by Parke Godwin
Work Habits: Messy. Writes longhand, paces, mumbles, chain-smokes. Revises endlessly on an Italian typewriter that resembles a Polish joke. Worries over structure; a crashing bore on the subject of tightness. Clumsy, the natural prey of mechanical devices and typewriter ribbons.
Current: Recently moved from Manhattan to California. A dog fancier all his life, has found two cats, one stoic and the other mad, that he actually likes.
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THE SNAKE OIL WARS
In the years since his first novel, Darker Places, was published in 1971, Parke Godwin has emerged as one of the major voices in contemporary fantastic literature, demonstrating in each new work a unique talent for capturing and defining the essence of the human condition in all its myriad forms.
With The Snake Oil Wars he further cements that reputation. The sequel to 1988’s Waiting for the Galactic Bus, The Snake Oil Wars continues the tale of mankind’s alien creators, Barion and Coyul, two near-immortal extraterrestrials who genetically tampered with the prehistoric apes of Earth five million years ago, thus giving rise to the human race. That bit of character enhancement, however, was against the law among their people, and Barion is removed from his post as ruler of the heavenly realm Topside to stand trial on their home world. His brother Coyul is left behind to explain to all the souls in Topside, as well as in his own quite hellish Below Stairs, certain... realities about the universe.
This goes about as well as one might expect, especially with all-American Christian Reconstructionist hero Lance Candor, who – while on trial for tossing a bomb into Coyul’s office – accuses Coyul of being the Devil and challenges in court his claim that all life and afterlife as humans know them are nothing more than the result of an experiment on the part of two bored aliens.
Televangelism, tabloid television, political extremism and good ol’-fashioned sex and violence all are taken to task. Filled with the same diversity of characters as Waiting for the Galactic Bus, Snake Oil introduces fellow alien and former fertility goddess Purji; Letti Candor, Lance’s overly made-up and undersexed wife; Scheherazade Ginsberg, Lance’s less-than-reserved mistress; lawyers Peter Helm and Joshua Speed; two spirits who are quite a bit more than they appear; and Cathy Cataton, the ever-perky television commentator for the Hereafter.
Scathingly irreverent and as darkly humorous as its predecessor, The Snake Oil Wars promises to become a favorite of readers everywhere.
Known most widely for his Arthurian trilogy, including Firelord (finalist for the 1981 World Fantasy Award), Beloved Exile (1984), and The Last Rainbow (1985), Parke Godwin has never taken the cautious, predictable road in writing fiction. Author of A Truce With Time: A Love Story with Occasional Ghosts, and co-author (with Marvin Kaye) of the novels The Masters of Solitude and Wintermind, he is also an acclaimed short fiction writer, winner of the 1982 World Fantasy Award for the story “The Fire When It Comes” One of his stories, “Influencing the Hell Out of Time and Theresa Golowitz,” was adapted as an episode on The Twilight Zone.
Born in New York, Godwin presently lives in California, where he is at work on his next novel.
Jacket Illustration © 1989 by Chris Consani
Jacket Design by Jamie S. Warren
0889
Printed in the U.S.A.
Table of Contents
Title page
Copyright
Prologue:
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