Things Will Never Be the Same Read online

  Table of Contents

  THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

  A HOWARD WALDROP READER

  Selected Short Fiction

  1980-2005

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  THE UGLY CHICKENS

  AFTERWORD

  FLYING SAUCER ROCK AND ROLL

  AFTERWORD

  HEIRS OF THE PERISPHERE

  AFTERWORD

  THE LIONS ARE ASLEEP THIS NIGHT

  AFTERWORD

  NIGHT OF THE COOTERS

  AFTERWORD

  DO YA, DO YA, WANNA DANCE?

  AFTERWORD

  WILD, WILD HORSES

  AFTERWORD

  FRENCH SCENES

  AFTERWORD

  HOUSEHOLD WORDS; OR, THE POWERS-THAT-BE

  AFTERWORD

  THE SAWING BOYS

  AFTERWORD

  HEART OF WHITENESSE

  AFTERWORD

  MR. GOOBER’S SHOW

  AFTERWORD

  US

  AFTERWORD

  THE DYNASTERS

  AFTERWORD

  CALLING YOUR NAME

  AFTERWORD

  THE KING OF WHERE-I-GO

  AFTERWORD

  Howard Waldrop titles available from Small Beer Press

  THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

  A HOWARD WALDROP READER

  Selected Short Fiction

  1980-2005

  Small Beer Press

  Easthampton, MA

  THINGS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME: A HOWARD WALDROP READER Copyright © 2008 Howard Waldrop. All Rights Reserved.

  Cover Photo of Waldrop Life Mask © Ellen Datlow / Photo of Grand Canyon © Robert T. Garcia. All Rights Reserved. Life Mask created by Doug Potter.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written consent from both the authors and copyright holder, except by a reviewer who may want to quote brief passages in review.

  Ebook edition published by

  Small Beer Press

  150 Pleasant St., #306

  Easthampton, MA 01027

  www.smallbeerpress.com

  www.weightlessbooks.com

  Print edition published by

  Old Earth Books

  PO Box 19951

  Baltimore, Maryland 21211

  www.oldearthbooks.com

  Print Edition Design by Robert T. Garcia / Garcia Publishing Services

  919 Tappan Street, Woodstock, Illinois 60098

  www.gpsdesign.net

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61873-079-4

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-882968-35-0

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-882968-36-7

  A companion volume, Other Worlds Better Lives: A Howard Waldrop Reader: Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003 is also available:

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61873-080-0

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-882968-37-4

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-882968-38-1

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  “The Ugly Chickens” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1980 by Terry Carr, From Universe 10, edited by Terry Carr, Doubleday & Co, 1980.

  “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1984 by Omni Publications International Ltd. From Omni, January 1985.

  “Heirs of the Perisphere” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1985 by Playboy Inc. From Playboy, July 1985.

  “The Lions Are Asleep This Night” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1986 by Omni Publications International Ltd, From Omni, August 1986.

  “Night of the Cooters” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 1987 by Omni Publications International Ltd, From Omni, April 1987.

  “Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications Inc. From Isaac Asimov’s SF Magazine, August 1988.

  “Wild, Wild Horses” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © l988 by Omni Publications International Ltd. From Omni, June 1988.

  “French Scenes” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © l988 by Howard Waldrop, From Synergy II ed. George Zebrowski, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988.

  “Household Words; or, the Powers-That-Be” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1994 by Howard Waldrop. From Amazing Stories, Winter 1994.

  “The Sawing Boys” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © l994 by Howard Waldrop, From Black Thorn, White Rose ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Morrow/Avonova 1994.

  “Heart of Whitenesse” by Howard Waldrop, Copyright © 1997 by Howard Waldrop. From New Worlds, ed. Dave Garnett, White Wolf, 1997.

  “Mr. Goober’s Show” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 1998 by Omni Publications International Ltd. From Omni Online, March 1998 and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1998.

  “US” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 1998 by Howard Waldrop and Event Horizon Web Productions Inc. From Event Horizon, November 1998.

  “The Dynasters; vol. 1: On the Downs” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 1999 by Howard Waldrop. From The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct/Nov 1999 (50th Anniversary Issue).

  “Calling Your Name” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 2003 by Howard Waldrop. From Stars: Original Stories Based On The Songs of Janis Ian. Ed by Janis Ian and Mike Resnick, DAW Books, 2003.

  “The King of Where-I-Go” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 2006 by Howard Waldrop. Published by the WSFA Press (for members of the 2005 Capclave convention) February 2006.

  Introduction and all-new story afterwords, Copyright © 2006 by Howard Waldrop.

  Once again, for Martha

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to the shattered remnants of what I laughingly refer to as my career. This is the second retrospective collection of my works (the first, Dream Factories and Radio Pictures was more specialized; it collected all my stories with a motion-picture, television or radio background from throughout my entire writing career.)

  This one, as it says, covers the shorter works published between 1980 and Right Now. (Michael Walsh of Old Earth Books swears there’ll be a second volume—the novelettes and novellas—next year, if he doesn’t lose his shirt—and shorts on this one.)

  What this started out to be was a Waldrop Sampler—I believe the approach was “8 to 10 stories, presented to the reader as choice examples of your stuff, with the promise that, if the reader liked these, they’d probably like all your stuff.” Or words to that effect.

  Well, Mike was insistent, so we started drawing up a tentative table of contents. I had two provisos (for I am, if nothing else, a Peoples’ Hero)—no more than 2 stories from Howard Who? my first collection (which Small Beer Press has just brought out in its first American paperback edition, after twenty years of being Out Of Print . . .) and no more than two from DF&RP—which Wheatland Press insists on keeping in print (unlike most of the publishers I’ve had . . .) Those were my insistences, and Mike had some of his own, and we went round and round about the contents. So Mike called in Jonathan Strahan (whom we both trust implicitly, and who was the original [Australian] publisher of my fourth collection Going Home Again) to referee.

  Well, Jonathan said we couldn’t publish a sampler without 11 more stories that were absolutely essential (and he named them.)

  We had to admit he made a lot of sense, so that the book went from being a sampler to being Selected Short Fiction or The Waldrop
Reader. (I suggested the Unportable Howard Waldrop.)

  During the talk about a further volume (novelettes and novellas) I thought we had that set in concrete, too. Then Mike said he wanted “The King of Where-I-Go” in this volume.

  “I thought all the novelettes would be in the second one,” I said.

  “I decided I wanted a Hugo nominee in the book,” Mike said.

  “Look at the table of contents,” I said “There are at least seven or eight Hugo nominees in it already.”

  “I meant one from this year.” he said.

  “Oh. Well, then . . .”

  So “The King of Where-I-Go” is the most recent story in here.

  I’ve been at it (being paid for it) for 37 years now. And the Grateful Dead had it exactly right: what a long strange trip it’s been.

  The earliest story in here was written mostly on a girlfriend’s kitchen table on Red River Street in Austin, TX early in 1979. Some were written on other kitchen tables, and desks in various hotel rooms around these United States, in England (the one time I was there) and Perth, Australia (ditto). Some were written at my own desk, in my own place. If you would have told me in 1980 that in 15 years, that would be, in George R.R. Martin’s famous mistaken notion “a plywood shack nailed to a bait shop” in the foothills of the Cascades in Washington State 40 miles from the Canadian border, I would not have believed it. And further—totally unbelievable—that eight years after that, once having been in Oz—that I would be back in Austin again, still knocking myself out, still not making any kind of a living at it . . . well, that part I would have believed, but not the Austin part . . .

  As a callow youth I thought: you start writing. It’s real hard at first. Gradually, you sell stuff: the more you write, the easier it gets.

  Wrong wrong wrong. One of the things I set out to do was to never write the same story twice—if that hasn’t happened, I’ve come as damn near it as anyone ever has (“No Brag—just Fact.” as Walter Brennan used to say.) That means the more you write, the more you have to work not to repeat yourself.

  People with long lucrative careers have made those careers writing the same story (or novel) not just twice, but four or five times. They’re doomed to have any one of the versions reprinted (“one’s as good as another”) so many times people think they’ve already read it, even if they haven’t.

  They have money, houses, health insurance. I turned 60 just before you’re reading this, and I’m still living like a grad student (which I never was) [for years my highest income was when I was a draftee in the early 1970s] and, he said proudly in these Bushite nationalistic capitalistic times, I have broken into a five figure income (think about it) exactly twice in my career . . .

  You know, $4000 just doesn’t go as far in the ’Oughts as it did in the 1970s, when $125 a month was rent anywhere in the US except NYC. . . .

  Not writing the same story twice doesn’t mean I don’t have some through-running concerns, as you’ll find out in this retro-look at what I’ve done.

  Charles Shaar Murray said in his foreword to McCauley and Newman’s In Dreams something like “I’ve thought of editing an SF rock and roll anthology but then I realized half of it would be from the Bruce Sterling-edited Mirrorshades and the other half would be by Howard Waldrop.”

  Well, yes, I’ve written some SF rock and roll stories—two of them are in here; five story titles are from rock and roll songs, whether the content is germane or not (one, lachryma Christi, is about a centaur.)

  I’ve written alternate histories back in the days before it was just another SF subgenre. Other writers used to complain: “I wrote an alternate history story and sent it to Omni, and Ellen Datlow said: “if I want a Howard Waldrop story, I’ll ask him for one.” For some reason they were complaining to me. Several alt. His. stories are in here.

  Some of the stories in here even I can’t classify—consider them stories.

  Where do you go for more?

  I’ve had 11 books published by 12 publishers (trust me), not counting reprints and foreign editions. They are all mostly gone, way out of print.

  Of the collections, right now, you can get this one; the reprint of Howard Who? (my first collection, getting its first American [trade] paperback in 20 years of waiting, from Small Beer Press); Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (all my stories concerning film, radio and TV worlds, from Wheatland Press, and, in its original incarnation, as an e-book from Electricstory.com); and Custer’s Last Jump! and Other Collaborations, like it says, the stories I did with Steven Utley, George R.R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, Leigh Kennedy, A.A. (“Al”) Jackson IV and Jake Saunders through the years, in about the same time span as that of this book, from Golden Gryphon Press.

  As for the rest—the original hardcover Howard Who? from Doubleday (1986), All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (Ursus, 1987) [The Ace paperback from 1989 was called Strange Monsters of the Recent Past], Night of the Cooters (Ursus/Zeising 1991) (and Ace pb 1992); Going Home Again (Eidolon Press, Perth Australia trade paper l997 and St.Martin’s Press hardcover 1998), and Heart of Whitenesse (Subterranean Press, 2005)—well, you’re on your own, in used bookstores, Amazon.com and mostly eBay. (The great thing about having Howard Who? back in print is that people don’t have to pay $150 for a beat-up unhinged ex-libris copy just to be able to read the stories anymore . . . Of the 4000 or so copies printed, 3000 went straight into Doubleday’s library sales program, so only about 1000 escaped for the general public to find, somehow . . .)

  There are, as we say, “fugitive pieces”out there in yellowing magazines and anthologies. A hint from Old Howard—if they’re not in one of the collections—or are not going to be in the next one, they’re probably not as up to snuff as the ones that have been collected.

  (Going Home Again has a bibliography that’s pretty complete up to 1998, or find wherever the hell my website is [I’m not on the Net, but I do a mailed-in typewritten couple of blogs that are archived at Electricstory.com and Infinitematrix.net] and get the contents of the collections.)

  I’m a Peoples’ Hero but I have some pretty hard and fast rules for myself, one of which is I don’t confuse fiction and journalism, i.e. I don’t rewrite old stories to make them like now. And if they can’t stand with the other stuff without a rewrite, they don’t get put in the collections.

  I’ll talk about this in the Afterwords to each story while I’m telling you something about the writing of them, their publishing histories, and some kind of autobiographical context. [I suffered for my art, now it’s your turn.]

  Rereading these stories, I was convinced of something I suspected long ago: I am the Avatar of the Zeitgeist; I didn’t choose to be, and it’s time someone else did it for awhile.

  I tend to write about things—I don’t know why—somewhere between three and ten years before the rest of the world gets interested in them. Like some Tyrone Slothrop (whose, as we used to say “conquests” in London in WWII, in Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, when plotted, show where the next V-2s will hit) of the ethersphere, I get nuggets of ideas, research them, write the stories, they get accepted and the magazines or anthologies pay me in cold potatoes or past-sell-date Twinkies, the stories disappear except for the occasional award or Best of the Year appearance, just another brick in my character-building (George R.R. Martin again: “if what you’ve gone through in your career is character-building, your character is taller than the Malay Towers.”)

  Some time later, some other yahoo takes the same starting place, runs with it and makes a bazillion simoleons with an inferior product (he said modestly). I don’t want to pull any punches, but read “US” here and then get a copy of Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America from last year. Or that parts of “The Ugly Chickens” have been in the news lately, 27 years on, and that somebody mentioned in it is now Governor of California, and at the time the story was written wasn’
t even an actor yet. How did I do that? I don’t know. It just happened.

  I write about something and years later, it comes true. Or, somebody makes more money than I did with it. The times are out of joint.

  It is also not true, scurrilous gossip, that I always chose the lowest markets first, to sell to. Or that I withdrew a story from a higher-paying market to sell it to a lower-paying one. (Something like that did happen once, but in Robert Silverberg’s useful shorthand phrase, it was for “complex but uninteresting reasons”.)

  But, as the old joke goes, “shag just one chicken, and for the rest of your life.”. . . So people keep telling other people I always go for low-bid every time.

  Don’t get me wrong. I like money. I can use money. I’ve never had any, so it holds a dire fascination for me. If I didn’t like money, would I have sold one of these to Playboy and many to Omni (then the highest paying magazine that took SF all the time, besides Playboy?), Omni Online and SciFi.com? Huh? Would I? Huh?

  I’ve been at this for a loooong time; I’m old, tired, beat-up and still doing it; crazy from all these years.