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 postfiguration machinery of the novel

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