From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 29 12:40:05 1994 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.sf.written Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!library.ucla.edu!csulb.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (Gareth Rees) Subject: Paul Park: COELESTIS Message-ID: <33kcd4$g9d@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK Date: Sun, 28 Aug 1994 23:21:57 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 98 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:600 rec.arts.sf.written:70438 Coelestis by Paul Park A book review by Gareth Rees Copyright (c) 1994 by Gareth Rees Paul Park's first novel, "Soldiers of Paradise", made an impact on me because of a certain ungentle quality in the writing and because of the amazing sparseness of the physical and psychical landscapes Park was portraying. I read the book feeling entirely divorced from anything concrete or real, floating in some kind of literary absence, and emerged from it somewhat dizzy and disoriented. While I still find it hard to say whether "Soldiers of Paradise" was good or bad when evaluated on the more usual grounds of character, plot and so on, reading it was a sufficiently unusual experience that I've followed Park avidly ever since. The sequels, "Sugar Rain" and "The Cult of Loving Kindness", outstayed their welcome, not really capturing the stark unreality of "Soldiers of Paradise" and not amounting otherwise to more than poor attempts to emulate the 'great cycle of years' experience of Aldiss' "Helliconia" trilogy, in which which the richness of the landscapes is essential. So it's a pleasant surprise to pick up "Coelestis" and find Paul Park back on form again. The new novel deploys itself with a more cunning grasp of structure than the previous books, and the effect is very powerful. "Coelestis" takes place on an unnames planet colonised by humans for some hundreds of years. The planet is inhabited by a race of intelligent aliens, or rather by two races. The 'Aboriginals' have been domesticated by the human settlers - given plastic surgery to give the human facial features and given complex drugs to make them think like humans. The other race, the 'Demons', which had some kind of telepathic control over the Aboriginals, has been wiped out. Historical details are sketchy, but it seems that before the arrival of humans, the Aboriginals and Demons had done nothing but lie around in caves in some sort of DreamTime; no-one knows for sure, and no-one cares very much. But the arrival of humans precipitated the natives into action (probably essentially copycat action): the Demons asserted their control, built a great empire and grand architectural projects at the cost of the lives of millions of Aboriginals, and waged a war against humans before being defeated and wiped out. By the time of "Coelestis", this is distant history and considered good reason for the Aboriginals to hate the Demons and be grateful to their human saviours - and to overlook the fact that apart from a lucky few, most of them live in poverty or are servants to humans. The novel is narrated from the viewpoints of two outsiders, Katherine Styreme and Simon Mayaram. Katherine is a wealthy Aboriginal; extensive surgery has made it difficult to tell that she's not human. She's a talented concert pianist. Simon is an assistant to the planet's Consul, and is a recent immigrant from Earth. Both are captured by a group of Aboriginal freedom fighters, and are imprisoned together. Katherine is deprived the drugs she requires to continue to think like a human, and gradually her perceptions, thoughts and consciousness revet to that of her race. Simon has fallen in love with her and can't understand that alien being with alien concerns that Katherine is gradually becoming. all he can think of is to get her to safety and to restore to her the drugs that will her turn her back into the woman he fell in love with. The change is Katherine's perceptions is very subtly described. The barely restrained violence of Park's prose, the concentration on very tiny details that never seem to add up to a rich or coherent scene but instead suggest a disjointed sequence of saccades across an image whose form never becomes quite clear, is perfect for the evocation of a mode of perception based on symbolic apprehension of the concrete and which pre-supposes some eternal static fabric underlying reality to which humans have no perceptual access (though some external signs evoke this static fabric - the planet keeps one face towards the sun so that every landscape feature casts a static shadow, unchanged by day or night). This is as good an approach to the description of alien perception as I've seen. So in one sense Park is using a very standard science fictional technique here - Katherine and Simon are the classic outsiders that give the reader a familiar viewpoint and a way in to an invented world. Bu his use of the technique is disconcertingly tricksy: both characters start out by appearing to be familiar guides to the unfamiliar, but gradually our perceptions of them change and they become strange to us. Katherine I've described, but Simon too turns out to be strange. He is recently arrived from Earth and speaks a language called 'English', but Earth turns out to be unrecognisably crowded, anarchic and poverty-stricken, and 'English' turns out to be an unrecognisable descendant of our language in which numbers substitute for emotional content. The more we find out about Simon's background the more unfamiliar he is to us. It is as if we are led into unfamiliar territory by apparently reliable guides only to realise that the territory is deeply familiar (it is Australia under European rule - or Africa or America), and that the guides are the aliens. %A Park, Paul %T Coelestis %I Gollancz %C London UK %D 1993 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Jan 5 13:33:44 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!pipex!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: reeder.29@osu.edu (P. Douglas Reeder) Subject: "The Cult of Loving Kindness" by Paul Park Message-ID: <199501030124.UAA14630@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@postmodern.com (Michael C. Berch) Organization: The Internet Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 02:58:19 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 52 A Review of "The Cult of Loving Kindness" by Paul Park review by P. Douglas Reeder Park draws a complex, plausible picture of a society in turmoil. Unfortunatly, his narrative strings out descriptions of events so that it is often difficult to discern what has happened, and the reader must struggle to put together references. This is particularly true of sister and brother Cassia and Rael's flight from their home village, a major event which Park motivates only indirectly. His characters are difficult to understand and most of them I found difficult to identify with -- reading this immediately after "The Mists of Avalon" by Bradley may have been a mistake, as my appetite for stories about religious fanatics who believe in reincarnation is limited. The main characters are Cassia and Rael, and Deccan Blendish, a graduate student, and Cathartes, a definite villain, a professor of Theology (he and his university are far more powerful in his society than ours). There are a number of other characters, though, and it only gradually becomes clear that these four are central, a feature that is not unattractive. Cassia's acceptance of a role that others put on her is difficult to understand, given her earlier reactions. Rael is easier to understand, and their closeness is plasible given that they were the only humans in their village (the villagers are near-humans). Blendish has a tendency to pop in and out of the narrative, and his final role was dissapointing to me, given that I identified more with him than the others. Cathartes is a fairly straghtforward villain, though this thankfully is not evident at the start. More interesting to me than the characters is their society, whose nature is gradually (too gradually) revealed. It has a very third-world character, though insofar as I can tell, it is not intended as an allegory for some current country, unlike Resnick's "Paradise". I haven't read the first two books of the Starbridge trillogy, which would have made some things clear, though "The Cult of Loving Kindness" is readable by itself. This novel has much more of art than entertainment in it, and the art failed to reach me. It is somewhat reminiscent of Gene Wolf's work. P. Douglas Reeder Roboticist and Fashion Designer reeder.29@osu.edu If you would like to rent one of the following videos with me, plase give me a ring: Like Water for Chocolate, Sleepless in Seattle, Tous les matins du monde (All the Mornings in the World), Schindler's List, Enchanted April, Glen Gary Glen Ross, Philadelphia, Thelma & Louise, My Left Foot, Remains of the Day, Farewell my Concubine, The Color Purple, The Piano, Sex, Lies & Videotape, Unforgiven, The Fisher King, Sleep With Me, Howard's End, The Gods Must Be Crazy, Bob Roberts, Back to the Future I/II/III, The Naked Gun 33 1/3, or Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. From /home/matoh/tmp/sf-rev Fri Aug 22 16:42:11 1997 From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Aug 18 15:22:56 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!feed1.news.erols.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-xfer.netaxs.com!netnews.com!eecs-usenet-02.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!news!wex From: agapow@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au (p-m agapow) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: "Celestis" by Paul Park Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 06 Aug 1997 20:32:56 GMT Organization: Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Biologists Lines: 62 Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:1471 "Celestis" by Paul Park A Postview, copyright 1997 p-m agapow A planet of the edge of colonised space, Celestis is isolated in time and distance, feeding off decades-old news from Earth. The aboriginal population of Celestis is subjugated by the humans, living on the fringes of the colonies, transforming their bodies into human-like forms via drugs and surgery. After Earth breaks off contact, a clumsy rebellion erupts. Simon, a diplomat who has actually seen Earth, and Katherine, a transformed native, are taken hostage. Deprived of her medicine, Katherine becomes more and more alien as her body returns to its natural state. Many years ago, a "National Geographic" photo-essay on South Africa contained a picture of a roadside billboard for "whitening cream." The advertisement was illustrated with cartoony pictures of beaming black Africans, with peculiar beige-toned skin, in doctors smocks and business suits. The photo caption did not mention the billboard, referring only to the people walking by in the foreground. The picture spoke for itself. A reading of "Celestis" (confusingly aka "Coelestis" in another edition) calls that image to mind. The "colonists," most of whom were actually born on planet, celebrate an exaggerated image of Earth, a homeland that in reality is hopelessly alien to them. Although not intentionally malign, the colony's very presence has engulfed Aboriginal culture. "Improved" natives have their jaws broken into a human shape and take carcinogenic drugs to look more human. The author does not preach or demonise the colonists but his metaphor is obvious and coldly furious. The details of the setting encourage a comparison to colonial days. The majority of technology and social mores seen are contemporary, a point which jars slightly. Officials are ferried around in limousines between rambling mansions and garden parties. Park is disinterested in technology or spouting science. At the same time, it would be wrong to read the book too literally. Although the colonists speak in English, that language has mutated into unrecognisable forms too. Further, as Katherine reverts to an alien form, her mind and perceptions follow too. Humans and natives see the world in entirely different ways. Park shows great skill in depicting this transition, making it alien yet believable. His descriptive powers are excellent, conveying both this decaying corner of empire and the turmoil in the minds of its inhabitants. Unfortunately the plot and sense of the novel are conveyed so well that for a period near the end it seems like the narrative has finished before the story. The pace slows down for a while before picking up for the end. Apart from this minor complaint, "Celestis" comes highly recommended. Not one for the the techno-fetishists and science buffs but a thoughtful and well described story of another world. [***/interesting] and dawn over the Nile on the Sid and Nancy scale. %A Paul Park %T Celestis %I Tor %C New York %D 1995 %G ISBN 0-312-86285-7 %P 287pp %O paperback, Aus$17.95 paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse "There is no adventure, there is no romance, there is only trouble and desire." [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]