Reading science fiction like it matters since 1989.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2015; $30.00 hc 320 pages
It’s difficult to review James Morrow’s fiction without lapsing into a lecture about the importance of satiric literature—Candide, “A Modest Proposal,” yadayadayada—building up to an exhortation that “This Is Important and You Should Read It Because It’s Good for You!” Well, yes, you should read this book, but not out of a grim sense of duty. At his best, when he’s not overcome by outrage at our narrow-minded cruelty, Morrow argues effectively for humane tolerance. He’s thoughtful and funny.
The trick is to help the reader become outraged by what he or she experiences in the story, not just use the rough idea for a story as a horror dump. The social situation in “Auspicious Eggs,” for example, strikes me as contrived, reflecting not believable human behavior in response to environmental catastrophe but Morrow’s dismay at the Catholic Church’s clever inhumanity. The underlying emotion is genuine, but Morrow hasn’t found a convincing container for it. He’s better with preexisting situations that give him props to play with. In the case of “Arms and the Woman,” Morrow takes the heroic legend of the Trojan War and slyly imagines how the bloodshed could have been stopped if Helen had realized how phony and dumb the whole thing was: Men and their silly games! (Although Helen here displays some human vanity too; at his best, Morrow can notice frailties wherever they lurk.)
And then there are Morrow’s “Bible Stories for Adults,” two of which are included here. Both are very good. “No. 17: The Deluge” won the Nebula Award for best short story in 1988, but I prefer “No. 31: The Covenant,” presenting an alternative world in which a self-aware computer is given the task of reassembling the shattered stone tablets containing God’s Law that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai but destroyed when he discovered the fickle Israelites worshiping an idol they’d made during his absence. In Morrow’s story, unlike Exodus 32:4 in the Bible we’re familiar with, the people don’t get a second chance at Divine Guidance when Moses climbs the mountain again and comes down with new tablets containing the Ten Commandments. No, in “No. 31” the fragments of Law have been waiting since the tablets’ destruction for the development of a superhuman intelligence that’s able to reassemble all those little shards. The story’s protagonist is quite capable of doing that job—until another computer, the Son of Rust, nurtures doubt about whether it would be right. If humans had God’s Own Laws, they might misinterpret and misuse them; for example, different groups might even imagine that their particular faith was superior to all others.... The story’s world, remember, has had a different history than ours, so that concepts like “slavery” and “war” are unknown until the Son of Rust mentions them. Even the Church is healthier because the holy tablets remain broken, as Morrow casually reveals by showing us that one of the Church officials sponsoring the project is female and black. Without definitive commandments from God, humans have been forced to rely on themselves with the result that their society has turned out fine.
That, finally, is Morrow’s overall point: Take responsibility for yourself, accept your limitations and talents, and get to work. And smile from time to time.
Joe Sanders lives in Willoughby, Ohio.
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