GODWIN, Parke

(1929-)

   US writer who began publishing work of genre interest with "Unsigned Original" for Brother Theodore's Chamber of Horrors (anth 1977) ed Marvin KAYE "and Brother Theodore". PG has since been more or less equally associated with fantasy and sf, though most of the stories assembled in The Fire when it Comes (coll 1984) are the former, the title novella winning a 1982 World Fantasy Award. As an sf writer, PG remains best known for the first two volumes of the Masters of Solitude sequence, both with Marvin Kaye: Masters of Solitude (1978) and Wintermind (1982); a projected third volume has yet to appear. Set in a post- HOLOCAUST USA, the first volume depicts a conflict between rural followers of a diseased mutant form of Christianity and a city in which a science-based worldview is encapsulated; in the second, a personal drama and an interesting half-breed protagonist intensify the grain of narrative, but peculiarly diminish the sense, given off by the earlier book, of a large sf occasion. A Cold Blue Light (1983), also with Kaye (whom see for the sequel), is aghost story which confusingly mixes sf and supernatural rationales. PG's second sf sequence, written solo, the Snake Oil series - Waiting for the Galactic Bus (1988), The Snake Oil Wars, or Scheherazade Ginzberg StrikesAgain (1989) - is an erratically amusing but ultimately very dark-complected SATIRE on RELIGION and US society at large, refracted through the behaviour of the two ALIENS who were responsible for breeding Homo sapiens in the first place, and have now taken on the roles of Godand Devil; the assault on Christian fundamentalism is explicit. Though a writer whose flamboyance sometimes unhinges his plots, PG remains a figure whose relative obscurity is fully undeserved.

   JC

   Other works: The Firelord Arthurian fantasy sequence, comprising Firelord (1980), Beloved Exile (1984) and The Last Rainbow (1985); A Memory of Lions (1983), associational; A Truce with Time (1988), contemporary fantasy; Invitation to Camelot (anth 1988); Sherwood (1991) and Robin and the King (1993), two Robin Hood fantasies.

   See also: GODS AND DEMONS.