The Coffin of Honey

by Geoffrey D. Morrison

Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation in this poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.

At the end of the twenty-first century, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, a minor Marxist politician’s speech is interrupted by the arrival of an iridescent, pill-shaped object. It brings him, briefly, to another world, and to a state of ecstasy he will struggle to interpret upon his return. Soon, many others will be offered the same incantatory opportunity. Rival states attempt to capitalize on these developments, and a cynical spy sets an elaborate psychological operation in motion. Thousands of miles away, on an agricultural commune near the Caspian Sea, a young poet spends her nights troubled by prophetic dreams. The politician, the spy, and the poet will be ineluctably drawn into one another’s orbits, as will the mysterious Bell Letterist, author of a text about “the interdimensional will to the aesthetic” – a powerful motive force that requires human solidarity in order to thrive.

The Coffin of Honey is inspired equally by apocryphal stories of Alexander the Great, Bolaño-esque tales of literary vanishings, thousand-year-old Persian poems by exiled princesses, and the fever-dream conclusions of every parapolitical conspiracy theory that might just be true.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 12, 2026

Reviews

[Adam McPhee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world is split in two: the capitalists once again form their own side, the Communards the other, but it's the people living in the margins, the Communard-sympathizing workers of the capitalist world, who are most likely to be visited by the UFOs, a still unexplained but increasingly common phenomena.

A UFO briefly abducts a minor communist functionary in Kerala while he's in the middle of giving a speech, an agent from SIKE, REDACTED is sent to sow chaos, and a group of Communard comrades along the Caspian Sea research the UFO phenomenon at their library. It's a lot of fun, very funny, and shows a real love and erudition when it comes to language(s). There is so much going on here, and I can't wait to visit it again.

[Brendan Campisi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because of the way it allows an author to shape entire worlds to their own specifications, science fiction has a longstanding affinity with radical politics. In 'The Coffin of Honey,' Geoffrey Morrison presents, not a utopia, but a complex picture of a near-future world transformed by climate change. This world, somewhat like the 20th century one, is divided into capitalist and communist spheres, although the former is in seemingly irreparable economic and cultural decline and the latter appears free from anything resembling Stalinist degeneration. The book's characters--whose narratives are conveyed in strikingly distinct voices and forms--include loyal citizens of the Commune, communists stranded 'behind the wall' under capitalism, and one agent of imperialism who provides an extremely compelling villain. I feel compelled to begin with the book's politics in part because they make it impossible to simply 'enjoy' it in an untroubled way. 'The Coffin of Honey' confronts the reader starkly with the inequities of the world we live in, and the ways that they are going to get worse in our century. The hope it offers is not that there is a 'fix' for this, but that those most affected are agents who will be able to rebel against the world that placed them in such a catastrophic position.

Morrison's first novel, 'Falling Hour,' is centrally preoccupied with historical consciousness, seeking an antidote to the amnesia of Anglophone settler society in the fraught triangular relationship of Scotland, Ireland and 'Canada.' 'The Coffin of Honey' is just as clearly preoccupied with the problem of *global* consciousness, the awareness of the wider world that is just as difficult to achieve for Anglos as awareness of the past. The book's setting spans much of the world, but centers on the broad Indo-Persian cultural universe. Every choice about its setting and characters seems made in conscious effort to portray a world that does not have whites, Westerners, English speakers, people like its author or myself, at its center. Those whites/Westerners who do appear are menacing, ridiculous, or both. It is perhaps for others to decide whether Morrison's imaginative effort here has succeeded or not, but I find it admirable in any event.

Closely related to this recentering is the novel's deep concern with *language,* or rather with *languages,* the way they shape and are shaped by cultures and their histories, the they have been and will be mixed and reconfigured by global migration, and the power of translation. The cultural ideal the novel gestures towards could be called a kind of Third Worldist cosmopolitanism.

Along with (or through) all of this, The Coffin of Honey is a well-crafted science fiction story (I can't get into the pure sci fi element without spoiling anything, so I won't) with compelling characters and beautiful prose. I hope that there will be a readership prepared to receive it.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was super eager to read THE COFFIN OF HONEY by Geoffrey D. Morrison because I loved the writing in his debut novel Falling Hour and I loved the writing in this novel too. I was so pleased to find this novel featured long sentences (like in Falling Hour) and you can find a deliciously long sentence on page 42 where one sentence is almost the entire page. I loved how the writing was mixed up in this novel with short chapters. This story begins with an encounter with swimmers (aliens) and I loved the global setting which included Canada. I loved the wonderful descriptive language such as “the couch creaked arthritically”. I really enjoyed the touches of humour and how the writing was spectacular down to the specific word choice. There were several words like tendriline, ambuscade, gimcrack, buckram, boondoggle, mastaba, semaphore, forfend, and medusoid which I’d never heard of before and after looking up the meaning found they fit perfectly. I loved this part of a sentence: “…chewed a Swedish-made nootropic snus and spat into a platinum pocket spittoon.” I can’t wait to read his next book!

Thank you to Coach House Books for my gifted review copy!

[GwenViolet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Becoming one of those guys who fell into deep depression about Pandora from Avatar not being real but about the Communards.

[Thom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came in blind to this, and picked up a copy after tagging along with a friend to Geoffrey’s reading at Iron Dog books. It’s clear from meeting him, and dipping a toe into the book, that Geoffrey is in love with language and the beautiful mess that lies within translation. This is a sci-fi novel ostensibly, but while there is ‘alien life’ it is used to mirror the alienation that we live within today: class divides, capitalist horror, colonialism, environmental destruction and the like.

I read China mievilles Embassytown last year which also uses sci-fi tropes as a backdrop for exploring translation, but this work felt considerably more cohesive, and frankly was a much more pleasurable read. You feel the joy and optimism radiating from the author throughout, and it becomes contagious. The bell letterist text and the closing chapter were some of the finest writing I’ve encountered in sci-fi in years, with vivid imagery and sentences you can really chew on. I don’t have much else to say for now beyond that I loved reading this and will be following up with his debut/eagerly awaiting whatever he writes next.

[jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful case for the possibility of Something Else. This book is thoroughly aware of exactly the nasty state of the "dish of parboiled shit" we live in, and yet it is also, I think, filled with passionate hope for transformational change. It is deeply compassionate and in love with every speck of beauty and care in the world. There is a section in the middle that is such an astonishing feat of language and long sentences that I became slightly giddy reading it on my bus ride home. It's also a convincing image of communal living and family abolition, to boot.

[Rustic Red Reads]

It might be early to drop this one at 18% but I personally didn't enjoy the writing style. We have a Stream of consciousness chapter - sometimes in second-person POV, we have chapters where's there's a lot of unnecessary real-world information - like dugongs/manitees mistaken as mermaids, Pliny and the volcanic eruption. I felt exhausted and with my long TBR, I decided to drop this.

And it seems the (at least in the 18% of the book I've read) - it's going to be more focused on the socio-political themes with history lessons scattered throughout, which is not really my genre. I focused on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Annihilation part of the blurb - with the 18% I've read and some skimming, I'm still don't get why this book is compared to those. But the focus should be on the poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism.

[Evelyn]

DNF @13%

[Jonah F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Closer to a 3.5. Mixed feelings here, Bell Letterist section onwards is pretty brilliant and thrums with the deep significance and nonsense of a psychedelic trip (see the Caspian Tern!) That said, for something trying and succeeding at being “literary”, I found it focused too much on the granular details of its world building. Too much time spent playing in the political sand of the future world when I think vagueness would have served it better.

[Torie]

DNF, ran out of time on my library loan and just had no interest in picking this up again. I only made it about 35% in but the characters still felt uninspiring, and I still felt like I was stuck in an endless loop of exposition and world-building every time another character joined the already huge cast.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

The thing that really got me about this book was its snappy dialogue and characters that leapt off the page at me. The different perspectives and the way it was paced was compelling. It was unlike any book I've read before.

[Matthew Tomkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A major contribution to Canadian literary sci-fi, and future classic.

[Elliot Hanowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful and inspiring book that I will be pondering for a long time to come.