Custer's Last Jump and Other Collaborations

A nifty little collection with mostly an alternate history flavour, with some SF thrown in as well, including the excellent Sun's Up!. Each of these stories have Waldrop writing with someone else, and each story begins with an introduction by Waldrop and ends with an afterword by his writing partner, and these are quiet entertaining, and a bit more at length than the usual sort of authorial story note. So, some added value here, as far as that goes. Even George R. R. Martin sort of admitting his team-up story just may not be too good, which I suppose a forest killing star like him shouldn't feel too unsure of himself he can admit such things. So, nice work all around on this book. Custer's Last Jump : One Horse Town - Leigh Kennedy and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : Custer's Last Jump - Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : A Voice and Bitter Weeping - Buddy Saunders and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : Men of Greywater Station - George R. R. Martin and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : Willow Beeman - Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : The Latter Days of the Law - Bruce Sterling and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : Sun's Up! - A. A. Jackson and Howard Waldrop Custer's Last Jump : Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole - Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop Trojan bones aplenty. 3.5 out of 5 Dirigible Big Horn. 4 out of 5 Israel tanks Texas. 3.5 out of 5 Spore defense dismay. 3 out of 5 Copulation extinction. 3 out of 5 Hokkaido exiles 'r us. 3.5 out of 5 AI's Orion ramjet jumpstart supernova surf return. 4.5 out of 5 Inner world exploration appropriation monster. 4 out of 5 4.5 out of 5

The stories in this collection are great, of course. Some are recently published, some have been sprung from the prison of time, and one, the long-rumored collaboration between Howard Waldrop and Bruce Sterling, has never been published previously. The title story is the one that changed the ground rules for writing alternate history. These are stories of ideas -- of complete profligacy with ideas -- of inventing forms, pushing their envelopes, and making the rest of the world sit up and take notice. Howard's collaborators are among the people who made Austin a free-fire zone of SF ideas and original stories in the Seventies and Eighties: Bruce Sterling, Steven Utley, George R. R. Martin, Leigh Kennedy, Buddy Saunders, and astrophysicist Al Jackson. Howard says it's "thirty years of the True History of SF." Since he and Saunders were in the 7th grade together, and he and Martin first started corresponding in 1963, so I'd say Howard is shorting himself a decade there, but really, who's counting?

As always, Waldrop comes through, here in collborations with some of science fiction's brightest lights. Offbeat, well-researched and thought provoking. Well worth your time.

Compiled by Howard Waldrop (a renowned writer of deftly researched alternate-history stories and winner of both the Nebula and World Fantasy awards), Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is an enthralling anthology of original short stories in which Howard Waldrop combined his talent with other skilled wordweavers such as George R. R. Martin, Bruce Sterling, and others. From a unique perspective on the saga of Troy; to a distant future in which Mankind is nearly extinct; to an alternate history when Crazy Horse uses Confederate monoplanes against Custer; Custer's Last Jump And Other Collaborations is a dazzling display of literary imagination, and a very strongly recommended read for science fiction fans enthusiasts everywhere.