Idolatry is distinguished from Image-worship by an undue finality. It rests in the relative as though it were the Absolute, worships the creature, the image and vehicle of the Divine Spirit, as though it were that Spirit. — E. I. Watkin, The Bow in the Clouds Here is one of the more complicated clusters in the Lafferty canon: four stories, all published in 1973, that form a sequence within The Men Who Knew Everything . The ongoing Centipede Press edition chose to break them u

"I examined the four walls, the carpeted floor, and the ceiling of the room. There are only six interior sides to a regular room like mine, and if they are secure the room should be secure." " . . . my girl friend Rosemary Korff told me, ‘but now you have acquired a mind without boundaries and a personality without a center.’ So I went about fixing drinks and cheeses and taco dips for my guests . . . at my own Party Without Walls." There are so many memorable birds in Laffer

"No, no, you are no child of mine" Originally titled "The Multitudinous Grandmothers," "Nine Hundred Grandmothers" was a Lafferty favorite. Many of his longtime readers hold it in especially high regard. Most come to it early for at least two reasons: its title is unforgettable, and it gives its name to Lafferty’s most successful short-story collection. It might as well be the Jaffa Gate to his canon. Yet, contrarian that I am, I question its reception and am less smitten wit