Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations [Hardcover]

Howard Waldrop (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Story collaborations between cult figure Howard Waldrop and numerous other celebrated science fiction and fantasy writers are collected for the first time in this unique volume. 'One Horse Town' breathes fresh life into an ancient tale, combining elements from the sack of Troy, Homer's early days, the last day in the life of a Trojan warrior, and the archaeological dig at Troy. In 'Custer's Last Jump!' the legendary Crazy Horse uses Confederate monoplanes in his famous battle against General Custer. 'A Voice and Bitter Weeping' paints a grim post-nuclear age where Israeli mercenaries fight Texans in a never-ending, hopeless war. Mystery, intrigue, and treachery abound in the Heian Japan setting of 'The Latter Days of the Law', where a clever man must find a lost prince.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Though known as an iconoclastic independent, Waldrop (Going Home Again) shows himself a capable team player, too, in this collection of eight collaborative stories. Most were written in the 1970s, when he and his co-authors were fledglings of the Texas SF-writing community, and their themes and approaches span the speculative spectrum impressively. "One Horse Town," with Leigh Kennedy, collapses fragmentary glimpses of the life of Homer, the Trojan War and a modern archeological dig into a haunting fantasy fueled by the imagery of war and death. "Men of Greywater Station," a joint venture with George R. R. Martin, is a tale of extraplanetary perils whose pulp pacing betrays the authors' mutual interest in comic books. "Sun's Up!," co-authored with astrophysicist A.A. Jackson IV, is a hard science exploration of AI. All the stories are notable for the meticulous detail of their imagined worlds, none more so than a trio of collaborations with Stephen Utley, including the title tale, a giddy exercise in steampunk "what if-fery" that extrapolates the impact airplanes might have had on the Civil War, and "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole," a kaleidoscopic meditation on creators and creation in which Frankenstein's monster adventures in hollow earth kingdoms distilled from the fiction of Poe, Verne, Lovecraft and Burroughs. Chummy intros and afterwords by all the writers make this volume an interesting study of the craft of collaboration as well as a fascinating fiction read.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Golden Gryphon, specialist in odd volumes, strikes again, rounding up eight stories by Howard Waldrop and various collaborators, most notably Steve Utley. The first Waldrop-Utley collaboration, "Custer's Last Jump," is an alternate-history classic and more than slightly tongue in cheek. Other stories, collaborations with Buddy Saunders, George R. R. Martin, Leigh Kennedy, Bruce Sterling, and A. A. Jackson, are mostly less well known and definitely less widely reprinted, but on the whole hardly less well done. The real treasures of the volume, however, are Waldrop's introductory portrayals of his collaborators and their afterwords about him. These writers are definitely unconventional, with most of them possessing countercultural leanings from way back, and a fair number, including Waldrop, being devout comics fans since well before it was trendy. Their remarks add to knowledge of their creative processes and how said processes have survived the vagaries of existence, such as collaboration. Good reading with rather a lot of instructional utility. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 280 pages
• Publisher: Golden Gryphon Press; 1 edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1930846134
• ISBN-13: 978-1930846135
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,055,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Idea (...) from the galactic fringe, August 26, 2004

By 

Eileen Gunn (Seattle) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations (Hardcover)

The stories in this collection are great, of course. Some are recently published, some have been sprung from the prison of time, and one, the long-rumored collaboration between Howard Waldrop and Bruce Sterling, has never been published previously. The title story is the one that changed the ground rules for writing alternate history. These are stories of ideas -- of complete profligacy with ideas -- of inventing forms, pushing their envelopes, and making the rest of the world sit up and take notice.

Howard's collaborators are among the people who made Austin a free-fire zone of SF ideas and original stories in the Seventies and Eighties: Bruce Sterling, Steven Utley, George R. R. Martin, Leigh Kennedy, Buddy Saunders, and astrophysicist Al Jackson. Howard says it's "thirty years of the True History of SF." Since he and Saunders were in the 7th grade together, and he and Martin first started corresponding in 1963, so I'd say Howard is shorting himself a decade there, but really, who's counting?

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A dazzling display of literary imagination, June 13, 2003

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations (Hardcover)

Compiled by Howard Waldrop (a renowned writer of deftly researched alternate-history stories and winner of both the Nebula and World Fantasy awards), Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is an enthralling anthology of original short stories in which Howard Waldrop combined his talent with other skilled wordweavers such as George R. R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, and others. From a unique perspective on the saga of Troy; to a distant future in which Mankind is nearly extinct; to an alternate history when Crazy Horse uses Confederate monoplanes against Custer; Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is a dazzling display of literary imagination, and a very strongly recommended read for science fiction fans enthusiasts everywhere.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read!, February 22, 2004

By 

Richard J. Arndt (Elko, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations (Hardcover)

As always, Waldrop comes through, here in collborations with some of science fiction's brightest lights. Offbeat, well-researched and thought provoking. Well worth your time.