The author next attempted a more immediate, political, and experimental narrative. Although "This Is the Way the World Ends" (Henry Holt, 1986) was marketed initially as a mainstream novel, the science-fiction community embraced it, giving Morrow his first Nebula Award nomination. The plot is driven by “The Unadmitted,” a ghostly race of potential humans who never got to be born, due to nuclear holocaust. Determined to use their earthly tenures wisely, the unadmitted put the surviving architects of Armageddon—including the novel’s everyman protagonist—on trial under the Nuremberg precedent.