Towing Jehovah

God is dead, and Anthony Van Horne must tow the corpse to the Arctic (to preserve Him from sharks and decomposition).

Disgraced by an infamous tanker spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the former master finds himself armed with a Brazilian license and a Vatican charter to haul two miles of sea-borne divinity.

To secure the tow, salvage divers and an avant-garde Jesuit cosmologist must lodge twenty-ton kedge anchors directly into the Almighty’s ears. Meanwhile, four football fields of refitted steel shudder under the strain as ravenous hammerheads and opportunistic vultures gather for the ultimate feast.

En route Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, sabotage both natural and spiritual, and greedy hucksters of oil, condoms, and doubtful ideas. Winner of a 1995 World Fantasy Award.

• Magical Realism: Trapped in rigor mortis, the two-mile Supreme Being bobs in equatorial waters, attended by pods of mourning narwhals and flocks of orphaned seabirds.
• Race Against Time: The Vatican calculates that divine brain death will arrive by mid-August, forcing the tanker through hurricane swells before putrefaction destroys the celestial mind.
• Absurdist Fiction: When an ancient pagan island thrusts out of the seabed, the stranded crew mutinies to stage arena spectacles and feast on giant vegetables sprouted in empty ballast tanks.
• Philosophical Satire: Rescued from an Atlantic guano rock, radical biologist Cassie Fowler conspires with eccentric saboteurs in vintage warplanes to send the celestial patriarch to the ocean floor.
• Also by This Author: This Is the Way the World Ends, City of Truth and The Last Witchfinder.