John Klima is the editor of Electric Velocipide, the Hugo and World Fantasy Award nominated speculative fiction magazine.

Howard Who? by Howard Waldrop (Small Beer Press/Peapod Books)
This is the Small Beer Press reprinting of Waldrop's seminal story collection. It's worth the price of  admission just for "The Ugly Chickens" (a story about the dodo) alone, but you'll get a lot more than that in this book. Funny and weird and thought-provoking, reading Howard Waldrop is not like reading anyone else.

Things Will Never Be the Same by Howard Waldrop (Old Earth Books)
A collection of selected short fiction from 1980 to 2005. A lot of Howard Who? appears in this volume, plus an excellent selection of other short stories such as "Heart of Whitenesse" and "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll." What will likely happen to you after reading this book is that you'll head out to find more Waldrop fiction.

The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories by Jeffrey Ford (Golden Gryphon)
As mind-blowing as Stephen King was to a young teen, Ford's short fiction was potentially even more devastating to a thirty something. Just when I thought I was jaded and that I knew everything there was to know about short fiction, in walks Jeffrey Ford to change it all with his first short-story collection. Ford's story "Creation" still stands as one of his finest. Stories like "Exo-Skeleton Town" and "The Delicate" will impress readers as well.

The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford (Golden Gryphon)
Perhaps even stronger than The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, Empire of Ice Cream shows how Ford keeps growing and stretching as an author. Each story is more fantastical and surprising than the next. Personal favorites include "The Weight of Words," "The Empire of Ice Cream," "Coffins on the River," and "A Night in the Tropics." But, there isn't a clunker in the bunch.

The Science Fiction Century, Volume 1 edited by David G. Hartwell (Tor Books)
Hartwell has edited quite a few noteworthy anthologies, but this one is a great introduction into science fiction for a new reader, and an excellent refresher/broadener for an existing fan. It's likely that there's at least one of the 45 stories in this volume that you haven't read and will be happy to find. As the title suggests, the anthology covers 100 years of history of the science fiction genre. It's a nice impressive tome that you can dive into again and again and constantly find something new and inspiring.