Night of the Cooters [Paperback]

Howard. Waldrop (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ursus (1990)
• ASIN: B000V9CFYY
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Night of the Cooters, and Going Home Again. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette "The Ugly Chickens." George R.R. Martin is the author of the bestselling Song of Ice and Fire series of novels. His fiction has won the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy Award, Stoker, and Locus Awards. He worked on the TV shows The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best writer you aren't reading, December 30, 2006

By 

Nolan J. Werner "Writer" (Chicago, Ill.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Night Of The Cooters (Paperback)

In 30 years, Howard Waldrop will have the same authority as a speculative fiction writer that Philip K. Dick has now.

His stories are so insanely off the wall that no one else could have possibly even thought them up and so brilliant that only a master could have pulled them off. He manages to take familiar tropes and items that we know and put them in an entirely new context without the slightest hint of pastiche.

The title story is War of the Worlds set in Texas.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This S.O.B. can WRITE!!!!, August 18, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories (Hardcover)

No matter what crazy or malign things
Howard Waldrop may have done in
his life, these stories or his will pay for his entrance into Heaven! This is a short story collection which takes "What if..." ideas and twists them around until the reader says, "What the HELL?!?!" Waldrop's fiction is a smorgasboard of delightful details. It activates circuits in your brain you didn't realize you had. Waldrop's characters are so deftly rendered that you can SEE them in your imagination - the man would have made a great casting director. He knows old movies better than Connie Willis (who took an entire book to do something Waldrop did in a handful of pages). He knows comics and H.G. Wells and music and ... heck, if I ever meet the guy, the beers are on me. This sonuvagun can WRITE!!!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHAT A RIDE!, December 17, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories (Hardcover)

Two or three years ago I test-drove the latest Waldrop offering, a hot little number the manufacturer decided to call HOWARD WHO? for most obvious reasons: Waldrop writes some of the best sci-fi or imaginitive fiction I've seen today---award-winning---yet this superb author remains a relative unknown.
Now if you're looking for great refinement in a 0-to-60 short-story, you'd best look elsewhere, but if you're looking for a vehicle that will A) knock you back in your seat with the sheer g-force of imaginitive acceleration; and B) make you wonder how or where a top-notch writing-engineer like Waldrop receives his divinely insane ideas, this is your ticket to unmitigated bliss.
Waldrop is a mad-man, but one we can all understand, and he seeks to hurl each of us about the tight curves of his mind on the responsive yet friendly suspension of this latest collection, each short complete with a personal annotation from The Maestro himself. You want alternate history, this book's got it. You want pure fantasy, this book's got it. You want the plain old daily drive of weird, this book's got it.
This has to be the best working-person's imaginitive drive for the money. I'd even be willing to pit it in a no-holds-barred road-race against any other collection of imaginitive fiction still in production. Collectors will want to order one copy to drive, and a second copy to garage, something to show the grandkids.