Park, Paul (Claiborne) 1954-

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PARK, Paul (Claiborne) 1954-

PERSONAL: Born October 1, 1954, in Williamstown, MA; son of David Allen (a physicist, professor, and writer) and Clara (a professor and writer; maiden name, Claiborne) Park; married Deborah Brothers, 1994; two children: Miranda, Lucius Lionel. Education: Hampshire College, A.B., 1975. Politics: "Left." Religion: Episcopalian.

ADDRESSES: Home—Box 10, Petersburg, New York 12138. Agent—Adele Leone, 26 Nantucket Place, Scarsdale, NY 10583.

CAREER: Author and instructor. Smith Greenland Advertising, New York, NY, copywriter and production assistant, 1977-78; Town Squash, Inc., New York, NY, manager, 1979-85; Potala Asian Imports, Pittsfield, MA, 1986-90. Visiting instructor in creative writing, Writers' Center, Bethesda, MD, 1988, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, 1988-94, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1996. Also worked as a construction worker, political aide, and doorman, New York, NY, 1975-77. Works part-time for eZiba.com, an online retailer.

WRITINGS:

"starbridge chronicles" series

Soldiers of Paradise (also see below), Arbor House (New York, NY), 1987.

Sugar Rain (also see below), Morrow (New York, NY), 1989.

The Cult of Loving Kindness, Morrow (New York, NY), 1991.

The Sugar Festival (omnibus; includes Soldiers of Paradise and Sugar Rain), Guild America Books (New York, NY), 1989.

other novels

Coelestis, HarperCollins (London, England), 1993, republished as Celestis, Tor (New York, NY), 1995.

The Gospel of Corax, Soho Press (New York, NY), 1996.

Three Marys, Cosmos Books (Canton, OH), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Paul Park has been deemed "one of the finest authors on the 'humanist' wing of American science fiction," explained Infinity Plus reviewer Nick Gevers. Critics have praised Park's novels for using strange and grotesque material to reveal human warmth.

Park's "Starbridge" trilogy is set on a planet on which the cycle of the seasons takes 80,000 days, much longer than the human lifespan. Most of the action takes place in Charn, a city-state ruled by a totalitarian society set on organizing for survival during a half-century of winter. This society is savage and contrasts sharply with a heretical cult of antinomials, reminiscent of twentieth-century hippies. Writing in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, reviewer E. R. Bishop praised Park's depiction of Charn "with its toppling buildings and mud streets, its derelict harbour where the hulks of warships lie tilted in the ooze, its slums, taverns, brothels, palaces, prisons, all clear and detailed in the light of other suns." The same reviewer noted that through Park's "matter-of-fact approach, we learn through what seems chance references that the carnivorous 'horses' have beaks, claws, horns, and wings; that gasoline is used as an explosive and gunpowder as a motor fuel, that the spring 'sugar rain' is laced with hydrocarbons, à la Velikowsky, so that Charn city burns every year, while the foresighted protect their valuables in asbestos bags." The reviewer explained, "This meticulously prepared background supports Park's grander flights; the terrible and pathetic fate of the antinomials; the fall of theocracy; Charity Starbridge's wanderings in the labyrinth under Charn; Thanakar Starbridge's passage through the monstrous prison Mountain of Redemption, with its million tormented inmates."

In an interview with ElectricStory, Park discussed the creation of his "Starbridge" trilogy. "I worked a lot of stupid jobs after college, and taught squash for many years in Manhattan. I quit in 1983 to write a novel. With a notebook and a couple of shirts, I flew to New Delhi telling myself I couldn't come back until I had completed a manuscript," he explained. Soldiers in Paradise, Park's first novel and the first in the "Star-bridge Chronicles," was written while Park traversed Sri Lanka, Nepal, Rajasthan, Burma, Thailand, Indonesia, and other parts of Asia over the course of two years.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer observed that Park's novel Celestis "seems planted on firmer ground" than his trilogy, but added, "the oddly disengaging revolution through which the author's new characters wander tends to skew the fine-edged balance he is apparently trying to maintain between futility and passion." Celestis features Katherine Styreme, an alien whose man-made medication has given her human qualities. When Katherine is kidnapped by terrorists, she is deprived of her medication and her alien characteristics return. The same Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded, "Park produces some beautiful writing here as well as some compelling insight into the nature of 'the world outside our small blinkered range,'" but felt Park's "repeated emphasis on how sexual bonding promotes a false sense of communication detracts from an otherwise impressive treatise on the nature of mind, matter, and reality."

Park reinterprets the life of Christ in his controversial Gospel of Corax featuring Corax, a slave with amazing abilities who runs away after his master's death. Along his travels from Palestine to the Himalayas, Corax rescues "Jeshua of Nazareth," a still-unknown Jesus, from a Jewish jail after he's been accused of treason. Booklist reviewer Steve Shroeder remarked, "If it made the right people angry, this book could move a sizable Christian audience to the kind of passion that Satanic verses inspired among the Muslims." Shroeder later clarified that the book "is not a 'gospel' in the technical sense" but is simply historical fiction. A Publisher's Weekly reviewer described the book as "a dark narrative, full of brutality and misery—so much, in fact, that at times the gruesomeness borders on the cartoonish." The same reviewer went on the say, "What's more likely to rub some readers raw" is the "novel's claim of Eastern influence of Jesus' teaching … and its implied favoring of Buddhism over biblical religion."

Park explores life after Jesus' death in Three Marys, which tells the story of the "three Marys": Mary of Magdala, Jesus' mother Mary, and Mary of Bethany. In an Infinity Plus interview, Park remarked that while he is proud of the novel, he sees its commercial difficulties. He described the book as a "retelling of the stories of the Gospels and the Book of Acts from the points of view of some of the women that surround Jesus, and to understand and appreciate how I have changed the stories in a thousand minute ways, some quite specific knowledge is essential." Gevers noted that Park's "powerful, densely written narratives of religious and existential crisis on worlds at once exotic and familiar have won him comparisons with Gene Wolfe and Brian Aldiss at their finest."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Chicago, IL), 1991, pp. 615-616.

periodicals

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October, 1995, review of Celestis, p. 162.

Atlantic Monthly, July, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 109.

Booklist, July, 1996, Steve Schroeder, review of The Gospel of Corax, pp. 1804-1806; October 1, 1998, Ray Olsen, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 293.

Book World, September, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 8; October 13, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 4.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 700; April 15, 1995, review of Celestis, p. 515; April 1, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 478.

Library Journal, August, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 113.

Locus, February, 1990, review of Soldiers of Paradise, p. 54; November, 1990, review of Sugar Rain, p. 60; June, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 15; August, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 51; September, 1993, review of Coelestis, p. 15; February, 1994, review of Coelestis, p. 36.

New York Times Book Review, October 7, 1990, review of Sugar Rain, p. 38; October 27, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 30; November 22, 1992, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 40; July, 9, 1995, review of Celestis, p. 18; July 14, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 15; May 4, 1997, review of Celestis, p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, June 14, 1991, review of The Cult of Loving Kindness, p. 48; May 15, 1995, review of Celestis, pp. 59-61; April 8, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 53; July 28, 1997, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 72.

Science Fiction Chronicle, March, 1994, review of Coelestis, p. 32; February, 1994, review of Coelestis, p. 28.

Utne Reader, November, 1996, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 88.

Virginia Quarterly Review, winter, 1997, review of The Gospel of Corax, p. 22.

Washington Post Book World, October 25, 1987.