Customer Reviews

Night of the Cooters: More Neat Stories

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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.

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!!!

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.

I'm completely mystified why Howard Waldrop's books are out of print - they should be required reading for everyone! Although it's easy to assume this guy is seriously crazy, he possesses the most imaginative mind I've ever come across. His stories often take a historical event, and give it such a neat little twist, you end up wishing it had happened that way. Whatever the subject, you just find yourself thinking, "Hey! What if ....." and surely that can only broaden your mind. Isn't that what the art of short story writing is all about? To get us thinking?

Although I'm responding to this excellent collection (which I've owned for many years), my favourite of his short story collections, "Strange Things in Close Up" is not even listed here! Among 19 wonderful stories, it contains "The Ugly Chickens" which has to be one of the best short stories ever written (most of the rest of my personal top ten short stories are also by him). You'll really believe dodos were alive (in America, no less) into this century - after all, Paul Linberl saw the photo. This story also made me find out what on earth Pachelbel's "Canon in D" was and was instrumental in changing my taste in music forever!

From far-off Australia, I urge all Americans to rise up and demand Howard Waldrops books are reissued so they can rush to log on to Amazon and buy them! This guy should be revered as one of your greatest authors, not languishing among the "Out of Print"!

Why is Waldrop so ignored? His short stories are brilliant, but difficult to classify-- he heads off into a completely new direction every time. There isn't a genre he won't twist to his own ends, frequently with large dollops of genuinely witty humor thrown in. The miracle is that he succeeds each time with even the most improbable concepts and premises. So track this down along with his other collections (Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Howard Who?, anything else you can get your hands on) and enjoy. You'll become a fan, I guarantee it.