Things Will Never Be the Same

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"Some of the stories in here even I can't classify--consider then stories."

—Howard Waldrop, from the introduction.

Things Will Never Be the Same is a collection of selected short stories written by Howard Waldrop from 1980 to 2005. They range from alternative histories to straight up science fiction to weird stories that can only be classified as "Waldropian."

The stories in this book are:

  • The Ugly Chickens
    • An ornithologists discovers that there might have been dodo birds living in the Deep South in the early 20th century and goes off on a quest to discover them.
  • Flying Saucer Rock and Roll
    • What really caused the New York blackout of 1965? Aliens and a doo-wop competition.
  • Heirs of the Perisphere
    • An in post-apocalyptic world, three survivors wake up: MIK, GUF, and DUN, animatronic characters from Disneyworld.
  • The Lions Are Asleep This Night
    • In an alternate Africa, a little boy writes a book.
  • Night of the Cooters
    • During The War of the Worlds, it turns out not all of the Martians landed in London. Some landed in Texas and had the unfortunate chance to meet Sheriff Bert Lindley (based on Slim Pickens).
  • Do Ya, Do Ya, Wanna Dance?
    • A high school reunion reunites a band that wanted to change the world.
  • Wild, Wild Horses
    • In ancient Rome, P. Renatus Vegetius has to help get an old friend home. The friend: Chiron, the last centaur.
  • French Scenes
    • In the future, movies won't have actors. There will only be one person with a computer. One person, trying to homage French New Wave, finds more than he asked. (Compare with Connie Willis's Remake.)
  • Household Words; or, The Powers-That-Be
    • Charles Dickens reads his most famous story to an audience...The Christmas Garland. It's a different world, but maybe not different enough.
  • The Sawing Boys
    • "The Brementown Musicians" set in the 1920s with rum runners and a music competition.
  • Heart of Whitenesse
    • Christopher Marlowe, agent for Her Majesty, is given a task: find Dr. Faustus and, if needed, kill him. (Compare with Heart of Darkness.)
  • Mr. Goober's Show
    • You sit at a bar where man tells you about his childhood, about how him and his sister found a TV set in their aunt's closet and watched a television show without sound, like an outer space travelogue, and how later, they found out that the TV set couldn't have possibly worked and how the show couldn't have possibly existed. (Compare to Candle Cove.)
  • The Dynasters
    • As Waldrop puts it, this is "the only story you will ever read about Piltdown Man (and Woman)."
  • Calling Your Name
    • A man gets electrocuted and wakes up in a world slightly different from his own, where Nixon was never elected President.
  • King of Where-I-Go
    • What would you do if you could go back in time? Franklin's sister got polio when they were children. Now they're grown up and she's been recruited in a secret facility and he's experiencing strange flashes where he finds that he's back in time, back into his own childhood.
Tropes used in Things Will Never Be the Same include:
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