They say winners write history and Harry Turtledove writes alternate history. In THE OTHER END, John Shirley writes a futuristic alternative tale of Armageddon – set “about a year from whenever you’re reading it” – until now monopolized by fundamentalists like Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
Fundamental religious issues are too often black-and-white. Non-believers are told that eternity is too long to be wrong, regardless how true their moral compass directs them, but rarely do the purveyors of such warnings lose sleep over the idea of Muhammad descending from the clouds instead of Jesus or vice versa. But I’ll leave it to THE OTHER END to deal the proverbial Judgment Day hands.
If it’s true there are only two sides to religious conflict – and we’ll pretend for about 300 pages it is – John Shirley’s courageous book is an account for the rest of us. As the title suggests, this is a book for the other end of the ideological spectrum: the non-superstitious, those concerned with real-world problems – issues we can see and misfortune we can address here and now.
The short novel begins when Sacramento Bee reporter Jim Swift scales the fence of a notorious RV park during an illegal immigrant investigation. As he’s going after his shot – or to get shot, he fears – he sees something strange: large translucent cones suspended above one of the trailers. The cones disappear and Swift goes about his business until a couple of shady characters approach, one of whom is brandishing a baseball bat. Swift is attacked, but as quickly as he’s knocked unconscious by his cursing aggressors, he awakes suddenly to find them cooperating with police and rambling regrettably about their illegal enterprise.
Swift learns from a conspiracist colleague that a string of characters not unlike those Swift described are getting their comeuppance on a worldwide scale. A corrupt district attorney admits to five cases of wrongful convictions carried out knowingly for political reasons, and a longtime suburban foster parent shocks his community with several accounts of molestation – a confession spurred by a strange vision. Again, not unlike the ordeal Swift encountered in the trailer park, when he initially thought he was having a stroke.
Shirley is diversified enough in his examples that he’s going to offend someone, and if the descriptions of his earlier works are any indication – I haven’t read them, yet – maybe even some of his own loyal readers, and for that, I applaud and envy him. But the heart of the book does not lie within his challenge of “conventional” ideas; it lies within the relationship between Swift and his daughter, Erin, with whom he’s grown closer even as his fundamentalist ex-wife has taken her further away.
I wouldn’t call THE OTHER END witty or biting satire on a James Morrow scale, but fans of Morrow’s BIBLE STORIES FOR ADULTS and ONLY BEGOTTEN DAUGHTER surely would enjoy it. And Shirley makes it clear from the beginning he doesn’t intend to veil anything, thinly or otherwise.
While the author’s vision of Judgment Day isn’t meant to be taken literally like its extreme Christian counterpart, open-minded readers will agree the events and consequences in THE OTHER END are just as plausible as the side it opposes. –Jason Light
Buy it at Amazon or Cemetery Dance.
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• IN DARKNESS WAITING by John Shirley
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Finally! There’s someone else who remembers James Morrow! I have gone hoarse trying to convince people to read Towing Jehovah, and why he hasn’t keep publishing is a tragedy.
If you like Morrow, please tell me you’ve read his latest, THE LAST WITCHFINDER.
I did not know he had a new one out, I don’t know how I missed it. Definitely getting it.