Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations [Hardcover]

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.

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

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 archeological 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 postnuclear 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. Each story features a riotously funny introduction by Waldrop and an afterword by the coauthor.

Collaborators include Leigh Kennedy, George R. R. Martin, Jake "Buddy" Saunders, Bruce Sterling, and Steven Utley

Howard Waldrop is a winner of the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award. He is the author of Going Home Again, Night of the Cooters, and All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past. His stories have appeared in numerous editions of The Year's Best Science Fiction annual collections. He lives in Fort Worth, Texas.