World Fantasy Award–winner Waldrop (Custer's Last Jump
) offers 10 quirky, sometimes outrageous speculative stories in this wise and funny collection, each with a lively and informative afterword. If J.D. Salinger had written SF, Holden Caulfield would have been one of the gang in "The Other Real World," a teenage view of the Cuban missile crisis with a more somber outcome than the actual one. "The Dynasters" imagines an unusual scenario in which the phony Piltdown Man (and Piltdown Woman) are real. A three-headed robot in the offbeat "Our Mortal Span" runs into trouble in a theme park called Story Book Land when he takes fairy tales too seriously. In the marvelous title story, about playwright Christopher Marlowe, "Will Shaxper" is only a bit player. "Us," a gripping tale of alternative history, explores the possibilities had Charles Lindbergh Jr. lived. Waldrop is a razzle-dazzle hoot. (Apr. 25)
