A baker’s dozen of Waldrop’s best short stories about movie and TV.
Dream Factories and Radio Pictures collects twelve of Howard Waldrop’s movie (“dream factories”) and television (“radio pictures”) stories from his first four collections, as well as a new article and a new story.
The stories — about personalities, history, projections, alternatives, guesses, and the effects they had and keep on having as they and we evolve — are accompanied by Waldrop’s original (in every sense of the word) introductions full of “Strange But True facts uncovered while researching them.” The collection includes: “Fin de Cyclé,” “Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me,” “French Scenes,” “Heirs of the Perisphere,” “Hoover’s Men,” “Major Spacer in the 21st Century,” and more.
Table of Contents
Fin de Cyclé
Flatfeet!
Occam’s Ducks
Der Untergang des Abendlandesmenschen
Save a Place in the Lifeboat for Me
The Passing of the Western
The Effects of Alienation
All about Strange Monsters of the Recent Past
French Scenes
Heirs of the Perisphere
Interlude: A Summer Place, On the Beach, Beyond the Sea . . .
Hoover’s Men
Mr. Goober’s Show
Major Spacer in the 21st Century
Review for Howard Waldrop’s stories
“The most startling, original, and entertaining short story writer in science fiction today.”
—George R. R. Martin
“If Philip K. Dick is our homegrown Borges (as Ursula K. Le Guin once said), then Waldrop is our very American magic-realist, as imaginative and playful as early Garcia Marquez or, better yet, Italo Calvino…. Calvino once said that he was ‘known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself.’ Much the same could be said of Howard Waldrop. You never know what he’ll come up with next, but somehow it’s always a Waldrop story. Read the work of this wonderful writer, a man who has devoted his life to his art—and to fishing.”
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Waldrop subtly mutates the past, extrapolating the changes into some of the most insightful, and frequently amusing, stories being written today, in or out of the science fiction genre.”
—The Houston Post/Sun
“You want funny? Howard’s got funny. You want weird? Howard’s got weird. You want mind-bending? You’re about to get it.”
—Cory Doctorow
“It always feels like Christmas when a new Howard Waldrop collection arrives.”
—Connie Willis
“There’s no better writer alive than Howard Waldrop.”
—Tim Powers
Cover & Edition History
This collection was originally published as a trade paperback by Wheatland Press and as an ebook by Electric Story. The Electric Story edition cover used here is by Cory and Catska Ench.
About the Author
Howard Waldrop, born in Mississippi and now living in Austin, Texas, is an American iconoclast. His highly original books include Them Bones and Readercon Award-winner A Dozen Tough Jobs, and the collections Howard Who?, All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, Locus Award-winner Night of the Cooters, Other Worlds, Better Lives, and Things Will Never Be the Same. He won the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for his novelette “The Ugly Chickens.” In 2021 Waldrop was awarded the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award.