A Better World's in Birth!
A chapbook.
It's 1876, twenty-three years after the executions of the Peoples' Revolutionary leaders Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Richard Wagner — and spectres in the guise of these three men are haunting Communist Europe, specifically the city of Dresden. Officer Rienzi, from the Peoples' Department for Security, is called in to investigate. Are these spectres truly ghosts of the Revolution's leaders? Or is there a larger conspiracy afoot? And if a conspiracy, does it involve Comrade Leader Eisenmann, who became head of the Peoples' Federated States of Europe following the death of Wagner?
With A Better World's in Birth!, author Howard Waldrop has skillfully crafted another of his trademark alternate history stories, this one about the peoples' revolutionary leader (and German composer) Richard Wagner. More than 10,000 words of pure Waldrop. In the Afterword, the author details the story behind this story that was twenty years in the making. Each copy is signed and numbered by the author on the limitation page.
With scintillating wraparound cover art by artist Nicholas Jainschigg.
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Howard Waldrop
Howard Waldrop was born in Mississippi in 1946 and has lived most of his life in Texas except for about six years when he lived along the Stillaguamish River in Washington state. He made his first professional sale in 1970. He was nominated for two Nebulas in 1977 for his stories "Custer's Last Jump" (written with Steven Utley) and "Mary Margaret Road-Grader" and has won both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards for "The Ugly Chickens" (1980).
Howard Waldrop's stories combine elements such as alternate history, American popular culture, the American South, old movies (and character actors), classical mythology, and rock 'n' roll music. His style is sometimes obscure or elliptical. The stories are often considered entertaining: Night of the Cooters is The War of the Worlds told from the perspective of a Texas sheriff (a homage to Slim Pickens); "Heirs of the Perisphere" involves robotic Disney characters waking up in the far future; "Fin de Cyclé" describes the Dreyfus affair from the perspective of bicycle enthusiasts.
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