Buy Waldrop Howard

Heart Of Whitenesse

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Customer Reviews

A national treasure returns to Austin!
Back in the 1970s, one of the main reasons I tried never to miss ArmadilloCon was the opportunity to hang around as much as possible within earshot of Howard Waldrop, just listening to him talk. To anyone. About anything. He has the mind of a Van de Graaff generator, throwing off ideas and comments and observations of the most original sort, the kind of thing that makes his listeners pause and go "Hmmmm." As he demonstrates in all his fiction, including the ten in this new collection, he never forgets anything and seems to have a total grasp of popular culture within, and frequently before, his lifetime. And since he and I are almost exactly the same age, I'm always fascinated at his crystal-clear memories of things and people I can only vaguely recollect. And then there's his style; face it, the man could make a guacamole recipe mesmerizing. Take the title story here: There's Marlow, the narrator from Conrad's _Heart of Darkness_, there's Raymond Chandler's Marlowe, the private eye, and there's Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabeth playwright and spy. Mix `em all together and whattaya got? A trip up a river (instead of down) on an iceboat, a run-in with Dr. Faustus, and a Queen Elizabeth who steals lines from Bette Davis. And who else could write an existential story about pedal cars? "Us," my favorite, is a series of alternate-reality shorts about what happened to the Lindbergh baby who survived. And "The Other Real World," the most complicated story here, is also a lot of fun, though it requires careful reading to pick up all the references before you get to the give-away footnotes. If only Howard's rate of production weren't so bleeding slow!

2006-08-14 (Gonzales, Louisiana) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

Interesting but sometimes obscure tales
Howard Waldrop's stories have never been in any sense ordinary. He often surprises not only with strange subjects, but also with the way he handles them. Although (and unjustly) not well-known with the larger audience, his stories have won him a steady following. These new stories have all the elements of the typical Waldrop, but while he is investigating historical possibilities -- things that might have been, had some of the details of our past been a little different -- he is also becoming more obscure. One needs an encyclopedia, and the afterwords to the stories, to fully understand them. A very interesting collection, certainly, but there is the overall feel that Waldrop is too much embedded in his own intellectual games.

2006-02-24 (Leuven, Belgium) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

I know the man...
...and a finer writer there couldn't be, a finer fellow too.

If I could give it 6 stars, oh how I would. "The Heart of Whiteness" is my new favourite story and I think dear old Kit Marlowe would entirely agree. I have not been as delighted and chilled simultaneouslly as I have been by "The Other Real World"....if only "The Wolfman of Alcatraz" was also contained herein, but I am being picky again aren't I?

Howard is unique and SO very important. His books should be famous, but maybe the fact that his work is almost a secret thing testifies to how good it is? Or how dull American publshing might be?...Both perhaps.

Treat yourself to a whole new way of realizing just how good, sad, hilarious, intelligent and important science-fiction, alternate history and short stories can be, and all at once too. ;)

2005-09-21 | Dandy (Washington, DC USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

Some of the coolest short stories (sci fi or otherwise) you'll read.
If you're not already a Howard Waldrop fan, here's what you need to know: Waldrop's a master of the short fiction form. His great--often very funny--writing shouldn't (and doesn't) just appeal to science fiction fans. He's a flat-out genius at connecting completely disparate fields of interest and finding just the right weird little connection to make them fit together perfectly in a short story.

This book is the perfect gift for those show-off friends who think they know a little about everything. Because odds are Waldrop knows more than they do. And he can twist and shape that knowledge into some darned amusing tales that are accessible to anyone. If you love pop culture and history, Waldrop is your go-to guy.

2005-09-14 (Stuck in the Middle, USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

A Unique Short Story Writer
Howard Waldrop has been called "a national treasure" and after reading this collection of 10 stories it's not hard to see why. He has a fascination (perhaps an obsession) with twentieth century pop culture, obsolete technologies, and arcane ephemera that permeates his stories and makes for a unique reading experience. He is also a meticulous craftsman, and it shows in these finely written tales.

Waldrop creates stories out of seemingly absurd connections that no one else could imagine. The excellent title story conflates Christopher Marlowe, the Shakespearean era playwright who wrote "Dr. Faustus", and Marlowe the narrator of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", as CM takes a journey on the frozen Thames river in search of the real Dr. Faustus at the behest of Queen Elizabeth (in reality, CM actually did serve as a spy). Waldrop even manages to throw in a riff on Philip Marlowe, the detective in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep! No one else could have conceived this idea or made it work, yet in Waldrop's hands it becomes a classic story. "US" is a moving alternate history story that shows three possible lives that might have been led by Charles Lindbergh Jr (who in real history died as a baby during the infamous botched kidnapping). No other story I've read captured so well the loss of human potential when a life is ended prematurely. "Mr. Goober's Show" centers around a brother and sister who, in the early 1950s, accidentally view on an obsolete TV set a children's show that no one else may have witnessed, a viewing that changes the course of their lives. "Major Spacer in the 21st Century" begins with the downfall of the creator of a 1950 children's science fiction TV show as the McCarthy hearings begin, and picks up in the year 2000 in a world where Y2K really did lead to a technological disaster. As a result, "Major Spacer" is given a second chance to change the world for the better. These are just a few highlights in a collection with no weak stories.

This is Waldrop's sixth collection of stories, and my favorite by just a hair. I hope this book will be reprinted by a mass-market publisher so that more people get to read it. If you like this book, I would recommend that you search for his other collections, all of which are excellent.

If you like Waldrop's writing, I would also recommend short story collections by Avram Davidson (The Avram Davidson Treasury, The Other Nineteenth Century, Limekiller), Andy Duncan (Beluthahatchie), Terry Bisson (Bears Discover Fire), and Neal Barrett jr (Perpetuity Blues).

2005-06-04 | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

Strange Monsters of the Recent Past

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Customer Reviews

That's Mr National Treasure to you.
Waldrop is one of the few truly original voices working in science fiction or fantasy today. Stories like his Nebula Award winning "The Ugly Chickens" display his combination of a regional voice, traditional tall tale telling and a wildly unique imagination to their best advantage. This paperback collection brings together his second collection, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, with A Dozen Tough Jobs in a readily affordable edition. If you're looking for something original, something different or just something funny and weird this is for you. The man is, as the Japanese would have it, a living national treasure

1995-07-21 | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 4

Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader: Selected Short Fiction 1980-2005

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The only problem with THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME is that it's not nearly long enough. Sure, sure, it's chock full of great stories by the best short fiction writer of his generation, modern classics like "The Ugly Chickens" and "Flying Saucer Rock n Roll" and "Heart of Whitenesse" and many more... but there are two or three times as many terrific Waldrop stories, equally good and sometimes even better, that have been left out for want of space. There's only one solution. Read this book... and then go out and track down all of Waldrop's other collections and read them too.

Customer Reviews

Enthusiastically recommended for science fiction and fantasy buffs everywhere.
Things Will Never Be the Same: Selected Short Fiction 1980-2005 is the first career-retrospective anthology of Howard Waldrop's short stories, including the Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning tale "The Ugly Chickens" and the Hugo-nominated "The King of Where-I-Go". Sometimes mundane, sometimes dazzling, always peering into an ever-so-slightly askew "Waldropian" universe, these tales are crafted not only to entertain the reader, but also to expand the reader's worldview. Distinguishing this retrospective are brief afterwords to each tale, written by Waldrop himself, offering insights into the genesis of the story and comments on what affected its creative process. Enthusiastically recommended for science fiction and fantasy buffs everywhere.

2007-06-03 (Oregon, WI USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

You will never be the same
This is not science fiction. These are tales of an alternate universe which
is occasionally tangential to one I inhabit. I am proud to have read all [I
think] of Waldrop's oeuvre. I have met Howard. No one writes like him. No
one thinks like him. Once you've read "The Ugly Chickens," you'll never think of zoology in the same way; you'll recall the rock-n-roll of the 50s
and 60s. Drive-ins. DQ girls on roller skates. This is a fine selection.
There are many things I love (of Howard's) that aren't here. Like Marxism
in the 19th Century. Like "Custer's Last Jump." Like the Labours of
Hercules. That's OK. You'll want them once you've read this. As they
useta say "collect 'em all."

Howard, I love you.

2007-05-23 (Toronto, Canada) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

Decent short "sci-fi"ish fiction
Being so wonderfully reviewed, I thought I would give his work a try. I'm glad I did, but only because now I don't really wonder what I'm missing. It's just OK, not "great" or "the best ever" or anything approaching that. The comments by the author after each story tell about when it was written, perhaps why or what inspired it. Those are moderately interesting, and tell a lot about the author. I have a feeling he's kind of a difficult person.

The stories themselves are more "fiction" than "science fiction," and while I'm not a fanatic about categories and the like, I was a little disappointed in the science content of the stories. I like to read about alternate realities, imagined technologies, speculative fiction about future technology, etc. and there wasn't a lot of that in these stories.

I guess the title says it all. It's decent science fiction, light on the science.

2007-05-16 (Stillwater, OK) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 3

The American Italo Calvino
This is the first career retrospective of Howard Waldrop.

"If Philip K. Dick is our homegrown Borges (as Ursula K. Le Guin once said), then Waldrop is our own very American magic-realist, as imaginative and playful as early Garcia Marquez or, better yet, Italo Calvino" so wrote Michael Dirda in the March 18th Washington Post Book World.

Your life is not complete until you own this book!

2007-04-03 (Baltimore, MD USA) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

Other Worlds, Better Lives

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Collects 7 longer pieces by this aclaimed writer.

Customer Reviews

Seven swell stories you need!
Seven great long stories by the resident weird mind of America:

A Dozen Tough Jobs (1989)
Fin de Cycle (1990)
You Could Go Home Again (1993)
Flatfeet (1996)
Major Spacer (2001)
The Other Real World (2001)
A Better World's In Birth (2003)

Michael Dirda of the Wasington post Book World has written:
"If Philip K. Dick is our homegrown Borges (as Ursula K. Le Guin once said), then Waldrop is our very American magic-realist, as imaginative and playful as early Garcia Marquez or, better yet, Italo Calvino."

And award winning author Orson Scott Caes has written:
"Now he brings us 'A Dozen Tough Jobs' [included in this volume], which is, yes folks, a retelling of the Labors of Hercules, set in a Mississippi town in the 1920s. Because it's Waldrop writing it, though, it's more than a comic reworking of an old myth. It's also a clear depiction of life in that sunbeaten, humid, fearful place and time. The rhythms of speech, the slang, the relations between the races, between rich and poor, between men and women, all are there, with the power and ugliness and majesty of real life. Waldrop's comedy comes from his true-seeing eye, and A Dozen Tough Jobs puts him right amoung William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Conner, and Harry Crews as one of the umcompromising prophets of the American South."

Don't wait, click away and order this! Order two! One for you, one for a friend!

But then I'm prejudiced about Howard Waldrop.

2008-09-11 (Baltimore, MD USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

Howard Who?: Stories (Peapod Classics)

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Howard Waldrop is a writer’s writer. His fiction is erudite, gonzo, wistful, funny, and beautifully written. Waldrop has a capacious, encyclopedic knowledge of superheroes, baseball players, Mexican wrestlers, world wars, longdead film stars, oddball television shows, pulp serials, radio plays, fairy tales, scientific expeditions, extinct species, and knockknock jokes. His stories are sophisticated, magical recombinations of the stuff that our popculture dreams are made of. Never published in paperback, long out of print, and extremely collectible, Howard Who’ was Waldrop’s seminal debut collection. If you haven’t read Waldrop before, you’re in for a treat.

Customer Reviews

One of the best, most underappreciated writers
I have been obsessed with Howard Waldrop for about fifteen years. The first three were spent trying to find his collections (this one especially) or locating a working copier so I could xerox any stories I located in the library. It was attempting to purchase "Howard Who?" and "Strange Monsters of the Recent Past" online that led me to become an Amazon.com member. Now I've got everything he's done up to a booklet containing two of his stories I bought from a gentleman in Austin. I found out recently that he was hospitalized for heart troubles. I don't know what his condition is now, but I would advise everyone to get as much of his work in your hands as you can before they go out of print again. And this is the best place to start, his first collection.

2008-10-03 | Tens Years Gone, Still a Member (New York, NY) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

Waldrop Rules!
One of the most eclectic writers in the Sf/F genre one can find. No Waldrop story is like any other story, or like any other Waldrop story for that matter.

If you haven't read Waldrop before, have you got a treat coming!

2008-06-08 (Baltimore, MD USA) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

An American Iconoclast
Howard Who? is a short story collection by Howard Waldrop with an introduction by George R. R. Martin.

It consists of the following stories.

The Ugly Chickens
This story won the Nebula and the World Fantasy awards as well as being nominated for a Hugo.
It puts forth the question What if the Dodo hadn't been wiped out.

Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen
I have no idea what this story was about, but I was never the less tremendously entertained by it.

Ike at the Mike
Did you ever wonder how the world would be different if Eisenhower and Patton had been in a band with Louis Armstrong rather than leading the allies in Europe? Well Me neither, but Howard did, and its a wonderful story.

Dr. Hudson's Secret Gorilla
Classic old school horror movie plot. Or old school bugs bunny cartoon either way .

. . . the World, as we Know't
I don't see the word Phlogiston used enough anymore. This story is a cautionary tale of a science experiment gone bad. Really, Really, horribly bad.

Green Brother
This is the first of two Native American centered stories. I much preferred the next one.

Mary Margaret Road Grader
Or Mad Max meets the county fair. This is a post apocalyptic story where Native American again rule the plains of the US, and they engage in tractor pulls.

"Save A Place in the Lifeboat for Me
Abbot and Costello, Laurel and Hardy, and others are sent to prevent "The day the music died." This was also one of my favorites perhaps because I've been to the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake IA many times.

Horror, We Got
You've got to love a time travel tale crossed with a Zionist conspiracy don't you? I loved this story.

Man-Mountain Gentian
Zen Sumo. 'nuff said.

God's Hooks
Izaak Walton goes fishing for a nightmare.

Heirs of the Perisphere
Another post apocalyptic tale. This time Mickey, Goofy, and Donald are the only survivors and they are trying to figure out why no one is coming to Disneyland.

I enjoyed this collection, but I've found I have a hard time getting into reading short fiction. I have a zone I get into in a book I really like, and short stories are over before I ever get to that point. Its much more of a chore to read short fiction for me. But taking that into account the writing itself is very good. Waldrop is very eclectic, and is certainly a master of the short story.

8 out of 10

2007-02-19 | http://racebannon42.blogspot.com/ (Minneapolis, MN) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 4

Heirs...
First let me confess I have not read this book, not yet... You see I read Heirs of the Perisphere years ago when it was first published * ahem * in Playboy (Nothing risque in the writing, just well written.).

More memorable than the girl, I still remember passages today - must have been close to twenty years ago.

Mr Waldrop... Genius. Years ahead of his time. Great writer. I highly recommend.

2004-06-04 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

Outstanding Stories? Definitely
The title does not lie. This is a collection of 12 outstanding stories. Each story is a tiny gem, a short 13-25 page story that makes a large impact.

Waldrop's stories have to be read to be believed. He is able to turn the mundane into the spectacular. Take 'Man Mountain Gentian' about sumo wrestlers with telekinetic powers. Or 'Heirs of the Perisphere' about intelligent Disney robots that are mistakenly activated years after humanity mysteriously disappeared. 'Mary Margaret Road-Grader' is a fascinating story about Native American Tractor pulls. World-Fantasy-Award winning story 'The Ugly Chickens' is about a possible rediscovery of the supposedly extinct Dodo. 'God's Hooks': a story about a fishing expedition for Leviathan and the consequences thereof.

There is not a bad story in this collection. Waldrop is a towering talent in the speculative fiction scene. Unfortunately most of his works are out-of-print. He's written a lot of stories but it takes an effort to track them down. Trust me, it's worth it. Highly recommended.

2001-08-11 | human (Vacaville, CA USA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

Texas-Isrl War: 1999

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Customer Reviews

Gonna party like it's 1999!
In the future...in, um, 1999...England will be attacked by Ireland with bombs full of LSD; the UK's leaders will go insane and drop nukes on several countries; other countries will drop nukes on still other countries; the US will get dragged into it; chemical and biological weapons will be launched at nearly every country in the planet; nine tenths of the earth's population will die; Texas will secede from the US; and a new Civil War will be fought between the Union and the Republic of Texas, with the Union using hired Israeli troops for much of the fighting.

It's going to be interesting.

Especially, since on top of all of that, Texas will kidnap the US President, the Vice President will go crazy with power, and Israeli troops will be forced to go undercover to get the President back--along the way, fighting against Texas and going against the orders of the power-crazed VP.

That's the story told here, and it's an interesting one. If it weren't set in a projected future (1999, theorized from 1973 and 1974), if the tanks didn't have lasers in it, and if we hadn't already sent a manned expedition to Mars (which WE SHOULD HAVE DONE ALREADY), the story wouldn't really be sci-fi, more of a military novel, almost like something by Tom Clancy. It's really grounded, though it does have a little fun with giant, mutated roaches.

It's a pretty decent, fast-paced read, though it often resorts to telling instead of showing, frequently uses passive voice instead of active, and sometimes lapses into bits of seemingly lazy racism--for instance, referring to one character once as "the black."

The story is a cool idea though, and anyone familiar with Texas, Lousiana, or New Mexico will find an interesting future proposed here for their states. Also for Pittsburgh, PA, which becomes the new DC.

Check it out.

2008-01-14 (Albuquerque, NM) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 3

Outstanding book.!
I come back to this one again and again, it's one of my favorite stories from when I was a kid. Regarding Glen's review:
If you look for flaws in anything, you will find them.
If you accept a story for what it is, you can relax and enjoy it.

2006-07-15 | Tech Guy (Seattle) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

"Highly Imaginative"
Saunders and Waldrop definitely get a "A" for imagiation on this book. When a nuclear war wipes out a good chunk of Earth's population, Israel is relatively untouched and helps America fight its wars in exchange for a place to live. Now a group of Israeli and American soldiers face a tough challenge. Rescue the kidnapped President of the United States from Texas, which has seceded from the Union.

It's a quick read with OK character development and decent action. I really liked the laser-armed Israeli Centurion tanks duking it out with a Texas heavy cruiser. Also, a first-rate job by the authors bringing out the harshness, and hopelessness, of a post-apocalypse world, from contaminated farmland to cities no longer maintained. The characters in many instances are torn between their dreams for life after fighting, then wonder if they will live long enough to see them or if they can even make a life in this miserable world. Some really good scenes when the Israelis ad Americans infiltrate the Texan compound. They learn of the conflict between the regular Texan Army and the fanatical faction called the Sons of the Alamo. One great aspect was the Israeli commander's view of one Texan general who comes off as an honorable warrior, leading the Israeli to dislike the idea that he may have to kill him in order to complete his mission.

2003-09-21 | therustsays (Prescott, AZ) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3

2 parts Mad Max + 1 part Yom Kippur War = Good Entertainment
A friend who knows that I research the Arab-Israeli conflict recommended this fun little Sci-fi novel and I'm very glad she did. I enjoyed reading this novel very much. It was very nice light entertainment.

Jake Saunders and Howard Waldrop, the authors, have fashioned an extremely entertaining post-holocaust action novel in the rebellious remnants of the United States. It's obvious that both spent a lot of time reading and researching before the novel was written because there a quite a few disparate elements successfully rolled together in this light entertaining novel. Among the elements are: Wild West Texas Rangers cowboy story elements, an interest in the Arab-Israeli wars, an interest in W.W.II military hardware, an interest in Cold War politics, and probably, above all else, a projected post-nuclear Armageddon scenario.

The novel was written in 1974 and parts of the novel cobbled together into a novelette previously appeared in Galaxy Magazine in July, 1973. This story was probably written during the height of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and probably the authors drew much inspiration from what appeared in the newspapers, magazine, and other media of the time.

The authors built an alternate history in which 1992 a limited nuclear exchange and widespread use of biological and chemical weapons has killed nine out of every ten people in the world. The two coalitions were a Chinese-Irish-Afrikaaner versus a Russo-British coalition that eventually allies with the United States. Europe waffles and is mostly destroyed in the crossfire. The Israelis stood neutral and their sworn Arab enemies attacked Israel, but with little result. Egyptians bombers managed to hit Tel Aviv, but after that brief attack, the Arab world was all but destroyed by Israeli military might. As neutrals, Israel managed to avoid all but the lingering effects of the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) exchange and stands as one of the last prospering enclaves of humanity. In fact, Israel is so prosperous that they have an overpopulation problem. Enter story plot element one, Israel now hires out its excess population as mercenary soldiers to the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in the shattered remnants of the USA, Texas declares independence and a second US civil war develops, with a Second Lone Star Republic arising driven by oil interests and the SA, Sons of the Alamo, a white supremacy Gestapo-like group holding the power behind the throne. Israeli mercenaries have been hired out to both sides of the war and the book's protagonists are a mixed unit of Israeli tankists and reinforcements from the federal government. Their mission is to penetrate the heart of Texas and rescue the kidnapped president of the USA.

However, the World War has not only destroyed the world's population, but along with that population went the many technicians who maintained the technology that not only drove high-tech societies, but their military machines as well. Any weapon surviving is thrust onto the field including W.W.II museum pieces, M-4 Shermans, M-3 Grants, and even a Stuart tank. The federal Israelis start out in updated British Chieftain and Centurion tanks, but are quickly moved into vintage armor as they take losses. A little high technology exists such as main gun cannons replaced with laser weaponry, but most of the weapons are conventional arms from the 1970s and before.

Several historical personages are written into the story including Israeli generals Yoffe and Sharon. Sharon, in this alternate future, is a general hired out to the Second Lone Star state instead of being a future president of Israel. The cameos were fun to read. The authors seem to be a little prescient as well since they predict a 1982 Arab-Israeli war that did occur.

The story very much reminds me of the Steve Jackson Games universe called Car Wars or the movies Mad Max and The Road Warrior. All of the popular apocalyptic background is there including the particular character of Texas that all writers from that state seem to imbue their work with. Among my favorite humorous elements were giant cockroaches the size of small dogs that are now hunted for sport and in one Texas cantina; the protagonists find one mounted over a bar.

I highly recommend this fun little sci-fi novel. It's not art or high literature, but it is a great read!...

2003-05-30 (Sacramento, California, USA) | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 5