History is not false but true when it is put dramatically. It is not true but false when it arrives anyhow, proceeds at random like an unconsidered run of nature, and ceases unravelled without the gathering of the threads into a conclusion. — Hilaire Belloc, "The Historian" In 1955, Hollis and Carter published a volume of Hilaire Belloc’s uncollected essays under the title One Thing and Another. Lafferty was an avid reader of Belloc, so it is unlikely that he did not know the

A late-night thought. The readers I think of most often when working on Lafferty are Andrew Ferguson, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen, and Gregorio Montejo. Ferguson’s archival work is essential. His chief readerly contribution, so far, is to ask how fiction makes worlds. I think his main philosophical argument cuts off Lafferty from Catholic ontology. A subsidiary question, important to SF scholars and fans, concerns genre history; that is often where Ferguson’s readings come to r

Telez: Obviously, you know men, how evil they are. Only God is good. Cambreau: But the good in man is God, Telez. Telez: Only God is good. Only God can forgive. They stole my crucifix, Cambreau. Without it, I’m lost. I’m afraid. Cambreau: A crucifix is a piece of wood, Telez. Only a piece of wood. The miracle is not in the wood, but in the heart. — Strange Cargo (1940) Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time af