A short post on a curiosity. Lafferty wrote a sequel to “Quiz Ship Loose” that has never been published. The work survives in an intermediate stage. His handwritten notes and a complete typed version exist, though he never polished it. The story is typed on lined notebook paper, a sure sign of a first-typed draft. Had Lafferty wanted to save the story, he would have next typed it out on carbons. For whatever reason, he abandoned it. In “Hooligs,” we again meet the crew of Qu

“But if I want to murder somebody, will it really be the best plan to make sure I'm alone with him?” Lord Pooley's eyes recovered their frosty twinkle as he looked at the little clergyman. He only said: “If you want to murder somebody, I should advise it.” — G. K. Chesterton, “The God of the Gongs” "Seven Story Dream" (1961) centers on a delusional, self-exculpatory fantasy that recasts a murder victim as art. Two years before Lafferty wrote it, he had already written a sto

The professor looked at his watch, looked at his schedule, saw that he still had a little time before his final class, glanced at the final entry in the book, "I love you, Emily," smiled, closed the small notebook, and put it in his pocket. "Women have a satirical turn of mind," he said to his companion. "What? Are you sure?" the companion asked. "Blenheim denies it, and the evidence in Creager is doubtful. And Pfirschbaum in his monumental monogram Satire und Geschlecht has

“But we haven’t any wings, father,” Job Salto protested. “You have feathers, and feathers are certainly an intimation of wings. Some of you even have a few elbow-feathers. I will call them pinion-feathers, and perhaps your elbows will have turned into wing-pinions by tomorrow.” But Darwinism and all the denials that make it up does give silly and evil answers; and it is guilty of Mistakes of Interpretation against dozens of sciences as well as against the Word of God. — unpub

Lafferty’s ontological distinction between characters and persons is underappreciated in part because modern ideas of personhood have been shaped by mass-mediated character and by the categories of modern psychology. The modern person thinks nothing of bumping into the Narcissist or the Borderline, but would be taken aback by bumping into Vice . Daniel Otto Jack Petersen has pointed out that an interesting parallel to Lafferty’s work is the medieval dream vision. This strikes

And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. — Revelation 4:8 “And I’m on the verge of doing away with all eyes except one pair to a person,” said Mary Fat-Land. “All of them except one pair are an illusion anyhow. Let me touch my mind to that Illusion of an Exuberance of Eyes as I might touch my cigar to a child

Voltaire They had been having a hard time waking Voltaire up and keeping him awake. But, once he understood that it was one of his highest desires really being presented for him, he was able to stay awake pretty well; and he cackled and carried on like a person a hundred and fifty years younger than himself. But it takes a long time to strangle a man with entrails as slick as those were. Fourteen choruses of Grave-Stone Rock were done while it was going on, and one of those

What was it, then, that I, miserable one, so doted on in you, you theft of mine, you deed of darkness, in that sixteenth year of my age? Beautiful you were not, since you were theft. But are you anything, that so I may argue the case with you? Those pears that we stole were fair to the sight, because they were Your creation, You fairest of all, Creator of all, You good God — God, the highest good, and my true good. Those pears truly were pleasant to the sight; but it was not

“Everybody liked him except those animals, the coons, badgers, and wolverines, those animals that traditionally hate and fear dogs. Then there appeared a wolverine of genius in the neighborhood. In every species, whether wolverine or human or other, about one individual in five million will be an individual of genius. The gifted wolverine got about a hundred other wolverines to assemble. He had to be a genius because the slashing solitary wolverines are lone hunters who hate

On August 8, 1971, a book by Lafferty received a rare notice in The New York Times Book Review . The review drew attention to the heady blend of “politics, poetry, [and] magic” in The Flame Is Green and noted the bright splashes of humor threaded through its moral symbolism. Unfortunately, the final two volumes of the Cosucin tetralogy remain unpublished. Taken as a whole, the Cosucin novels constitute a major work, worthy of being set alongside Argo and Green Tree . Until

Pre-War Apartments, Tulsa, OK Q: Do you believe in the perfectibility of man, or is he a constant fool at odds with the gods of the universe, to be forever rebuffed at his attempt to rise above the madness which surrounds him? RAL: The perfectibility of “man”? I believe in the perfectibility of people—some people, possibly most people. I do not believe in the perfectibility of society, or of the world, or of “man” in the abstract. Maybe it is a madness that surrounds and r

A short note today. This is a fun purchase: an edition of the Grolier books that Hugh Lafferty bought for his son. It had a profound influence on RAL’s imagination—he said he remembered almost every word of it—and it’s still a delight to flip through. If you’re interested, you can look it up online here . Fascinating for those interested in ethno-essentiaism as Lafferty learned it. It is a window onto the world that ended.

Winding Stair Mountains, Oklahoma Reverence is the chief joy and power of life—reverence for that which is pure and bright in youth; for what is true and tried in age; for all that is gracious among the living, great among the dead, and marvelous in the powers that cannot die. — John Ruskin What's this stuff about art not supposed to be didactic? I buy you geography and arithmetic books and you chew them up and don't learn what's in them. Then I put the stuff in SF parables,

Okeene Rattlesnake Round Up, Okeene, Oklahoma Vivian was in with a loud rustle, and her footsteps like music as she started up the stair (the tone of her footfall at a frequency of 265, just above middle C, compounded with a vagrant, two harmonics, and a mute). Few men could so analyze their wives' footsteps. Everything about her was in tune, and she hummed the "Dreamer"as she ascended. May God us keep From Single vision & Newton’s sleep! — William Blake, Letter to Thomas But

In the case of the Effigy History of Music and its author, there is a correspondence and mutual clarification between creation and creator that is not to be found in the Effigy History of Mountain s, for instance. With almost any musical instrument, Karl Effigy can play out the clarifications of the statements in his History of Music . But Karl Effigy can not, to the same extent, clarify the obscurities of his History of Oceans or his History of Continental Upthrusts . And y

“I see now that she is not quite a Cloud-Nine person yet,” the space-traveler mused. “But she is a metamorphic, and she is turning into a Cloud-Nine person. If one isn't already a Cloud-Nine person, one will become such after a bit of trafficking with the Cloud-Niners. The Cloud-Niners are real, but they destroy the reality of every world they infest.” “Who are you really?” he asked them. “What is your name?” “Our name is Multitude because there are many of us,” they ans

“But others of them fabulously describe the passion and restoration of Sophia as follows: They say that she, having engaged in an impossible and impracticable attempt, brought forth an amorphous substance, such as her female nature enabled her to produce. When she looked upon it, her first feeling was one of grief, on account of the imperfection of its generation, and then of fear lest this should end her own existence. Next she lost, as it were, all command of herself, and w

Alas, we have the terminal report of him! The coded chatter gives the sighted mort of him, How out beyond the orb of Di Carissimus His sundered ship became a novanissimus. His soaring vaunt escapes the blooming ears of us, He’s gone, he’s dead, he’s dirt, he disappears from us! Be this the death of highest thrust of human all? The flaming end of bright and shining crewmen all? Destroyed? His road is run? It’s but a bend of it; Make no mistake, this only seems the end of i

No, I haven't broken my good resolution to stop writing. I finished the story Flaming Arrow on January 8, 1982. This was quite a while before November 7, 1984 (my 70th birthday) when I swore off writing. The book in which this appeared ( Magic in Ithkar #2) had its first printing in December 1985 and was copyrighted by Andre Norton and Robert Adams in 1985. — Letter, 1987 “I’m impressed by your irrationality. It’s beyond anything I ever met with in my own time. I’m impresse

“Faith Sufficient” is a late sequel to Lafferty’s 1959 short story “John Salt,” though—true to Lafferty’s crazy publication history—“John Salt” wasn’t published until 1985, two years after “Faith Sufficient.” In "John Salt," Lafferty took aim at hellfire-and-brimstone preaching and fraudulent miracle-working. In "Faith Sufficient," the target shifts a bit: the focus is religious enthusiasm, the revivalistist culture of being slain in the spirit , speaking in tongues, other th