THE FISHING AND FICTION OF HOWARD WALDROP

Howard Waldrop was a well-regarded science fiction writer and avid flyfisherman. He was a writer of alternate histories and stories so unique they’ve inspired their own adjective: Waldropian. Howard showed me how to fish during seven-plus years from 1995 to 2002, while he lived at the Oso General Store in Oso, WA, located on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River.

Born in 1947 in Mississippi, Howard lived most of his life in Texas. In 1963, at age 15, he sold his copy of The Brave and the Bold comic, which contained the first appearance of the Justice League, to George R.R. Martin (who would go on to write A Game of Thrones), for 25 cents. Thus began a lifelong friendship. Both started publishing professionally in the 1970s, winning science fiction’s most prestigious awards—Hugos, Nebulas, World Fantasy Awards—though they had contrasting career paths. Recently Martin produced several short films based on Howard’s stories, which are currently being shown at film festivals across the United States. Meanwhile, copies of that original The Brave and the Bold comic are worth five figures today.

Howard never used email or a computer and he did not own a phone while he lived in Oso. To notify me about river conditions and fishing prospects, he wrote handwritten letters, some 350 of them or so during the time we fished together. Of those, letters from October 1997 stand out to me because they encapsulate his life as a flyfisherman and writer—he caught and released some fish, missed others, reread Roderick Haig-Brown’s writing, wrote stories, got paid for his writing (often late and not enough), described his (never-written) fishing novel, and admonished me for not writing and not fishing my local waters in Seattle.

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