James Morrow

James Morrow (born 17 March 1947 in Philadelphia) is an American novelist and short story writer whose satirical science fiction and fantasy turns large theological and philosophical questions into comedy, most famously in Towing Jehovah (1994), which imagines the aftermath of God's death.

Morrow studied at the University of Pennsylvania and took a Master of Arts in Teaching at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, then worked as an instructional media specialist in Massachusetts schools. His first novel, The Wine of Violence (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981), was followed by The Continent of Lies (1984), This Is the Way the World Ends (Henry Holt, 1986) and Only Begotten Daughter (Harcourt Brace, 1990). Towing Jehovah opened the Godhead trilogy, continued in Blameless in Abaddon (1996) and The Eternal Footman (1999). He later wrote two unconventional historical novels, The Last Witchfinder (William Morrow, 2006) and Galápagos Regained (St Martin's Press, 2015), as well as The Philosopher's Apprentice (2008) and the novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima (Tachyon, 2009).

Towing Jehovah won the 1995 World Fantasy Award for best novel, was a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards and the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and in French translation won the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. Morrow has also won Nebula Awards for the story "Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge" and the novella City of Truth (1992), and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for Shambling Towards Hiroshima. He co-founded the International Society for Heresy Studies in 2013.

For collectors

The book to own is the Harcourt Brace first edition of Towing Jehovah (1994), his award winner. The Nebula-winning novella City of Truth is an exception to his American firsts: the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction lists it under a London edition from Legend (1991). The Henry Holt first of This Is the Way the World Ends (1986) completes the early run.