Here’s an amusing little novella whose presumption you’ll find amusing.
In Shambling towards Hiroshima, the U.S. Army is facing a bloodbath when it invades Japan in 1945 and there’s not enough uranium to construct the A Bombs. So the Ultimate Threat is three Godzilla type creatures which the Allies plan to unleash on the Japanese mainland.
After some of the scientists working at the secret laboratory start feeling guilty about breeding giant psychopathic incendiary lizards as biological weapons, the Navy call on the services of Syms Thorle. As the Olivier of Monster movies, his job is to shock visiting Japanese envoys, making them aware of the ferocious fate that awaits their country if they fail to surrender.
Behind Syms lie the full resources of Hollywood and there are cameo appearances by some of the industry’s great technicians. Syms is requires to don a superior rubber suit, devastate an enormous scale model of a Japanese city and to do in such a way that the three delegates beg for mercy.
With a humour and a writing style in the tradition of Soon I Will be Invincible, this is a rollicking read. Morrow is obviously an erudite writer whose sardonic humour is used to examine the big questions of Mankind almost at the level of Swift. The inhabitants of Veritas are unable to tell any lies, while Towing Jehovah has the corpse of God being shipped towards the Arctic. This is not the first time Godzilla has featured in his writings. A yarn in his collection The Cat’s Pajamas has King Kong, Godzilla and another unnamed creature offering their services after 9/11.
