Howard Who?: Twelve Outstanding Stories of Speculative Fiction

Although Waldrop is the author of a novel (the paperback original Them Bones, the publishers apparently feel unsure of the selling power of the Waldrop name (witness the title and subtitle). They need not worry: these 12 stories are strong enough to stand on their own. The Nebula and World Fantasy award winner ""The Ugly Chickens'' is a delightful tale about a brace of dodos that managed to survive into the 20th century, only to end up as the centerpiece of a Mississippi picnic table. Many of the other stories are also strongly rooted in history; often they have almost no plot but use history, real or reconstructed, to illuminate an idea. ``Ike at the Mike'' envisions Eisenhower as a Dixieland musician and Elvis Presley as a U.S. Senator. ``The World as We Know't'' imagines what would have happened if 18th century physicist Joseph Priestly had been right about ``phlogiston'' (answer: the total combustion of the world). And ``Heirs of the Perisphere'' parodies SF cliches by turning them into something like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. (July 18)