Джеймс Морроу – лучшие книги

А знаете - Рай пуст!..
А знаете - Христос работает медбратом в заштатном хосписе!.. А знаете - Второе пришествие уже наступило. Только вот родилась на свет... девочка?!
Каким станет Крестный путь Новой Мессии? Мессии, виновной уже в том, что она - женщина?!

Так все-таки - ЧТО перед нами? История циничной грешницы, ухитрившейся пережить Всемирный потоп… История Иова, возмечтавшего наконец свести счеты с Господом… История того, ЧТО, предположительно, и вправду написано было на скрижалях… Богоборчество? Дерзость? Скандал? Или просто - свобода духа, не признающая ни жанровых, ни религиозных уз? Прочитайте - и решайте сами!

Великий Яхве послал на Землю Великий Потоп. Проститутка Шейла из последних сил пытается спасти свою жизнь и жизнь своего ребенка, но похоже все усилия напрасны. Ребенок умирает, его легкие заполнены водой и мать должна оставить его тело на съедение акулам. Шейла из последних сил цепляется за спасительную лодку, но в скором времени теряет сознание. Её бесчувственное обнаруживает Ной вместе с сыновьями, которые на своем ковчеге плывут к месту своего спасения — горе Арарат. Шейлу переносят на ковчег, но теперь Ною предстоит решить её дальнейшую судьбу, ведь дегенеративное семя, которое несет в себе Шейла, не должно продолжить род человеческий...

Как и многие рассказы Джеймса Морроу, «Технофилия» рассказывает о влиянии религии на жизнь человека. На сей раз — на такую сферу человеческой деятельности, как образование...

James Morrow's Galápagos Regained centers on the fictional Chloe Bathurst, an unemployed Victorian actress who finds work on Charles Darwin's estate, nurturing the strange birds, exotic lizards, and giant tortoises he brought back from his trip around the world. When Chloe gets wind of the Great God Contest, sponsored by the Percy Bysshe Shelley Society―£10,000 to the first petitioner who can prove or disprove the existence of a Supreme Being―she decides that Mr. Darwin's materialist theory of speciation might just turn the trick. (If Nature gave God nothing to do, maybe He was never around in the first place.) Before she knows it, her ambitions send her off on a wild adventure―a voyage by brigantine to Brazil, a steamboat trip up the Amazon, a hot-air balloon flight across the Andes―bound for the Galápagos archipelago, where she intends to collect the live specimens through which she might demonstrate evolutionary theory to the contest judges.

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.

Jennet is the daughter of the Witchfinder of Mercia and East Anglia. Whilst her father roams the countryside in search of heretics, Jennet is left behind to be schooled by her aunt Isobel in the New Philosophy principally expounded by Isaac Newton. But her aunt’s style of scientific enquiry soon attracts the attention of the witchfinders. To save her aunt, Jennet travels to Cambridge to seek the help of Newton himself. Isobel is burned at the stake but in her dying moments, begs Jennet to devote her life to overturning the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act.

This sweeping novel follows Jennet as she travels to America and witnesses the Salem witch trials; is abducted by Indians; begins an affair with Benjamin Franklin; travels back to England and finally meets the real Newton; is shipwrecked; then ends up back in America where her brother is now the Witchfinder Royal. In a great final showdown between old superstition and new science, Jennet decides to have herself accused of witchcraft in order to disprove its existence.

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.

James Morrow turns his wit and vision to the ultimate fate of our species in this seriocomic tale of one George Paxton: devoted husband, adoring father, Everyman par excellence. A happy tombstone carver in the sleepy little town of Wildgrove, Massachusetts, George lacks only one thing: an anti-radiation “scopas” suit—all the rage in America in 1995—to protect his daughter in the event of nuclear war. Then fate (or the devil) intervenes, and for the price of a mere signature, George secures the longed-for suit. Unfortunately, what he has signed is an admission of complicity in beginning World War Three—and as that war that could never happen happens, George is whisked off on a series of surreal adventures.

When the nuclear blast devastates Wildgrove, George is rescued by the mysterious crew of a U.S. submarine whose other passengers include a TV evangelist, the Assistant Secretary of Defense, a psychotherapist, and an Air Force general in despair over the end of his career. Journeying into the past and the future, with people who have died and people who will never be born, George grapples with the need to explain exactly why this is the way the world ends. Finally, on a deserted plain in the wastes of Antarctica, he is made to face the consequences of his complicity.

В будущем борьба за права нерожденных развилась в борьбу за права незачатых, и теперь у каждого человека есть при себе специальный счетчик, с помощью которого можно определить вероятность зачатия в любой момент времени, так что вступать в половые контакты можно только при наивысшей вероятности. Разумеется, контрацептивы при этом запрещены полностью. Каждого новорожденного ребенка проверяют на предмет вероятности будущего бесплодия, и если он/она тест не пройдет, ребенка попросту топят в ходе специального обряда, называемого Окончательным Крещением. Несколько человек решают выбраться из города в какой-нибудь другой, менее склонный к такому активному поощрению деторождения.
© Nog

In a bizarre future metropolis where even the most trivial fib cannot be uttered, a man must learn to lie—or lose what he loves most Truth reigns supreme in the city-state of Veritas. Not even politicians lie, and weirdly frank notices abound—such as warning: this elevator maintained by people who hate their jobs: ride at your own risk. In this dystopia of mandatory candor, every preadolescent citizen is ruthlessly conditioned, through a Skinnerian ordeal called a “brainburn,” to speak truthfully under all circumstances. Jack Sperry wouldn’t dream of questioning the norms of Veritas; he’s happy with his life and his respectable job as a “deconstructionist,” destroying “mendacious” works of art—relics from a less honest era. But when his adored son, Toby, falls gravely ill, the truth becomes Jack’s greatest enemy. Somehow our hero must overcome his brainburn and attempt to heal his child with beautiful lies. Alternately hilarious and moving, City of Truth thoughtfully explores the pitfalls inherent in any attempt to engineer a perfect society.