Howard Waldrop

Howard Waldrop, at ConQuesT 38, 2007

Howard Waldrop is an American SF writer of mostly short stories.

Wikipedia says of him, "His style is sometimes obscure or elliptical", which is unnecessarily tentative -- a Waldrop story is a story that you either get or you don't. If you do get it, it's awesome.

Works written by Howard Waldrop include:

• "The Ugly Chickens", in which a researcher discovers that the dodo survived the extinction of the native population in the form of a flock owned by a farmer in the American backwoods. Won the Nebula Award and the World Fantasy Award.
• "Night of the Cooters", in which one of the alien war machines from H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds goes off-course and lands in Texas instead of England.
• "Ike at the Mike", in which Elvis Presley is a senator and Dwight Eisenhower a famous musician.
• "Man Mountain Gentian", the tale of the world's greatest zen sumo wrestler.

He has contributed to the Wild Cards series (he wrote "Thirty Minutes Over Broadway!", the story that set up the whole premise) and to the Turkey City Lexicon.

Howard Waldrop provides examples of the following tropes:

• The Catfish: "God's Hooks!"
• Richard Nixon the Used Car Salesman: "Ike at the Mike"
• Viewers Are Geniuses
• Zeppelins from Another World: "Custer's Last Jump"