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Custer's Last Jump |
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n the manner of Harlan Ellison's Partners in Wonder (1971) and Gardner Dozois' Slow Dancing Through Time (1990), this volume collects eight collaborations perpetrated by the erudite and gonzo Howard Waldrop and six fellow co-conspirators. In addition, there are introductions by Waldrop, afterwords by his partners-in-entertainment, and a couple of essays by Waldrop on the general practice of such synergistic writing.
The first piece, "One Horse Town," finds Leigh Kennedy and Waldrop braiding three threads together in a kind of timeslip fantasy. In one thread, we witness the sack of Troy; the second finds a young Homer wandering the very ruins he will later eulogize; and the third thread discloses famed archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann as he makes his momentous modern discovery of the fabled city. The title story is the first of three composed with Steven Utley. An alternate-worlds tale fashioned as a historical document, this piece reveals how Gen. Custer led his paratroopers into an ambush by the dreaded Sioux fighter-pilot squadron commanded by Crazy Horse. Buddy Saunders helps with "A Voice and Bitter Weeping," the novella later expanded into The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 (1974), which limns a battle among Israeli armor and Texas rebels, after our world is shattered by the Third World War.
George R.R. Martin weighs in with "The Men of Greywater Station," wherein a small party of scientists on a world where a sentient killer fungus reigns must do battle with fellow humans perverted to the alien cause. Utley pops up for the second time with "Willow Beeman." The last man on Earth exists as an irritating germ of hatred for all other creatures—til he finds that he is more than a man. In "The Latter Days of the Law," Bruce Sterling aids Waldrop in exploring the mannered realm of ancient Japan, when their protagonist must solve the mystery of a missing prince.
"Sun's Up!" finds A.A. Jackson detailing the plight of a sentient ship dispatched to record the supernova that will kill it—and how the threat of extinction may motivate even a crystal brain to try to survive. Finally, the third Utley-Waldrop effort rounds out the volume: "Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole" pastiches a number of authors, from Verne to Burroughs, from Lovecraft to Melville, as we follow the adventures of Frankenstein's monster at the Earth's core.
Stories greater than the sum of their parts
This volume represents the culmination of a 30-year goal by the award-winning, talented, irreproducible—yet still inexplicably under-recognized—author Howard Waldrop, to preserve all his collaborations in a single package. By withholding these stories from earlier collections, he's insured the creation of a valuable book that not only provides plenty of pure, fresh entertainment, but which also functions as a kind of "true history" of the decades in question—or at least a subset thereof. Waldrop's native state of Texas was a hotbed of young SF writers during the '70s and '80s, and his association with these luminaries, their triumphs and failures, dreams and ambitions, makes for fine extra-fictional reading.
The stories themselves do not fail to intrigue and reward. From the Borges-like "Custer's Last Jump" to the historical-detective hybrid of "Latter Days," we see Waldrop & Company pushing to achieve something different with every outing. Yet each narrative stands on its own merits, without reference to the overall framework that today encases them. True, some are better than their companions. The Martin collaboration strikes me as the least exciting, a close-to-stereotypical adventure tale out of Planet Stories. The Saunders as well reads too much like a David Drake shoot-'em-up to fully convey Waldrop's quintessential qualities of off-kilter extrapolation blended with a deep, humble humanity. (Although its descriptions of desert warfare amid civilians has an uncanny resonance with current events.) On the other hand, my two favorite stories turned out to be not the more famous ones ("Custer," "Pit") that I already knew, but the short "Sun's Up!", which reads as if Larry Niven or Vernor Vinge wrote it, and the Laffertyesque "Willow Beeman." This former, a fast-paced account of an AI trying to rescue itself, actually brought a tear to my eye; while the latter, about the lovesick travails of a man who fancies himself "a large, hairless dog," provoked constant laughter.
And of course, to those who know Waldrop's solo work, the chance to study the atypical fusions of these various talents is a prime allure. Endless reader speculation as to who wrote what will be either undermined or supported by Waldrop's disclosures, giving the reader insights into how mysterious such joint creativity is.
As Waldrop declares, in tales of these sorts, "One plus one doesn't always equal two," but rather "1 = 1 = 2.147." This book, therefore, is really more than twice your money's worth!
As always, Golden Gryphon's excellent production values and supreme attention to details (consider the little author thumbnail photos accompanying the afterwords) make this book not only essential reading but eminently collectible as well. — Paul
Also in this issue: Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson
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