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The Best Writer You've Never Heard Of
12 years ago
General
HOWARD WHO? by Howard Waldrop (Peapod Classics, 2006, 9781931520188)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/19....._new_dp_review
OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES by Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books, 2008, 9781882968381)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/18....._new_dp_review
reviewed by Roochak
HOWARD WHO?
Howard Waldrop is the best writer you've never heard of. Thing is, where other writers become specialists -- mining a particular vein of obsessions in a single, recognizable tone of voice -- no two Waldrop stories are alike.
His scope is staggering. These stories, written between 1974 and 1983, invite us into the quest of 18th-century natural philosophers to isolate the atomic substance "phlogiston"; into a proud Native American society based on auto theft and tractor pulls; into a band of time-traveling Jewish terrorists; into a tournament for telekinetic sumo wrestlers; into a reunion concert for two of the world's greatest jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong and Dwight Eisenhower. And I haven't even mentioned that there are cowboys gunning for vampires, Izaak Walton as a 17th-century Captain Quint, robot simulacra of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as the last survivors in a postapocalyptic landscape, and, of course, Groucho Marx as God.
If you love dazzlingly imaginative science fiction and fantasy writing, you must read this book.
OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES
Writing novella-length science fiction isn't something that sane people do very often. Where do you sell it?
Fortunately for his readers, short story specialist Howard Waldrop likes to stretch out to 25,000 words or so every once in a while. His longer stories aren't always as action-packed as his shorter ones, but we get to spend a little more time in the various, richly-textured worlds he keeps dreaming up.
"A Dozen Tough Jobs" transplants the twelve labors of Hercules to rural Mississippi in the 1920s, and Waldrop's vernacular "translation" is a hoot: our hero from Mt. Oatie has a young, black sidekick named I.O. Lace, and the episodes are by turn funny as hell and scary as hell; the ending is poignant as hell.
"Fin de Cyclé" (a Waldropian joke: "cycle" in French has no acute accent, and refers to "a series of events") asks, "What if Méliès, Proust, Picasso, Satie, Jarry, and le Douanier Rousseau got together to make a movie about the Dreyfus affair?" The story is proof that Belle Époque Paris is as wild a science fictional settng as any alien planet.
In "You Could Go Home Again," novelist Thomas Wolfe lives to cross paths with Fats Waller, J.D. Salinger, T.E. Lawrence, and Nevil Shute on a zeppelin flight from Japan to Germany. Wolfe's books were always about bombastic young men in search of the real America; this story is about an older, sadder, and somewhat wiser man in search of himself. "Flatfeet!" is early 20th century world history as seen through the eyes of the Keystone Kops. "Major Spacer in the 21st Century!" takes us from live television drama and anti-Communist paranoia in 1950 to the Y2K technology crash of the new millenium (which actually happened in this story's world). What's the connection? Excessive government surveillance leads to a world that no one wants to live in? Could be. This one left me shrugging.
Ever wondered about the kid characters in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and other 1950s sci-fi movies, and how their screwed-up lives might've gone on after the movie ended? Neither have I, but while "The Other Real World" has too many oblique movie and TV references for its own good, it's still one heck of a Cold War thrill ride.
In "A Better World's in Birth!" a spectre is haunting the Peoples' Federated States of Europe -- the spectre of Marx, and those of Engels and Wagner as well. A secret police investigator is assigned to find out who or what's behind these ghostly sightings. This is, without question, the best 19th century, hardboiled Communist detective story I've ever read.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/19....._new_dp_review
OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES by Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books, 2008, 9781882968381)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/18....._new_dp_review
reviewed by Roochak
HOWARD WHO?
Howard Waldrop is the best writer you've never heard of. Thing is, where other writers become specialists -- mining a particular vein of obsessions in a single, recognizable tone of voice -- no two Waldrop stories are alike.
His scope is staggering. These stories, written between 1974 and 1983, invite us into the quest of 18th-century natural philosophers to isolate the atomic substance "phlogiston"; into a proud Native American society based on auto theft and tractor pulls; into a band of time-traveling Jewish terrorists; into a tournament for telekinetic sumo wrestlers; into a reunion concert for two of the world's greatest jazz musicians, Louis Armstrong and Dwight Eisenhower. And I haven't even mentioned that there are cowboys gunning for vampires, Izaak Walton as a 17th-century Captain Quint, robot simulacra of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy as the last survivors in a postapocalyptic landscape, and, of course, Groucho Marx as God.
If you love dazzlingly imaginative science fiction and fantasy writing, you must read this book.
OTHER WORLDS, BETTER LIVES
Writing novella-length science fiction isn't something that sane people do very often. Where do you sell it?
Fortunately for his readers, short story specialist Howard Waldrop likes to stretch out to 25,000 words or so every once in a while. His longer stories aren't always as action-packed as his shorter ones, but we get to spend a little more time in the various, richly-textured worlds he keeps dreaming up.
"A Dozen Tough Jobs" transplants the twelve labors of Hercules to rural Mississippi in the 1920s, and Waldrop's vernacular "translation" is a hoot: our hero from Mt. Oatie has a young, black sidekick named I.O. Lace, and the episodes are by turn funny as hell and scary as hell; the ending is poignant as hell.
"Fin de Cyclé" (a Waldropian joke: "cycle" in French has no acute accent, and refers to "a series of events") asks, "What if Méliès, Proust, Picasso, Satie, Jarry, and le Douanier Rousseau got together to make a movie about the Dreyfus affair?" The story is proof that Belle Époque Paris is as wild a science fictional settng as any alien planet.
In "You Could Go Home Again," novelist Thomas Wolfe lives to cross paths with Fats Waller, J.D. Salinger, T.E. Lawrence, and Nevil Shute on a zeppelin flight from Japan to Germany. Wolfe's books were always about bombastic young men in search of the real America; this story is about an older, sadder, and somewhat wiser man in search of himself. "Flatfeet!" is early 20th century world history as seen through the eyes of the Keystone Kops. "Major Spacer in the 21st Century!" takes us from live television drama and anti-Communist paranoia in 1950 to the Y2K technology crash of the new millenium (which actually happened in this story's world). What's the connection? Excessive government surveillance leads to a world that no one wants to live in? Could be. This one left me shrugging.
Ever wondered about the kid characters in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) and other 1950s sci-fi movies, and how their screwed-up lives might've gone on after the movie ended? Neither have I, but while "The Other Real World" has too many oblique movie and TV references for its own good, it's still one heck of a Cold War thrill ride.
In "A Better World's in Birth!" a spectre is haunting the Peoples' Federated States of Europe -- the spectre of Marx, and those of Engels and Wagner as well. A secret police investigator is assigned to find out who or what's behind these ghostly sightings. This is, without question, the best 19th century, hardboiled Communist detective story I've ever read.
So, sci-fi novellas are not good? Oh dear... what of speculative fiction/modern fantasy? I don't know how to classify it.
Another Waldrop collection that I've just started reading is Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, stories co-written with George R.R. Martin and other writers. "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" (1977), an inspired mash-up of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H.P. Lovecraft, was written with Steven Utley, and may or may not be the first "steampunk" story.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/07....._new_dp_review
(I'd send you my copy if I still had it.)
Speaking of, if I may suggest something. "The Fox Woman" by Kij Johnson. She writes with an authentic eye; I didn't know she wasn't Japanese given how the tale retains all the details and feelings of a genuine Japanese story. Sure, it has the saddest ending I've seen since I read "The Cunning Little Vixen" (Foxes sure are popular...) but it's otherwise spot on. Incidentally, Kij Johnson also wrote the short story "Ponies", one of the greatest stories written against the sacrifices of childhood conformity, and also one of the best examples of the mindless cruelty of children.
I remember listening to Janacek's opera The Cunning Little Vixen years ago; I had no idea it was available in book form as well.
It was also a newspaper serial first, then a book. It's usually in the Children's section of the library. Spoiler Alert: Seriously not for children.