Shambling Towards Hiroshima

In Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow, a B-movie actor looks back forty years later at the part he played in a top secret Navy operation to end World War II. With a shortage of plutonium for the Manhattan Project, America’s alternative super weapons are three genetically engineered Godzilla-style giant iguanas. A demonstration has been arranged with a miniature version of the creature and a model city, in the hope that the Japanese diplomats will realize that defeating the behemoths is impossible and advise the Emperor to surrender. When the human-size lizards prove too docile, the actor is hired to play the part in a lizard suit for a filmed demonstration instead. If he is convincing enough, the lives of the Japanese civilians who would be killed by the behemoths and those of the military on both sides who would be killed in a traditional assault will all be spared. Other classic Hollywood Horror figures are recruited for the filming, including a wonderfully depicted James Whale, the director of the first two Frankenstein movies. From a Nebula-winning author, this is a book full of sharp wit that revels in the absurdity of its premise and deep despair at the ultimate outcome of the war.

-- Kristen, Main Library