But the lie had to be a good one, because if your lie is badly done it makes everyone feel wretched, liar and lied-to alike plunged into the deepest lackadaisy, and everyone just feels like going into the other room and drinking a glass of water, or whatever is available there, whereas if you can lie really well then get dynamite results, 35 percent report increased intellectual understanding, awareness, insight, 40 percent report more tolerance, acceptance of others, liking

Lafferty is pretty divisive among readers, probably more so today than half a century ago: either you’re a fan of his stuff or you ain’t. I’m not a fan myself, really, but I’ll try anything once (or even twice). In the case of Lafferty it’s mainly because he’s Quirky™ that he has a love-him-or-hate-him reputation, although this same quirkiness also threw him into the midst of the New Wave, despite being politically and socially conservative and also already middle-aged, being

One question in Lafferty’s thinking about the end of contingent worlds is how to measure a life against the world’s. Everyone grows older and sees worlds fade. That is, anyone who is lucky enough to live long enough to experience that kind of loss. Lafferty certainly went through it. He was probably haunted by this more than most people (I think) because his father was so old when he was born, and he was the baby of the family. His grandparents were a century older than he. H

"No, my books don't stay in print very long, and so they are hard to find. All books go out of print quickly unless they are pretty solid sellers. My only books that get reissued are Past Master , Nine Hundred Grandmothers , and The Reefs of Earth. I've had sixteen novels published and over two hundred short stories, but you'd be lucky to find even one item of mine just walking into a book store." Short note on something fun. Charles Scribner’s Sons published Lafferty’s Does

“Mad Man” could stand as an emblem of Lafferty’s work in the minds of many readers, even if it is not the story they first think of when they think of him. It is classic, quirky, light-seeming 1960s science fantasy, full of Lafferty’s humor and style. Read by itself, it is really fun. Read against the whole of his work, however, it becomes a fascinating story, especially for anyone interested in Lafferty’s developing thoughts about the relation between machines and human pers

John Gillan had been lying dead on his back. A great part of his tongue had been chopped off and the bare end of his nose. However what had killed him was a spike driven into the lower center of his chest. The spike was a steel footing designed as a base for a wooden post or pier such as are sometimes used for support in these ramshackle buildings. It had its floor plate, and the center spike was meant to drive into the wooden pole to secure it. The spike—much sharpened—was d

Some modern scientists feel a powerful affinity with their ancient intellectual forebears. While Anaximander’s understanding of the apeiron  may be hard to grasp, some 20th-century physicists found it a helpful concept. In the 1930s and 1940s, physicists worked to turn quantum mechanics (a theory of particles and their interactions) into a theory of particles and fields (i.e. quantum field theory). But they encountered difficulties, as attempts to do so often led to the appea

Little c went to visit the Great Zambesi-Chartel in his cell. “It is time we had a talk,” he said. “No, no, it's too late for talk,” said Charles Chartel. “You have disgraced us both, Charles,” said celach. “It goes very deeply when it touches me.” “I never even knew who you were, little c. You are protean and you are not at all plausible.” Advanced Lafferty. Charles Chartel is our main character, a professional magician who performs under the name the Great Zambesi. He is kn

Goethe's "Erlkönig" (1782) is a classic of weird poetry. It tells a story about a father riding through the night with his child. The child believes he is being lured away by the supernatural Erlking. The poem has two obvious readings: on one, the child is seeing a real supernatural presence; on another, he may just be sick, fevered, frightened, and dying while the father keeps explaining everything away as fog, rustling leaves, and wind. The child is having a visionary exper

Dotty resolved to become the foremost Galveston-style piano player in the world. There are those who say that she became just that. She was good, very good, possibly the best. But that was some years after this first period of her return. — Dotty A twelve-year-old girl, a cripple, the daughter of the proprietor, was playing the piano. It was not for some time, due to the primacy of other matters, that Moysha realized that she was playing atrociously. Then he attempted to corr

We will not lie to you. This is a do-it-yourself thriller or nightmare. Its present order is only the way it comes in the box. Arrange it as you will. — "Promantia , "  The Devil is Dead (1971) This post is meant as a shortcut into the heart of Lafferty's work if you are new to Lafferty. To begin, I want to distinguish between two very different things: canonical Lafferty and your Lafferty. Everyone who reads Lafferty has to assemble their own sense of him. Obviously, all wri

The world's a blast (Ka-whoosh! Ka-whish!) With healthy soul and belly, And all the skies are full of fish, And all the fish are smelly. Charles Fort’s Super-Sargasso Sea comes up on the blog from time to time. Judging by the number of variations Lafferty gave the idea, he loved it. Oceans, seas, rivers, springs, and other waterways are a major part of his corpus. He uses them to write about time, the unconscious, and the suprahistorical. Yet there are the twists. For instan

When the Abebaios Block (the Hesitation Block) had been removed from most human minds (usually by simple childhood metasurgery), people began to make decisions faster, and often better. The "Block" had been a mental stutter. When it was understood what it was, and that it had no useful function, it was done away with. And individuals sharpened up as if they had been gone over by a honing stone. Future readers are lucky that so much of Lafferty’s writing process survives, thou

For anyone else who enjoys this sort of thing, here are some of Lafferty’s original titles: "Pani People" became "Pani Planet." "Rangle Dang Kaloof" became "Rang Dang Kaloof" on republication “Glaciation” became “Day of the Glacier” "Is He a Wreck?" became “Adam Had Three Brothers” "And There Confuse" became "Special Condition in Summit Street" "Blood Off a Knife" became " Enfants Terribles " " Mater Inventorum " became "Eurema’s Dam" " Saecula Saeculorum " became "Been a Lon

“Monitors were set up, and their capacity calculated. It was very wide, but not infinite. All credible impressions, projections, motifs, sensories, theories, and cogitations were catalogued. They were revised over a long period, added to as early randoms appeared, and put into final clarified form. Then the door was closed and nothing else could be added.” Lafferty wrote the unpublished dystopian short story “Vestige” in 1963, between two of his strong stories, “Pani Planet”

“I am like that hard-luck guy in the funny-paper or Job in the Bible.” Advanced Lafferty today. I will first run through the plot so that those who want only that can stop. "Narrow Valley" has about three-quarters of a century in it. In 1893, after being assigned a 160-acre plot of land subject to taxation, there was a Pawnee Indian named Clarence Big-Saddle. Big-Saddle performs a makeshift spell using substituted ingredients and an incorrect magic word. Yet the ritual alters

“But on the third hand, and often to the exasperation of critics, the writer usually knows what is wrong or right with a story better than a critic does.” — Letter The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. — P. G. Wodehouse To start a fight with someone who loves Chesterton, say that Chesterton was an alcoholic. Though it is in poor taste to mention, one of the qualities Lafferty

“Well, I started writing everything. I wrote a Saturday Evening Post  story and an American Magazine  story and a Collier’s  story, and some sort of a western story, and science fiction and mystery stories. I sent them around. The science fiction story sold and the others didn’t, so after several repetitions then, I just wrote science fiction. It took me about a year before I was selling.” —1983 interview with Schweitzer Andrew Ferguson has already noted the most important fa

They wrote the story on a column, And on the Great Church Window painted The same, to make the world acquainted How their children were stolen away; And there it stands to this very day . . . So, Willy, let you and me be wipers Of scores out with all men — especially pipers: And, whether they pipe us from rats or from mice, If we've promised them aught, let us keep our promise. — Robert Browning, The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1842)      “It's Gabriel's horn!” John Michael Anwal