About the Book
History is now...
Humanity has brought itself back from a global nuclear war, inventing a perpetual source of clean energy. But a rogue soldier uses the accelerator to go back in time, wanting to become a god.
The locals will whisper his name for centuries-the Crooked Man.
The one tasked with stopping him must learn the rules of time travel as he goes, waking up in the body of a disabled ancestor in the 1920s. But there's just something about Shamus Connelly that draws friends close. So begins . . .
There Was a Crooked Man
About the Author :
Edward Morris has been nominated for the British Science Fiction Association Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Pushcart Prize In Literature. His short fiction has appeared over 150 times worldwide in markets from Interzone to The Lovecraft Ezine, Perihelion SF, and Big Pulp. Print anthologies include The Children of Gla'Ki: Tribute Stories To Ramsey Campbell, Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer, and ReAnimators! His short stories have been translated into Japanese, Italian, Finnish, Polish, Hungarian, and most recently, Egyptian Arabic with Dr. Ahmed Al-Turki's fantastic translation of "Jihad Over Innsmouth" from The Book of Cthulhu. Morris is a multiple sclerosis survivor who lives and works in Portland, Oregon, as an author and bouncer.
Review :
"Edward Morris is a fearless writer, expanding the boundaries of what is possible with the weird. Read him." (Jeff VanderMeer, bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy, Dead Astronauts, and Borne)
"Alphabet of Lightning is told in a voice that puts me in mind of such writers as William S. Burroughs and Joseph S. Pulver Sr. It's not that he sounds like them specifically, but he is that daring and poetic a wordsmith. In a world of books generally populated with uninspired blandness, such originality of voice is a quality to be prized highly. But the originality doesn't end with the voice. In Morris's remarkable narrative, 'Past and Future are but different Towns, side-by-side in the same direction.' In the vividly rendered travels documented herein, besides a protagonist with superhuman powers, you'll encounter some titans from history as well, but I won't spoil the fun by naming them. Alphabet of Lightning is refreshing, invigorating, complex, and fascinating . . . and you're telling me these uncanny travels aren't over, yet? Morris has me ready to buy the next ticket." (Jeffrey Thomas, author of Punktown)
"Edward Morris uses words the way Miles Davis used notes." (Trent Zelazny, author of Fractal Despondency)
"Edward Morris's remarkable, stone force novel falls into the post-WWII canon of great post-apocalyptic science fiction. It stands with Earth Abides, No Blade of Grass, and "Lot," and when you stand with Stewart, Christopher, and Ward Moore, you are standing on sacred ground. The post-apocalypse school of science fiction, it has been speculated, is a metaphor for our present. The seared landscape and shaken polity of our time can best be grasped through a subcategory of fiction that holds at its heart the dirtiest kind of realism. The series, There Was a Crooked Man, is a terrifying, masterfully written, unforgiving precis of an unbearable present become an unbearable future, and Morris serves this as well as any writer of our time. His landscape is gutted, his vision soars." (Barry N. Malzberg, SFWA Grand Master)
"Doc Smith's Lensman books were once dubbed The History of Civilization. But I'm afraid that grand and ambitious overarching description has been boldly ripped out of Doc Smith's cold, cold hands by Edward Morris with his wild-eyed opus, There Was a Crooked Man. Replete with scores of unforgettable characters and scenes, the book rampages across space and time with a take-no-prisoners bad attitude. Formalistically daring and esthetically subtle, full of pyrotechnics and epiphanies, it's what you might get if you mashed up Alfred Bester's The Stars my Destination with Robert Wilson's Julian Comstock, Neal Barrett's Through Darkest America, and its sequel Dawn's Uncertain Light, and H.P. Lovecraft's "The Color Out of Space"-then had Jodorowsky film the result! Nothing like it on the planet!" (Paul Di Filippo, author of Cosmocopia and A Princess of the Linear Jungle)
"It is an honor to have lived and worked long enough to have other writers riffing on my work the way Morris riffs on The Guns of the South in There Was a Crooked Man." (Harry Turtledove, author of damn near everything)
"Edward Morris is either a documented genius or a certifiable madman, and based on There Was a Crooked Man, I am putting my money on the former." (Richard Lupoff, author of Visions, Dreams, and The Emerald Cat Killer)
