Shambling Towards Hiroshima –
I had been wanting to read this for a very long time. The title, the cover…the premise. It’s kind of hard to find in hardcopy, but I finally found it on Kindle ebook and I had a gift card so there you go.
It’s a quick read: our story starts out as our hero – Syms Thorley – is writing his memoir in a Baltimore Hotel after winning the “Raydo” – a Lifetime Achievement award for Major Science Fiction/Fantasy Film and before (possibly) attempting suicide. Back in the day, the 1940’s to be specific, our Mr. Thorley was a star of monster movies -“The Curse of Kha-Ton-Ra“, “Corpuscula” and “Revenge of Corpuscula“. He was on the same level as Bela Lugosi and Karloff… “No one shambled like Syms”. His high caliber shambling brought him to the attention of the US Navy who happened to be looking for someone who can play a good monster.
The story goes back in time to 1945; it’s after the fall of Nazi Germany and the focus of WWII has turned to the defeat of Japan. There are several options; the invasion of the Home Islands and the anticipated carnage on both sides that this would bring, the “physics” bomb being worked on by scientists in New Mexico or… the Knickerbocker Project.
What? you never heard of that one? That was the one where the US Navy bred giant mutated lizards out at China Lake with the intent of letting them loose on the Japanese homeland to wreak mass destruction. I guess it really was top secret.
So it turns out that these giant mutated lizards need to be kept sedated at the bottom of China Lake (Ok, in our time, China Lake is a dry lake bed, but back in this timeline, it’s been flooded for the lizards) . The Navy wants to threaten the Japanese with the prospect of the giant lizards invading the homeland but they don’t/can’t actually use the real things ….so…. they cook up a plan. The Navy builds a miniature of the major Japanese cities, harbors, fleets and needs a scaled down version of the “monster” to attack for a presentation to the Japanese delegation. That’s where Syms comes in – he will “play” the giant monster (a man in a suit) and will (hopefully) make the Japanese so frightened that they will surrender.
Hijinks ensue as they are likely to with such a plot.
It’s pretty light weight but it’s entertaining and fun. I will definitely look for more James Morrow novels!
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