Your Mephistopheles verse reminds me that I can only see that old devil as a stereotype. When I was working in the electrical business so many years, one of our most popular lines of electricians’ tools was the MEPHISTO TOOLS, with him as an old red devil with tail and hooves. Anyhow he made the best tools around . . . they had to have been forged in Hell itself. Anybody who can make tools that good can’t be all bad. — Letter So one question that may occur to a Lafferty reade

The metamorphosis of human children into adults is a disguised sort since children look more like adults than caterpillars look like butterflies or tadpoles look like frogs. — Letter The rest of the week was filled with great expectation. Henry dreamed it out in the mornings as he sat in the cave, and in the afternoons as he sat on top of Doolen's Mountain. The appeal of a completely untrammeled existence has always been strong. It would be perfect to be no more than a pair o

“Yes. Even ourselves it would kill. That is why we have our eyes always shielded. That is also why we erect another shield: that of our ritual politeness, so that we may never forget that too intimate an encounter of our persons may be fatal.” Lafferty wrote “The Polite People of Pudibundia” early, in 1959. Gene Wolfe once said that early Lafferty is Lafferty with water, and later Lafferty is straight Lafferty. “Pudibundia” falls squarely into the first category. It is also o