Vietnam was unified on July 2, 1976, with the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. Because one digressio leads to another, I want to note one of Aurelia’s stranger internal crossings. Although completed in 1976, the novel already contains the Vietnam argument that Lafferty later makes explicit in Part IV of In a Green Tree, “Incidents of Travel in Flatland.” It is an instance of Lafferty allegorizing history from within the machinery of the novel itself. He doe

The Frenchman Jules Verne appeared with a blaze of novels that were all "voyages" (but all Science Fiction stories are ‘voyages’ in a sense): Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863); A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864); From The Earth To The Moon (1865); Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870); Around the World In Eighty Days (1874). Verne’s "voyage"novels were genial and pleasant and original. There was good comedy in them. As a comic writer, Verne was at least equal to

“All these things are possible. If you will worry about them, then I will cease doing it. I hate duplication.” “I will worry about them,” the bodyguard said. “It is my job to worry about them. Are you also going on a peripateticus, as Rex calls it, when Aurelia goes?” “Yes. Today. And that is all the questions that I will answer, Mr. Bodyguard.” “But I would like to know—” “Black lightning of which you felt only a sample, man! Black lightning to burn you to a cinder!” Cousin

“Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It's growing out of sour earth. And it's strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.” ― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn “I heard you talking to Herr Boch about antlers and horns. You believe that horns are more predilected to evil than antlers are, and that is the tru

“To remedy this insufficiency, I’m enclosing a little book, very informative, though only a little over six hundred pages. It’s a sort of resume of the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. You’re very well informed on all the perimeters of the subject, but your information on the center itself is very weak. I’ve given away about twenty copies of this book in the last twenty years, but only to people intelligent enough to handle it.” A post on Walter Farrell, O.P., whom Lafferty respected

Advanced Lafferty. What comes next won’t depend on it. Not much has been written about Aurelia, but of the handful of things said about it, by far the most interesting and intellectually strongest is Gregorio Montejo’s essay “Eudaimonism in R. A. Lafferty’s Aurelia,” which appeared in Feast of Laughter in 2015. Anyone who wants to read Aurelia seriously should understand its argument. As a teacher of mine used to say, firstest with the mostist criticism. Today I want to walk

“Jump, jump, jump!” they called, and others took up the cadence “Jump, jump, jump!” People came from the hills and the lake and from all the luxury cabins around there. The “with-it” people came, and the sectarians, and all of the “Kill Aurelia Now League.” Even the strong partisans of Aurelia were caught up in the moment and cried “Jump, jump, jump!” Aurelia jumped. She lept out into the golden air, and she plummeted the thirty meters to the ground, a modified plummet, for s

The only encouraging statistics I can think of is that "Believers on the average have six times as many children as atheists." — Letter Your fertility rate is pathetic. You barely double in fifty years. Your medicine, adequate in other fields, is worse than childish in this. We find that some of the nostrums peddled to your people actually impede fertility. Well, get in the Surgeon General and a few of the boys and we'll begin to correct the situation. — "Guesting Time" Laffe

There are nine basic colors: hylicon, violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and mystes. There are persons who say that there are more basic colors than these: but they confuse hues with colors, or they list non-basic colors such as the purples and magentas and the variously named non-spectral violets and reds. To such persons we can only say, "You are mistaken." There are other persons who say that there are fewer basic colors than these listed here, that the fir

“Say, this is not quite the speech I intended to give. Nobody is throwing fruit or vegetables or eggs at me. But in the Indo-China War things are not muddy. There is no possibility of American gain or advantage. There are just not any lootable assets for us in Indo-China. We do not need their rice crop, we do not need their fish crop. Times were good when we intervened in accord with our treaty promise, and it was our involvement that turned times bad for us. The enemy does n

What things a man or a world believes or disbelieves will permeate every corner and shadow and detail of life and style, will give a shape to every person and personifact and plant of that world. They will form or they will disorder, they will open or close. A world that believes in open things is at least fertile to every sort of adventure or disaster. A world that believes in a closed way will shrivel and raven and sputter out in frosty cruelty. — Audifax O’Hanlon ("Ishmael

And what if all of animated nature Be but organic Harps diversely framed, That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, At once the Soul of each, and God of all? It was another of those extraordinary enlivening events. It got them. It got Erma Planda of the golden body, and Judy Brindlesby of the sometime incredible hair. It got Lisetta Kerwin of the now shattered serenity; it got Rushmore and Hilary and Blase. Perhaps it had

It has been busy around here, with the purchasing of a new house, the packing, and the end of the academic semester and angry students, one of my jobs being to pour bureaucratic oil onto troubled water. Hence, the unusual silence on the blog. It all just happened to correspond to post 400. By my heterodox count (it includes pieces such as “Claudius and Charles”), there are 265 Lafferty short stories. At this point, I have written something about all but three of them, which m

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 up

"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

SF has never been very forward-looking. It is likely the least innovative of literatures. It has certainly never been daring, though several of its practitioners wear the ‘I am Daring’ badge hypocritically. It is a field compounded largely of patsies who can be led by nose-rings anywhere at all. — "The Case of the Moss Eaten Magician" I want to think a little about Lafferty's support for Joseph McCarthy and his refusal ever to believe that McCarthy had been wrong about commun

There came a roaring like horses in the sky. Then was the multiplex crash (God save his soul, his body is done for) of bloody torso and severed limbs falling into the room froma great height, splintering the table at which the five of them sat, breaking the room, splattering them all with blood. But the ceiling above was unbreached and unharmed and there was no point of entry. “I am not man enough even to watch it,” Buford Strange gurgled, and he slumped sideways unconscious.

“I fear I did not fully understand all that the club comprised. I had not expected a live girl.” “I am a live one all right. Sign here and we’ll get rid of the business and then get down to the business. In a few days you’ll get an invoice for me and you can mail the remittance. And any gratuity (which I am sure you will be delighted to give) I will take in cash in the morning.” “Yes, this is an interesting club. It is very piquant for them to send a live girl to talk to.” “T