WALDROP, Howard 1946-

PERSONAL: Born September 15, 1946, in Houston, MS; son of Raymond Evans (an aircraft worker) and Zora Vee (a waitress; maiden name, Morris) 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.

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.

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 in Strange Horizons Magazine, 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. As Richard Gehr pointed out in the Voice Literary Supplement, "Interdisciplinarianism isn't required, but it sure helps." 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. "Waldrop's densely imagined and erudite stories have rather oddly gotten the reputation of being caviar for the general. . . . ," claimed the Washington Post Book World's Gregory Feeley. "In fact he is caviar for the masses, and deserves a wider audience than he has hitherto found."

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. Still, Gehr explained that as "a free agent, Waldrop writes with the unconstricted pleasure of the nonaligned autodidact, and as such he steadily, weirdly, and affectionately breaks and remakes the promises inscribed in the history of ideas." This freedom has consistently paid off, for, as Karen Joy Fowler wrote in the Washington Post Book World, "Waldrop is one of sf's most dependably surprising writers."

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."

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.

Lane, Daryl, William Vernon, and David Carson, editors, The Sounds of Wonder: Interviews from the Science Fiction Radio Show, Volume I, Oryx, 1985.

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, 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, 1998, p. 49; September, 2003, Charles De Lint, review of Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations, p. 39.

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

Observer, December 17, 1989, p. 46.

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.

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

Voice Literary Supplement, August, 1989, p. 19.

Washington Post Book World, February 24, 1991, p. 8; October 29, 1991, p. 8.

ONLINE

Howard Waldrop's 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/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers/waldrop.html/ (April 8, 2003), Bjorn E. Lundin, "Howard Waldrop: A Biography" and review of Them Bones.

Strange Horizons Magazine,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."*