Dream Factories and Radio Pictures

What if the post-apocalyptic world was inherited by the android avatars of a famous duck, mouse, and dog? What if every '50s Bugarama monster-movie nightmare came true at once? What if Cloudbuster pioneers had transformed the arid American Southwest into a subtropical paradise?

What do you mean, what if? They're real, they're here, a life-giving downpour in a desert of mundanity, right from the cranium of Howard Waldrop, one of the best, most original writers in America.

For the first time, the greater part of Howard's media-related tales are brought together in one place. TV, radio, movies—they're all right here. Plus original essays by the author and a never-before-published "Major Spacer in the 21st Century," about the triumph of McCarthyism over a space-opera serial, the subsequent death of democracy, and the country's eventual second shot at freedom.

In this collection, Howard brings to life the kind of historical trivia nobody else can imagine. Oh sure, you can laud his insights into the technical and social development of our dream factories and radio pictures. But what will blow you away are his wacky ideas—the way he brings together things that you'd never imagined on the same bookshelf, much less the same page of the same story. And yet, once he lays them out, you wonder why no one else thought to see it that way—his quirkiness exposes the romance of it all better than any cinéma vérité ever could.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show—you're about to see the world in a whole new aspect ratio.