At the Little Red Reviewer, Andrea Johnson gushes over the new James Morrow novella The Madonna and the Starship.

With a cover like this and promises of provocative satire, how could I not read it?

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But The Madonna and the Starship isn’t just about aliens crashing a TV show and causing a live show to be filmed with no script.  Kurt is a science fiction writer, and Morrow takes ample opportunity to touch on people’s preconceived notions of what science fiction writing is. Is it straight up pulpy kids stuff, like Connie thinks, or is it respectable literature that teaches as it entertains?  While you’re thinking about that every few pages, Kurt’s internal monologue is reminding us that he would never, ever put the cheesy lines people say into any of his stories. and it’s funny!

 At novella length, The Madonna and the Starship is an entertaining and highly satisfying quick jolt of fun, fast readers will be able to zip through it in an afternoon.  Morrow’s characters start plenty of conversations that due to a deadline they are unable to finish, and I wouldn’t have minded if Morrow had skipped right through novella word count and made it a full length novel.  Now that I think about it, I’ll bet the point of those unfinished conversations was because Morrow wanted his readers to finish them themselves.

For more on The Madonna and the Starship, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and design by Elizabeth Story.