Space War Blues

The basis of this book was a short story in the "Dangerous Visions" series, "Amongst the Bentfin Boomer Boys on Lil' Old New Alabama." (If I recall correctly). From what I remember from the author's introduction, this book was an experiment in "avant garde writing," which is to say, writing in different styles and voices in the vein of Mark Twain's ability to capture dialects.The storyline involves the distant future, where the South has risen again across several star systems; a war ensues against the opposing star systems who are analogous to the North. Two of the voices are shown here: the "notherners" and those of the New South, where the narratives are ordinary and in a heavy Southern drawl, respectively.The New South are short on manpower, so they combine intelligent lizzards (third voice) with bodies stitched together with remains from battles and employ a zombie ritual (don't remember why) to bring them to life.The imagery was so vivid for me, reading this when I was thirteen, that 23 years later I still remember this much. I still have a musty paperback copy back home in Cleveland somewhere (I hope). I never found any other books like this. Grab one if you ever come across it.