Waldrop, Howard 1946–

PERSONAL:

Born September 15, 1946, in Houston, MS; son of Raymond Evans (an aircraft worker) and Zora Vee (a waitress) Waldrop. Education: Attended University of Texas at Arlington, 1965-70 and 1972-74.

ADDRESSES:

Office—P.O. Box 49335, Austin, TX 78765. Agent—Joseph Elder, Joseph Elder Agency, P.O. Box 298, Warwick, NY 10990.

CAREER:

Freelance writer, 1972—. Dynastat, Inc., Austin, TX, auditory researcher, 1975-80. Military service: U.S. Army, 1970-72.

MEMBER:

Science Fiction Writers of America, Trout Unlimited.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Nebula Award from Science Fiction Writers of America, 1980, and World Fantasy Award from World Fantasy Society, 1981, both for "The Ugly Chickens."

WRITINGS:

(With Jake Saunders) The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 (science fiction novel), Ballantine (New York, NY), 1974.

Them Bones (science fiction novel), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1984, reprinted in hardcover, Mark V. Zeising (Willimantic, CT), 1989.

Howard Who? (stories; includes "The Ugly Chickens"; also see below), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1986, Peapod Classics (Northampton, MA), 2006.

All about Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories (also see below), Ursus, 1987, expanded edition published as Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (contains All about Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories and A Dozen Tough Jobs), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Strange Things in Close-up: The Nearly Complete Howard Waldrop (contains Howard Who? and All about Strange Monsters of the Recent Past), Legends (London, England), 1989.

A Dozen Tough Jobs (novella; also see below), Mark V. Zeising (Willimantic, CT), 1989.

Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories (stories), Mark V. Zeising (Willimantic, CT), 1991, revised edition (includes A Dozen Tough Jobs), Ace Books (New York, NY), 1993.

You Could Go Home Again (novella), Cheap Street (New Castle, VA), 1993.

Going Home Again (stories), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1998.

Flying Saucer Rock and Roll, Cheap Street (New Castle, VA), 2001.

(With Leigh Kennedy and others) Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, Golden Gryphon Press (Urbana, IL), 2003.

Heart of Whitenesse, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2005.

The Search for Tom Purdue, Subterranean Press (Burton, MI), 2005.

Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader, Old Earth Books (Baltimore, MD), 2007.

Contributor of stories to anthologies and periodicals, including Omni, Amazing Stories, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Playboy, Shayol, Galaxy, Eternity SF, and Haunt of Horror.

SIDELIGHTS:

"Howard Waldrop is one of science fiction's most distinctive stylists, one of the very few who might truly be called unique," according to an essayist for Contemporary Southern Writers. "Working predominantly in the shorter forms Waldrop has amassed an acclaimed body of work which consistently surprises, enlightens, and entertains. It isn't possible to define a typical Waldrop story in terms more precise than ‘odd.’" Although he is a science fiction writer, Waldrop more often explores the possible past than the distant future. Many of Waldrop's most popular stories are tales of what would have happened if history had turned out differently. In his award-winning "The Ugly Chickens," for example, a scientist discovers that dodo birds, long thought extinct, were being raised for food on a Mississippi farm. In "You Could Go Home Again," novelist Tom Wolfe and musician Fats Waller are returning from the 1940 Japanese Olympics via dirigible. Jed Hartman, writing on the Strange Horizons Web site, claimed that "Waldrop is one of the most unusual writers in the speculative fiction field."

The believability of Waldrop's alternate histories is a reflection of the exhaustive research the author puts into each story, enabling him to layer his fables with rich detail. This same detail, however, has made some of Waldrop's stories somewhat intimidating. For the reader to find the clues and get the jokes planted within the narrative, he often must have working knowledge of the time period. The story "Thirty Minutes over Broadway," for example, runs thirty-seven pages and comes with a twelve-page appendix in which all the allusions from comic books and pulp fiction are explained.

It is not surprising that Waldrop's name goes largely unrecognized, even among science fiction enthusiasts; after all, he has produced only a handful of books since 1974, and most of those in limited editions. What he does produce, however, is memorable. In his collection Going Home Again, Waldrop rewrites "The Musicians of Brementon" as a 1920s gangster story, creates a different version of Charles Dickens's classic "A Christmas Carol," and imagines how Peter Lorre's career may have been different had Nazi Germany won World War II. Doris Lynch in Library Journal called the stories "clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy." A critic for Publishers Weekly stated: "The fantastic inventions and whimsical nostalgia in these nine stories suggest that Waldrop is either a pulp writer born out of his time or an autodidact from another world."

Heart of Whitenesse, a collection published in 2005, offers readers ten assorted stories, each of which is accompanied by an explanatory afterword. In "The Other Real World," Waldrop takes a look at the Cuban missile crisis through the eyes of a teenager. "Our Mortal Span" features a three-headed robot who goes to Story Book Land, an amusement park where the rides are based on fairy tales. However, when the robot takes the stories literally, he runs into a bit of trouble. The title story includes minor character "Will Shaxper," while focusing on the adventures of rival playwright Christopher Marlowe. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly remarked that "Waldrop is a razzle-dazzle hoot."

Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader is the first retrospective collection of the author's work and gathers some of his best short stories written between 1980 and 2005. Among the sixteen works on offer is "The Ugly Chickens," which won both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, and "The King of Where-I-Go," which was honored with a Hugo nomination. Again, each story is followed by Waldrop's own afterword regarding his writing process and information on what sparked the idea for the work. Paul T. Vogel, writing for MBR Bookwatch, observed that Waldrop's stories are designed "to entertain the reader, but also to expand the reader's worldview."

Waldrop once told CA: "I fish and help my friends move to new apartments. I am interested in books, movies, dancing, rock and roll (what's left of it), and all the stuff my stories are about. If it were possible to make a living writing short stories, that's all I would do."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Southern Writers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

St. James Guide to Science Fiction Writers, 4th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May, 1985, Tom Easton, review of Them Bones, p. 135; February, 1987, Tom Easton, review of Howard Who?, p. 186; October, 1991, Tom Easton, review of Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories, p. 165; November, 1998, Tom Easton, review of Going Home Again, p. 135.

Booklist, July, 1998, Mary Carroll, review of Going Home Again, p. 1868; April 1, 2003, Roland Green, review of Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, p. 1384.

Library Journal, June 1, 1998, Doris Lynch, review of Going Home Again, p. 165.

Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September, 1989, Orson Scott Card, review of A Dozen Tough Jobs, p. 43; September, 2003, Charles De Lint, review of Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, p. 39.

MBR Bookwatch, June, 2007, Paul T. Vogel, review of Things Will Never Be the Same: A Howard Waldrop Reader.

Nova Express, Volume 1, number 3, 1988, interview with Howard Waldrop.

Publishers Weekly, June 20, 1986, Sybil Steinberg, review of Howard Who?, p. 93; May 4, 1998, review of Going Home Again, p. 201; April 14, 2003, review of Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, p. 54; March 28, 2005, review of Heart of Whitenesse, p. 62.

SF Eye, Volume 1, number 5, July, 1989, interview with Howard Waldrop.

ONLINE

Howard Waldrop Home Page,http://www.sff.net/people/Waldrop (April 8, 2003).

Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project of Starkville High School, http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/ (April 8, 2003), Bjorn E. Lundin, "Howard Waldrop: A Biography" and review of Them Bones.

Strange Horizons,http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (January 29, 2001), Jed Hartman, "Three Ways of Looking at Howard Waldrop (and Then Some)," George R.R. Martin, "Introduction to Howard Who?," Gardner Dozois, "Introduction to All about Strange Monsters of the Recent Past," and Eileen Gunn, "Alternate Waldrops."