New weird fiction novel, Alphabet of Lightning, tries to fix our war-raged future by diving into our shadowy past. What if all the horrors of our lives, everything we inflict on one another, could be traced to one guy? Morris's horror sci-fi novel, Alphabet of Lightning, brings us Shamus Connelly from a ravaged future, chasing through time that one guy that would destroy us all. And it all starts when he lands in the body of a kid in the 1920s and discovers he's got strange abilities...

CALL THE LIGHTNING

​Centuries to come, humanity has blown itself off the map with nuclear weapons but has slowly rebuilt. Those who rule from the megalopolis of the former American Eastern Seaboard have created a perpetual, clean energy source that could eliminate war. But one rogue soldier, drummed out of the service, hacks the device for personal gain—to travel through time and become a god.

Typhon Demarest is followed through time by the Illegitimi, whose operatives protect the accumulation of information. But time-travel works strangely, and they must spawn backward, into the bodies of their ancestors.

Humanity's only hope is born into a severely disabled miner's kid in rural central Pennsylvania in the 1920s, and this Shamus Connelly has a very special gift that has a habit of keeping him alive while also nearly killing him—just like his endless curiosity.

​The kid wants to be a detective when he grows up, and in this first book of the There Was a Crooked Man series, he uncovers a mystery beyond anyone's wildest nightmares and sets the stage for this worlds-spanning, centuries-deep tour de force.

REVIEWS

"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 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...