassie and Oliver, leaders of an activist atheist society, respond quite differently. They freak out, believing the appearance of the deity's corpse to be an event that will usher in a new era of ignorance, though ignorance concerning what, I am unclear. In their view, God's death somehow validates everything they are against. It validates the existence of a god, it validates the dominance of patriarchy, and it weights faith over reason. Morrow never provides a reason for why they feel this way, for why they never consider the possibility that God's death will alter rather than further the course of human history, but their panic does allow an essential plot line to develop. I hate to say this about Morrow because I'm such a fan of his work, but I feel like he left a major gap in the story and filled it with a bit of nonsense in order to facilitate a plot device. Ultimately, the hole and layer of brush covering it prevented me from going forward with the book and believing its conclusions.

For how concise, yet thorough Morrow is in his short stories, I am bummed that the first novel of his I've read was so intellectually disappointing. Nevertheless, I did enjoy his language -- his use of words and his way of revealing characters and worlds was always enthralling -- and I will probably read the rest of the books in the Godhead series with the hope that he will more fully explore the diversity of responses to the death of God.

[Math le maudit · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieu est mort, et son corps dérive dans le golfe de Guinée. Anthony van Horne, ex capitaine d'un supertanker et responsable d'une marée noire sans précédent est chargé par le Vatican de remorquer le corps jusqu'à sa dernière demeure.

Tel est le pitch de départ de ce roman qui, sous ses dehors rigolards et gentiment iconoclaste interroge notre rapport au sacré et à dieu, bien sûr.

Car en effet, si le ton semble d'abord léger et en dépit d'un humour corrosif distillé au fil des pages, c'est aussi un conte philosophique qui nous est proposé, la notion de cadavre divin remettant en cause beaucoup de choses, du simple concept d'athéisme (dur à assumer face à un cadavre de trois kilomètres de long) en passant par le rapport à la morale, car quoi de plus tentant que de transgresser tous les tabous une fois l'assurance de ne plus être "sous le regard de dieu" ?

Je ne dévoilerai rien du dénouement, mais je peux néanmoins dire que ce livre allie drôlerie, philosophie et aussi, un peu, théologie (mais c'est un peu logique non ?) avec un égal bonheur, ce qui suffit à en faire une lecture recommandé et recommandable.

[Pierre A Renaud · Rating 2 out of 5]

God is really dead this time (and accessorily makes an excellent delicacy and premium fertilizer). Do we reveal this to humanity, helping it achieve emancipation ? No - better keep this sad affair a secret, otherwise a desperate humanity will fall into murderous chaos. The church lives happily ever after, and so does a self-deluded humankind. An unambitious letdown for what appeared to be a promising prelude.

[Kris Blackburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

God is dead. The atheists among you are no doubt chuckling and grinning and thinking ‘yeah I know!’ And yeah as a fellow atheist I have to agree and high five along with you, but get this, and this is where the book is going, what if God actually died and his body was on Earth?

Right? I know. Now what?

So that’s what we have here. The initial humour and laughter subsides and the book gives you the chance to sort of get used to the idea. And you do. It takes a while, the first of the three parts into which this book is split deals a lot with the world building, scene setting and characterisation. There’s a little too much of this, and Morrow REALLY wants you to know that he’s spent a lot of time researching about large boats. You will get all the terminology.

When the book gets going though, ooh boy, what a deliciously sacrilegious treat we have here.

Everyone, atheists, the Catholic Church, scientists, Christian scientists, the lay people, all of them are represented here and what this means for every one of these groups of people. The book explores, deeply I must point out, the psychological implications of having to secretly transport the corpse of God to a hidden Arctic tomb carved out of an iceberg. And by deeply, I mean deeply.

The best satire comes from pointing the fingers at we already recognise and exaggerating it. It also has a point of reference; Ancient Greek comedy had the performers running around with wooden phallus’ beating and vomiting on each other. In here we have violence, we have orgies, we have burgers made from the flesh of the Alpha and the Omega to stave off starvation. We have a World War Two reenactment society being absolutely absurd and tragic all in one fell swoop.

The way that Morrow creates pity for all groups of people, as everyone is wrestling with the implications is superb. Everyone is devastated, everyone is wrestling with their conscience in some way, and all these little moments are played out on a backdrop of driving a quad bike across God’s navel to scare away sharks that are nibbling his floating underside framed around theological philosophical discussion. It’s almost an absurdist essay that genuinely asks ‘what if God did actually die right now?’ And says ‘I know you don’t believe in Him, but what if?’

It’s surprisingly poignant, surprisingly touching and isn’t the dissection of organised religion that you’d think. In many ways it reflects my own thinking: the issue is not with religion per se, but about the people weilding the power of it. And regardless of your thoughts on God of the Old Testament, if He does or did exist, you wouldn’t be here to enjoy the beauty of life without him.

That’s not to say that the theists get an easy ride: if God didn’t exist why should we behave? And for anyone who thinks this argument for themselves then this too is addressed by eulogising Kantian ethics.

By the end, no side ‘wins’. Everything is just beautifully presented and even ends on a decision. By the time you turn that final page you will ponder that decision, and you too will think ‘what if?’

[Nathan Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

World Fantasy Award Winners: 1995

As I've been getting through the world fantasy award winners, I've tried to finish the books in groupings by decade-- with the 70s and 80s now complete, this is my first entry from the 90s.

Upon reading the premise, Towing Jehovah immediately shot to the top of my list; God is dead and His body is to be towed across the ocean, to be entombed in the Arctic, preserved for the future.The presence of such a sight causes doubt and distress among the faithful and non-faithful alike.

It is a fantastic and bizarre premise that gave this novel a ton of promise... However, while it's not the worst WFA novel I've read, it's certainly the most disappointing and is ultimately, very much a mixed bag. The novel begins with a somber and eerie tone, lighting the conceit of the novel as something very troubling and earth-shattering, but it very quickly turns into a satirical almost-comedy, cartoonishly exaggerating christians, atheists, feminists, Jews and the intelligentsia in equal measures, written in a demeaning and reductionist viewpoint. With its ironic, post-modernist approach of highlighting brand-names and pop-culture references, it functions as a scathing criticism of capitalistic consumerism (and religion's often-troubling relationship with it) which gives it some validity as a satire, but it's very far from subtle, nuanced or clever.

I didn't find it wholly unenjoyable, and the sudden change in tone was something I eventually got used to, but it's definitely not the novel I was expecting, and not in a good way.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny, absurd, with a pletora of dysfunctional characters... I liked it, although it's not as good as, let's say, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. The style, the genre, aims there, but miss the center of the target.
Anyway: God is dead, and humanity doesn't feel good either. The remaining, sick angels are giving the last orders to the Vatican and cohorting a desperate captain to bring the Holy Body to a grave in the Arctic, for future adventures. I don't know if I'll read the rest of the serie, the first book is enough and doesn't end in a cliffhanger.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, you can't beat this conceptual premise for a novel (or, for that matter, this book's killer opening line): the two mile high body of God expires and a disgraced sealiner captain behind an Exxon-Valdez style oil spill is enlisted to tow the body by sea. Morrow is a wonderful satirist and this novel is often very funny. But I think that this book doesn't entirely live up to its promise. Morrow introduces interesting theological questions, such as how atheists react when they learn that God is real. But he's regrettably stuck with the captain's journey. So this novel starts to go off the rails a little bit and becomes increasingly less focused as it goes along. Even so, I was so impressed with Morrow's wit and imagination that I will be reading many of his other books.

[Sami Eerola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly good and complex. This is a satire, where the old testament God appears dead in the ocean and the Catholic Church tries to rescue it and a militant Atheist group to destroy it. Engaging characters that are more than stereotypes and actual theological ponderings on the implication of the concept.

This book makes me think of Terry Prachet and Neil Gaiman´s Good Omens that i did not like. Both book are satires of the literal reading of the Bible, but Morrow's book is funnier and the story less convoluted

[Corey Quick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most inventive book I've read in a long time--both humorous and thoughtful and entertaining.

[Sara Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this when it was released and was amazed. I loved it!

[Peter Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recall little about this one, except for the striking cover art. And that I didn't care for it. My first try at a Morrow?

[Dry Rat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moje oczekiwania do tego tytułu były w zupełności inne. Koniec końców nie powiem, że wszystkie te porównania i sposób prowadzenia historii wyjątkowo mi się spodobały. Zakończenie będące tak oczywiste jednak w mojej głowie to było tak niespodziewane jakby było niesamowitym plot-twistem.
Ta książka to dosłownie absurd goniący za absurdem, ale uważam że warte przeczytania