If Lions Could Speak and Other Stories

Paul Park is one of the most intriguing of SF writers. He made quite a splash with his first novel, Soldiers of Paradise (1987), an exotic and ambitious science fantasy about a world of tailed humans with a extra long year, facing revolution and upheaval as the seasons change. This was followed by two sequels, then by Coelestis, a challenging novel set on a colony planet, somewhat reminiscent of Gene Wolfe's The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and by The Gospel of Corax, about a lost episode in the life of Jesus Christ. In the meantime, he has produced occasional short stories, almost every one striking and different from the others. If Lions Could Speak and Other Stories is his first collection, and it assembles, to my knowledge, all of his published short fiction to date, with one story first published here, two other stories new to 2002 (though published elsewhere), and stories dating back to 1992, as well as an excerpt from Soldiers of Paradise. It is truly a first-rate group of stories. Highlights include the title story, "If Lions Could Speak: Imagining the Alien", in my opinion one of the best stories of the year, a vivid meta-fiction in which the narrator, SF writer Paul Park, is preparing a talk about the difficulty of imagining alien intelligence from a human perspective. The story spirals inward to contemplate the writer's own mind, in the end suggesting, perhaps, that we are as alien to ourselves as any extraterrestrial intelligence. "Get a Grip" was one of my favorite stories from 1995, anticipating The Truman Show as its narrator, also named Park, learns that his life has been a TV show. "Self Portrait, with Melanoma, Final Draft", from 1998, also plays with meta-fiction, at a remove, as the narrator, a middle-aged man trying to become a writer, finds that his stories have apparently been previously written by somebody else. Interesting enough -- but Park twists things yet again, tying in his relationship with his writing teacher, who is dying of cancer. At least one more story here, "Untitled 4", is essentially meta-fictional, this time treating a blocked writer charged with a crime in a totalitarian state who cannot even write his confession. Occasionally Park's stories are closer to traditional SF, though always challenging the genre's assumptions. "The Last Homosexual" is a striking story of a future in which draconian approaches to treating AIDS have wiped out the homosexual population. "The Tourist" seems at first a fairly straightforward story about time travel to multiple alternate pasts -- but by the end the SFnal setting is used to tell the story of a marriage. And "Rangriver Fell", the novel excerpt, is lovely and mysterious, a fine introduction to a beautiful series of novels. This is certainly one of the landmark SF story collections of the year. Highly recommended.

Paul Park is the master of getting a point/theme across without ever having to be blunt, didactic and/or preachy. Ever story is a tease, a tickle, a skipped heartbeat. He is so damn subtle, half the time I have no idea what he's getting at. Therein lies the beauty of his work. The reader is never fully satisfied, never fully briefed, thus rereading Park is always a new experience. These stories are so vivid, yet so sparse. I can smell them, yet I don't always recognize the scent. Paul Park is a writer for a hard core Taoist; he says without saying. If you want something challenging and provacative unlike any author, Park is your man. Check out all his work, stat