The Madonna and the Starship

by James Morrow

Overview

New York City, 1953. The golden age of television, when most programs were broadcast live. Young Kurt Jastrow, a full-time TV writer and occasional actor, is about to have a close encounter of the apocalyptic kind.

Kurt's most beloved character (and alter ego) is Uncle Wonder, an eccentric tinkerer whose pyrotechnically spectacular science experiments delight children across the nation. Uncle Wonder also has a more distant following: the inhabitants of Planet Qualimosa. When a pair of his extraterrestrial fans arrives to present him with an award, Kurt is naturally pleased—until it develops that, come next Sunday morning, these same aliens intend to perpetrate a massacre.

Will Kurt and his colleagues manage to convince the Qualimosans that Earth is essentially a secular and rationalist world? Or will the two million devotees of NBC's most popular religious program suffer unthinkable consequences for their TV-viewing tastes? Stay tuned for The Madonna and the Starship!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616961220
Publisher:	Tachyon Publications
Publication date:	05/19/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	1,108,400
File size:	491 KB

About the Author

James Morrow is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Towing Jehovah, the Nebula Award-winning novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima, and the New York Times Notable Book Blameless in Abaddon. His recent novels include The Last Witchfinder, hailed by the Washington Post as "literary magic," and The Philosopher's Apprentice, which received a rave review from Entertainment Weekly. He is a master of the satiric and the surreal who has enjoyed comparison with Twain, Vonnegut, and Updike. Morrow lives in State College, Pennsylvania.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpt from Chapter One of The Madonna and the Starship

1: Uncle Wonder Builds a Jet Engine

X minus ten seconds and counting! Nine, eight, seven! Step lively, cosmic cadets! Six, five, four! Time to scramble aboard the space schooner TRITON! Good job, cadets, you made it! Three, two, one ... BLAST OFF with BROCK BARTON AND HIS ROCKET RANGERS! Brought to you by Kellogg’s Sugar Corn Pops, with the sweetenin’ already on it, and by Nestlé’s Ovaltine, the hot chocolaty breakfast drink school teachers recommend! And now, stalwart star sailors, let’s race on up to the bridge, where Brock and his crew are about to receive an assignment from Galaxy Central: a mission that will hurl them pell-mell into the dreaded “Coils of Terror,” chapter one of this week’s exciting adventure, THE COBRA KING OF GANYMEDE!

Reading Group Guide

Except from Chapter One of The Madonna and the Starship

1: Uncle Wonder Builds a Jet Engine

X minus ten seconds and counting! Nine, eight, seven! Step lively, cosmic cadets! Six, five, four! Time to scramble aboard the space schooner TRITON! Good job, cadets, you made it! Three, two, one ... BLAST OFF with BROCK BARTON AND HIS ROCKET RANGERS! Brought to you by Kellogg’s Sugar Corn Pops, with the sweetenin’ already on it, and by Nestlé’s Ovaltine, the hot chocolaty breakfast drink school teachers recommend! And now, stalwart star sailors, let’s race on up to the bridge, where Brock and his crew are about to receive an assignment from Galaxy Central: a mission that will hurl them pell-mell into the dreaded “Coils of Terror,” chapter one of this week’s exciting adventure, THE COBRA KING OF GANYMEDE!

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/28/2014
Jonathan Swift meets Buck Rogers in this hilarious send-up of the golden ages of television and pulp sci-fi. In mid-20th-century New York City, Kurt Jastrow, de facto head writer for NBC’s Brock Barton and His Rocket Rangers, receives a transmission from the planet Qualimosa informing him that he has won the Zorningorg Prize for championing “reason in its eternal war with revelation.” Then the lobster-like extraterrestrials get wind of “Sitting Shivah for Jesus,” an upcoming episode of a Sunday-morning religious program written by Kurt’s love interest, Connie Osborne. The crustacean “logical positivists” propose to use their death ray to annihilate the show’s two million devout, “irrational” viewers. Can Kurt and Connie refashion her script into a satirical, sacrilegious screed, forestalling mass slaughter? This delightful romp from Morrow (Shambling Towards Hiroshima) provides the breathless answer in short order; no need to wait for next week to tune in and find out. (June)

Publishers Weekly

An io9.com June Must-Read Science Fiction and Fantasy Book

STARRED REVIEW] Jonathan Swift meets Buck Rogers in this hilarious send-up of the golden ages of television and pulp sci-fi. In mid-20th-century New York City, Kurt Jastrow, de facto head writer for NBC’s Brock Barton and His Rocket Rangers, receives a transmission from the planet Qualimosa informing him that he has won the Zorningorg Prize for championing “reason in its eternal war with revelation.” Then the lobster-like extraterrestrials get wind of “Sitting Shiva for Jesus,” an upcoming episode of a Sunday-morning religious program written by Kurt’s love interest Connie Osborne. The crustacean “logical positivists” propose to use their death ray to annihilate the show’s two million devout, “irrational” viewers. Can Kurt and Connie refashion her script into a satirical, sacrilegious screed, forestalling mass slaughter? This delightful romp from Morrow (Shambling Towards Hiroshima) provides the breathless answer in short order; no need to wait for next week to tune in and find out.
—Publishers Weekly

“...breezy humor and provocative thinking... Don’t miss the thrilling conclusion of James Morrow’s The Madonna and The Starship!
—Washington Post

“I am so besotted with James Morrow’s talent that I cannot find a word big enough to deify it.”
—Harlan Ellison, bestselling author of Shatterday

“The story has the tone of a manic tall tale, and is often just as hilarious....”
—Locus

“To whatever extent the Qualimosians represent the spirit of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, the ‘live and let live’ moral of The Madonna and the Starship is closer to Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World. And what’s more, it’s funny!”
—Interzone

“a wild, over-the-top farce.... once it starts, never stops racing, Complications abound, lunacy predominates, the aliens are kept distracted and the world is saved with a broadcast that surely would have made viewer heads explode in 1953.”
—SCI FI Magazine

“. . . an enjoyable read—funny, thought provoking, and memorable.”
—Strange Horizons

“The Madonna and the Starship will have you laughing out loud while you think about what it means to be human.
—Looking For A Good Book

“Galaxy Quest, eat your heart out.”
—Bookish

“The Madonna and the Starship is hysterically funny and thought-provoking at the same time.”
—Lit/Rant

“...reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut and the film Galaxy Quest.... this latest book by the inimitable James Morrow is rife with gonzo charm and buried barbs and offbeat parables galore.”
—Locus

“James Morrow is a master of couching heavy topics in irreverent, ridiculous scenarios, and The Madonna and the Starship deftly tackles atheism, science worship, and the ’50s rationale of the benevolent alien visitor. . . . Transcendently weird and aggressively smart, this book is Morrow at his most barbed and satiric.”
—Another Universe

“This is a perfect summer read, light-hearted, but intelligent.”
—Geeky Library

“The Madonna and the Starship gives a brisk spanking to fundamentalism on both sides of the religion vs. rationalism debate.”
—See the Elephant

“The Madonna and the Starship is a very funny, very clever look at philosophy and faith, couched in a comfortable, loving homage to nostalgia for a simpler time. It's ridiculously blasphemous and completely absurd . . . and that's entirely the point.”
—Beauty in Ruins

“A work of wit and substance.”
—New York Review of Science Fiction

Praise for James Morrow

"The most provocative satiric voice in science fiction."
—Washington Post

“Widely regarded as the foremost satirist associated with the SF and Fantasy field.”
—SF Site

“Morrow understands theology like a theologian and psychology like a psychologist, but he writes like an angel.”
—Richard Elliott Friedman, author of The Hidden Book in the Bible

“America's best satirist.”
—James Gunn, editor of The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

From the Publisher