A visit from Raphael, a despondent angel, who tells Anthony Van Horne that God has died and fallen into the sea, leads Van Horne on a bizarre mission to recover the divine corpse from the Atlantic and tow it to the Arctic Anthony Van Horne, the disgraced captain of an oil tanker that spilled its cargo, is approached by the angel Raphael at the Cloisters in New York to command his former ship on an important mission. It seems God has died, and his two-mile-long corpse has fallen into the ocean at 0 latitude, 0 longitude. The Vatican would like the captain to tow God to a remote Arctic cave for a quiet burial. Naturally, things don't work out this simply, and the complications form the events of this splendid comic epic. As more and more folks with varying perspectives become aware of the covert mission, more hell, if you will, breaks loose. The author, an sf crossover, puts the weighty subject and its possible ramifications to clever use on many levels. He packs the story with sailing matters, cultural criticism, theology, physics, and more but still manages to keep the encounter bubbly and inviting. Recommended for general collections. - Brian Geary, West Seneca, N.Y. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. A past winner of the World Fantasy Award, Morrow could easily claim another prize, for the year's most outlandish fictional premise, if there were prizes for such things. When God Himself drops dead, leaving His two-mile-long corpse floating face up in the Atlantic, former sea captain Anthony Van Horne is recruited by a grieving archangel to haul the Corpus Dei to an icy tomb at the North Pole. Eager to redeem himself for indirectly causing the century's worst oil spill, Van Horne resumes command of his newly repaired supertanker, the Carpco Valparaiso , and speeds north with God in tow. Already faced with protecting the corpse against marauding predators from the air and the sea, Van Horne confronts a series of setbacks as absurd as the notion of his divine cargo--setbacks such as a plot by a rescued feminist castaway to bomb and sink the patriarchal corpse for the good of womankind. Writing a brand of masterfully understated comic prose all his own, Morrow is a genius, and this book is one of the most deliciously irreverent satirical sprees in years. Carl Hays God, ecology, WW II, chauvinism, the Vatican, and what-all are all thrown into another unclassifiable work from the author of Nebula Award-winner City of Truth (1992), etc. When sea captain Anthony Van Horne left the bridge of his oil tanker, the vessel ran aground and a major spillage occurred. Now a dying angel, Raphael, appears to Anthony, announcing that God has died, that His two- mile-long body is floating in the sea off Africa...and will Anthony please entomb the body in an iceberg according to His last wishes? Anthony, promised absolution from his oil-spill guilt, accepts. Aboard the tanker are various folks, including scientist Cassie Fowler, a militant atheist who believes the feminist cause is threatened by the body's very existence. The crew mutiny (God is dead, so there's no possibility of divine retribution). Eventually, the starving crew are reduced to eating the divine corpse. Many adventures later, the body is at last laid to rest. Witty, entertaining, and provocative--in some measure. But the plot makes little sense, and Morrow makes no serious attempt to grapple with the large issues he raises. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.