But all the clocks in the city    Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you,    You cannot conquer Time. — W. H. Auden, “As I Walked Out One Evening” Often, and now more often, Vincent felt that he was touching the fingers of the secret. And always, when he came near it, it had a little bit of the smell of the Pit. “The Six Fingers of Time” is a prenucleation Lafferty fantasy that already bears on questions at the center of his imaginative project: how to think t

Thinking again about Monego's essay , which I mentioned a few days ago, and it occurred to me that one probable source for the Harvesters in Fourth Mansions  is Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human  (1953), a landmark work of mid-century science fiction. This must have occurred to others, though I haven't seen it discussed. Sturgeon’s novum reimagines evolution acting on the communal mind through Homo Gestalt , a multi-person organism formed by marginalized individuals who lea

Yes, I believe that there will be a coming of Christ, an actual physical appearance, comprising the eternal incarnation, redemption, and resurrection. So did Christ believe this and repeated it many times. It is to be believed literally, down to every jot and tittle of every letter. Those who have had visions of the Coming (the First and Second coming are non-sequential aspects of the same event and are neither first nor second), those who have had apparently authentic vision