Michael Simms

Bicycles of the Gods: A Divine Comedy (Madville, 2022)

In Bicycles of the Gods, the main character, Jesse, presents an earthly incarnation of Jesus Christ in the body of a 12-year-old boy in the company of Xavi, who is the earthly incarnation of Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds, also a 12-year-old boy. The pair stand on a hilltop above the city of Los Angeles contemplating how best to destroy it as a precursor to destroying the entire world to rid it of humanity so it can refresh and rebuild. Xavi is ready to get on with the task The Big Guy, God, has assigned them, but Jesse has a problem. He isn’t sure that everyone deserves to be destroyed.

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Praise for Bicycles of the Gods: A Divine Comedy

"A playful, provocative, and imaginative discursus, Bicycles of the Gods is an affront to racism, sexism, classism, ageism, and heterosexism as it posits a Divine who will not be captured and used by white supremacists for their own purposes.  Michael Simms has created an engaging new world order that functions within our familiar one.”

- Rev. Dr. Moni McIntyre, author of Social Ethics and the Return to Cosmology

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“Whether Michael Simms is writing a personal essay about growing up with autism or poems about our dying planet, a barfight, or the mystery of a hummingbird’s radiance, he is a master storyteller whose narratives hold memorable moments full of fresh and telling details that unlock the heart. And now, in his first novel he's invented a new genre -- apocalyptic satire. Bicycles of the Gods is hilarious at times, but make no mistake, Simms is serious as a heart attack in a hurricane. It tells an old story in a completely new way, exploring issues of faith, politics, trauma, imagination, and the triumph of love over tyranny.”  

- Peter Makuck, author of Wins and Losses: Stories 

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"Set in today’s digital-age Los Angeles, with a delightful cast of characters, including celestial ones “in disguise to make it easier to move through the world,” you will encounter The Big Guy, Maria, Jesse, Xavi, Luke, and Abe, as well as Christine, Mikey, Patrick, the Six Sisters of the Piston, Father Jack, Stefan the Poet, Birdie, Dharma the Dog, and Caruso the Parrot, all of whom are caught up in the tragi-comic battle between the forces of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness. Michael Simms has given us a frolicking and “novel” approach to the Apocalypse of John that offers a front-row seat to the shenanigans of the times in which we are presently living. Bicycles of the Gods deserves its own Broadway billing as both 'Dantean' and 'Shakespearean'.” 

 - Rev. Dr. Charles Davidson, author of Bone Dead and Rising: Vincent van Gogh and the Self Before God