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, Canada, Dystopia, Speculative 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!

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Coffin of Honey is a strange, dreamlike novel set in a semi-utopian future. Part of the world is still capitalist, but a big chunk consists of post-capitalist eco-communes. Weird alien bubbles start inviting carefully chosen individuals to take a quick ride to another planet. The narrative explores this phenomenon via multiple points of view, including the first person to experience this alien contact. The paranoid remains of a redacted agency panic about the political implications, while others ponder what it all means. I enjoyed the variety of voices through which the story is told and was impressed by the flexibility and atmosphere of the writing. The many moments of satire are also sharply effective. In the lands of the Communards, one assignment you can volunteer for is to search the capitalist world wide web ('the necrotic phantasmagoria of the Undead Internet') for what is real and good. This role is known as a Selector:

"Sometimes I must concede certain accidental strokes of profundity to the algorithms. It is the only thing that makes this work worthwhile. That, and knowing I am dredging up things that provide meaning to all of you, when I wade through the Hot and Cold Hells. Can you believe that what I do with the support of my Attendants, with my vitals monitored, with debriefings and counselling, and only for one year of my life, people on the other side of the wall do every day, absolutely unprotected, for hours at a time? For leisure and for work, which are poorly differentiated over there anyway. And they call us inefficient! You wonder how they get anything done."
"Why do they want to see such horrible things?"
"They mostly don't. But if they want to use their internet at all, they have no choice. And their entertainment-industrial complex has perfected the science of the 'least objectionable program.' It pre-dates the internet. Long ago they discovered that television audiences knew television was terrible but would watch anyway, as long as they found something slightly less awful than everything else on. The hunt for something slightly less shit in a torrent of shit is their animating life force. They are sharks swimming through raw sewage."

The Communards use the French Revolutionary calendar, which I love. The Coffin of Honey is a meandering and philosophical rather than plot-led novel. The alien encounters at the centre of the narrative are mysterious; they are written in an evocative style with particularly good use of colour. The ambiguity of the Swimmers remains throughout and there is no obvious communication with alien beings. Yet the visitations have fascinating impacts and the ending appears to reference the observer effect in quantum physics, or so it seemed to me. I've never read a sci-fi novel quite like this one. It is a playful experiment that gives the reader much to ponder. And the cover design is lovely.

[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.

[Sam Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I very rarely (although increasingly so in the last few years) read very contemporary fiction; this is, as far as I know, the only time I have ever read a novel the year it came out. It was a natural necessity that I read this now. The Coffin of Honey is a stunningly beautiful book, one that revels in the interconnectedness and unity-in-diversity that has always existed in the world, in the universe, but which has only become quite so apparent in an increasing pitch within the last century and, given the novel's timeline, into the following century too. More and more of us are more aware than ever of living in a *World*, a world of meaning and historical accretions one upon another which, with predictable unpredictability, occasionally shoot up to the surface to be reinterpreted under new lights, where our lives are shaped by both fellow working people halfway across the world and by shady powerbrokers a mile high up the pecking order. But instead of just superficially acknowledging this ancient-and-modern globalization, The Coffin of Honey puts forward *the* answer: socialism, solidarity, the international working class. There's so much in the world, more than any one person can really wrap their head around, but we're all touching on parts of the whole; I've personally told myself that there's four things that I, at least, think are most important: Nature, Socialism, Art, and Love. This is a book that is about Nature, Socialism, Art, and Love. I'm so glad I read this at the same time that I've been delving more into poetry. The feeling The Coffin of Honey inspired in me was exactly what was said about Varughese's book-within-a-book, that when I read it, it felt as though I had written it. That isn't meant to be self-aggrandizing; just that its something that makes you feel that you really can be a protagonist in art and in history. All of us can!

[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.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Geoffrey D. Morrison's debut novel Falling Hour was a 5-star book in literary terms, but only 4 as a read due to my lack of aligment with the novel's message. I commented: 'The narrator is anti-English, anti middle-class, anti-capitalist and anti-Christian, and I either am, or am pro, all those things.'

And here that became more of an issue, as the novel's style - 'a poetic space-age fable of proletarian internationalism' - was somewhat less aligned to my literary taste. And I couldn't help but identify more with the haters and doubters than with the Communards and their sympathisers:

Haters and doubters said his disappearance was just deserts for his strange Red fraud (per the denialists) or karmic retribution for having brought Them to our world (per the intergalactic xenophobes), or some inscrutable geopolitical move by the Reds, or his true handlers the globalists, or his true handlers the Islamic fundamentalists, or his true handlers the Chinese, the Hindu nationalists, the Khalistani separatists, the Hellolanders, the decadent perfumed homosexual underground, the revanchist cybernetics industry, the revanchist petrochemical industry, the geoengineering lobby, the ecofascists, the primitivists, the accelerationists, the Basques (so said the infinitesimal types and tendencies of conspiracists, paranoiacs, wackos, and cranks).

A very well crafted, and passionately told, novel but not for me.

[Ian Mond]

You can find my review of this revolutionary, surreal, first contact novel in the May 2026 edition of Locus.

[Nicholas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kim Stanley Robinson meets Sebald meets Marx meets something that's entirely its own

[Iosef · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most compelling prose I've read in a while, faith restored in contemporary literary fiction (as long as it's in the hands of a communist).

[Isabelle]

Wtf is happening what are they talking about 🫩

[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.

[Maya Ware · Rating 4 out of 5]

The intersections between poetry, narrative, politics, history, economics, linguistics, and speculative fiction in this novel are unlike anything I’ve read before. The author paints the near future as a planet torn apart by war, climate change, and nationalism. However, Communists are living and working together in peace and Communist sympathizers trapped in capitalist countries are playing music and making art for mysterious alien visitors. Capitalist nationalists try to sow seeds of discontent to try to cling desperately to whatever little power they think they have. We need poetry and music and love to thrive and we need language to express ourselves in. We play with time and space and language a lot here and it’s only confusing if you make it. This was by no means a “vibes” novel, but even though I didn’t quite understand some of the deeper political philosophy here, I was able to appreciate the beauty of the poetry and the uncanniness of it all. Seventeen polyamorous string quartets, a Cuban engineer learning Chinese, a genderless writer obsessed with Alexander the Great, a fascist who loves to surf. This was crazy.

[Josh Issa · Rating 3.75 out of 5]

Picked this one up from Tanner’s in Sidney and got to say that I quite like this white boy with soul. This sci-fi political thriller was quite nice. I’ve got to say though that while the first half was super cool and I loved the repeated return of Alexander, I was ultimately left with so many questions. The second half of the book was slipping through my fingers like sand and I just could not figure out how to parse the last chapters. It could, most likely, be that I’m dumb. It is also a bit strange to me that I’ve ended up reading and not getting multiple fictions centred on climate change.

[Rebecca Rash · Rating 4 out of 5]

this novel has everything I like: experimental and mysterious in its writing, situations that are like dark comedy within a somewhat serious and interesting setting, and weird scifi element. I sort of got lost at the 70% mark with the ok? How are you going to tie this up? Morrison mostly does land an excellent ending but could have used some of the characters to aid in that. Looking forward to a reread to see if it was me or the book itself. Ps the dystopian setting is 10/10 and the redacted pieces are a seriously perfect touch. Very interested to read more of Morrison's work. 4.25

[Amber · Rating 3 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.

[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.

[Ibrahim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book about sufism, quantum mechanics, post-climate change geopolitics, espionage, language, and the present and future of our world. The writing in this is sublime with some sentences inducing the transcendental experience the novel focuses on. Favourite contemporary novel.

[Pravar Joshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book cannot be read, only reread

[Rustic 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.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gosh, I hated this book. I kept with it because I thought surely it would redeem itself, but it did not. The prose was lush and full of interesting vocabulary, but that's about all I liked about it. The stream of consciousness chapter took me like 2 weeks to finish because it was so difficult to follow and I kept falling asleep.

I'm pretty left-leaning but this book cast in sharp relief the limits of my anti-capitalist politics. This book reads like sci-fi communist propaganda written by an undergrad who thinks they're super groundbreaking when in reality it's just brainwashed academic wankery, while somehow still appealing to our basest desires to see the enemy as one-dimensional. For attempting to represent a not-too-distant semi-realistic take on the future sociopolitical landscape, there was very little nuance here, with everyone being Bad or Good. I prefer characters that are a little chewier, especially the ones we spend a lot of time with. In the end, the vibes were the worst of 1960s Heinlein, a la Farnham's Freehold. Is there something I'm missing??

The only concept I found thought provoking enough for my taste was the idea of government censorship of the internet for mental health reasons, and the pros and cons of the implications of such policies. But that felt tangential to the rest of the "story." I wish the author had spent more time with it.

[cassidy · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

deliciously pretentious (ive been really liking nigella lawson in gbbo lately), like if i were reading infinite jest and actually enjoying it. a book about how the arrival of an alien craft would be more of a political event than a scientific one or anything else and the insanity of capitalism. also about love and family and being lost and poetry. insanely good prose but again pretentious to the point of being like unreadable at times. had crazy chills at the end. 4.25 can’t believe goodreads has partial stars now

[Evelyn]

DNF @13%

[Corrie Liotta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look I know this book was “good” and I actually enjoyed reading a lot of it up until just after the halfway point and it feels reductive to say I didn’t “get” it but. I feel like I’m missing like four semesters’ worth of context and primary sources needed to understand what I just read. But it was also really funny and well written??? Reading this felt like punching above my weight class in a lot of ways but hopefully the book club is good!!! 🫡 3.5⭐️????

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a little wordy for me. I couldn’t get through the last 40 pages, so I just skimmed them. Not really sure where it was going. However I understand how someone would like it a lot.

[Demetria King · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 stars.

I may have been the problem with this one. I just didn’t care for it.

[Robert Micallef · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't think a credible literary utopia could be created with such artistry during the reign of mad King Donald. Was I pleasantly surprised.

I resonated with the critiques of late-stage Buffalo capitalism and the religious ideologies that underwrite the immiseration of billions.

I was reminded of the jeremiads of Slavoj Zizek and the late Mark Fisher but much more beautiful when rendered in fiction. No, I am not a Leninist.

Especially noteworthy for me was the psychopathic operative from the dying Western states. A wonderful world-building technique. A micro instance to illustrate the deficiencies of the macro, an illustration that finds far too many real-world examples.

I found myself envious of the citizens in the communard states with their Star Trek-like socialism. 4.5

[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.

[Matthew Tomkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

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