Howard Waldrop
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OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES: Selected Long Fiction,
1989 - 2003
by Howard Waldrop
"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."
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– Michael Dirda,
Washington Post
Book World
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"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. "
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–
Orson Scott Card
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Now Available from our fulfillment
company, Pathway Book Service! –
Other Worlds, Better Lives - Selected Long Fiction
1989 - 2003, a new Old Earth Books collection of Howard
Waldrop stories featuring a selection of longer fiction
from the last twenty-five years of Howard's career.
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Table of Contents: |
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"A Dozen Tough Jobs" (1989)
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"Fin de Cycle" (1990)
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"You Could Go Home Again"
(1993)
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"Flatfeet" (1996)
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"Major Spacer" (2001)
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"The Other Real World" (2001)
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"A Better World's In Birth"
(2003)
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"In 2007, Old Earth Books, an independent press
located in Baltimore, brought out Things Will Never
Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader, a comprehensive
volume that features selected short fiction from 1980-2005
by the Nebula Award-winning and often anthologized writer.
This is a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone interested
in science-fictional and fantastic short fiction at its
best. Old Earth has now followed that earlier and welcome
volume with an equally fine companion, Other Worlds,
Better Lives, which features longer stories written
between 1989 and 2003, and it displays Waldrop's mastery
of the novella form."
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"Following hard on the heels of the previous Old
Earth Waldrop collection (Things Will Never Be The
Same), Other Worlds, Better Lives presents
seven novella-length stories told by the manic (maniac?)
bard of Texas. As before, it's a roller-coaster ride through
the mind of one very strange individual; a mind not quite
deranged, but rather re-arranged. And re-arrange he does
– reality, history, the reader's perceptions – nothing is
sacred. From the retelling of the labors of Hercules ("A
Dozen Tough Jobs") set in the Old South to what happens
when television sitcom and movie characters get conflated
with the Cuban Missile Crisis ("The Other Real World")."
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 Trade
Paperback • September 2008 • 272 pages • ISBN 978-1-882968-38-1
(1-882968-38-7) • $15 USD
Hardcover (300 copies) • September 2008 • ISBN
978-1-882968-37-4 (1-882968-37-9) • $45 USD
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THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: Selected Short
Fiction, 1980 - 2005
by Howard Waldrop
"Howard Waldrop is the Studebaker Golden Hawk
of genre fiction, a classic of structure and design. His
unique stories autopsy the entrails of our eccentric past
and reveal, often in oracular fashion, insanities to come."
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– Lucius Shepard
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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."
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–
George R R Martin
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"Howard Waldrop doesn't have e-mail. He doesn't have
a word processor. He doesn't surf the Internet. I guess
that means he spends most of his time writing. From my point
of view as a devoted Waldrop reader, I'm eternally grateful
to the Luddite in him."
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– Janis Ian
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"You want funny? Howard's got funny. You want weird?
Howard's got weird. You want mind-bending? You're about
to get it."
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– Cory Doctorow
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"There's no better writer alive than Howard Waldrop,
and here are all his best stories, with funny and fascinating
afterwords — you need this book."
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– Tim Powers
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"It always feels like Christmas when a new Howard
Waldrop collection arrives, and this one is as crammed with
wonderful presents as Santa's sack. This is even better
than getting a BB gun!"
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– Connie Willis
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"The 16 stories in this retrospective volume from
World Fantasy Award-winner Waldrop tend to be more sober
and less zany than those in his previous collection, Heart
of Whitenesse (2005). Highlights include "The
Lions Are Asleep This Night," a touching alternate
history of a would-be playwright set in Africa; "French
Scenes," in which Francophiles make movies using computers;
and "Household Words or the Powers That Be," a
tale Dickens fans are sure to love...."
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– Publishers Weekly
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"You don't have to know a lot to read Howard Waldrop's
fiction, but it helps. His stories are packed with inside
jokes, allusions, historic and pop-cultural references which
sometimes leave you wondering if you got everything out
of it he put into it. That's why this collection of his
short fiction is such a treasure: each story has an afterword
written by Howard himself explaining (some of) the punch
lines you may have missed, the premise he based it on, the
circumstances under which he wrote, and anything else he
felt his readers should know. (The continuing saga of how
he single-handedly shut down a number of publications just
by having a story accepted is truly amazing.)"
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Howard Waldrop's first sale to a professional magazine was "Lunchbox",
which appeared in the May 1972 Analog. His unique fiction
has consistently been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and World
Fantasy Awards. Although Howard does not own a computer, SFF.net
hosts a web site
for him.
Fast Forward: Contemporary
Science Fiction is a monthly half-hour cable television series
about the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which started
in 1989. This is a link to an Apple Quicktime file (18.3 MB)
of an interview (17 minutes) they conducted with Howard
Waldrop in March of 2006.
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Table of Contents
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- "King of Where-I-Go"
- "Calling Your Name"
- "The Dynasters, Vol. I, On the Downs"
- "US"
- "Mr. Goober's Show"
- "Heart of Whitenesse"
- "Household Words, or, The Powers-That-Be"
- "The Sawing Boys"
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- "Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?"
- "Wild, Wild Horses"
- "French Scenes"
- "Night of the Cooters"
- "The Lions Are Asleep This Night"
- "Heirs of the Perisphere"
- "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll"
- "The Ugly Chickens"
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| THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME (formerly
titled FLYING SAUCER ROCK AND ROLL) has been published
in trade paperback and a limited run hardcover edition. |
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1-800-345-6665, pbs@pathywaybook.com
Trade
Paperback • March 2007 • ISBN 978-1-882968-36-7 • $15
USD
Hardcover (300 copies) • March 2007 • ISBN 978-1-882968-35-0
• $45 USD
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Even More Howard From Our Friends at:
Small Beer Press
Founded in 2000 by Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link, Small
Beer Press publishes books (as Small Beer Press and Peapod
Classics), chapbooks, and a zine, Lady
Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.
Peapod Classics, a new line of numbered, uniformly-designed
trade paperbacks brings together the best in yesterday's books
today. Peapod Classics No. 3: Howard
Waldrop's Howard Who?
Wheatland Press
Wheatland Press
has established a reputation for publishing high quality trade
paperback editions of literary science fiction and fantasy, primarily
anthologies and single-author collections. In 2004, Wheatland
Press was nominated for a World Fantasy Award.
Dream
Factories and Radio Pictures collects all of Howard Waldrop's
film and television stories along with original essays by the
author. This collection first appeared as an Ebook from Electric
Story in 2001. Wheatland Press is pleased to offer the first print
edition.
The Moone World: A new work from Howard Waldrop to be
available in trade paperback and hardcover with a tentative publication
date of Summer 2008. [30 May 2009 Update: Due to circumstances
beyond anyone's control, the publication of The Moone World
by Howard Waldrop has been delayed.]
Golden Gryphon Press
Golden Gryphon
Press was founded in 1997 by Jim Turner, the long-time editor
of Arkham House, with the mission to publish handsome, quality
books of short story collections by today's master writers and
tomorrow's rising stars.
With A
Better World's in Birth!, author Howard Waldrop has skillfully
crafted another of his trademark alternate history stories, this
one about the peoples' revolutionary leader (and German composer)
Richard Wagner. More than 10,000 words of pure Waldrop. In the
Afterword, the author details the story behind this story that
was twenty years in the making. Each copy is signed and numbered
by the author on the limitation page.
In a career that has spanned thirty-four years, Howard Waldrop
has withheld these collaborations with A. A. Jackson, Leigh Kennedy,
George R. R. Martin, Buddy Saunders, Bruce Sterling, and Steven
Utley from his short story collections, in order to create a dream,
this special volume, CUSTER'S
LAST JUMP AND OTHER COLLABORATIONS. Included are
several Hugo and Nebula nominated stories, ranging from Waldrop's
second year as a professional writer to, in his words, "metaphysically,
the week before last."
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updated
11 March 2012
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