Saskia van Uylenburgh “I change history here and now, Saskia. I paint forgeries of things that would not exist for a generation yet, and now will never have existed.” — "Dutch Master" Doodkiststraat: A street in Amsterdam where the death-house and Dead Christ Church are located. The name literally translates to “Coffin Street,” reinforcing the chapter's focus on mortality and the blurred lines between life and death. — Half a Sky After that, Dana and Galopade were following t

Oh hang the cliffs with corpses nailed, For revel and for banger. Our enemies are here impaled In Cliff-and-Mountain-Hanger "Song of the Traitors of Tarshish" “We here are seven moral buzzards, yes. And we are up against an evil so enormous that only we evils can even see it.” Haunter of Moons and The Giant Ratchet of Sumatra were round-robin collaborations in which members of Oklahoma Science Fiction Writers (OkSFW) took turns continuing a story. OkSFW began in 1977, when C.

Comics and Lafferty make a fascinating story, given the place comics occupy in his work as both an influence on his techniques and a subject in their own right. Think of the Toonerville Trolley and its influence on “Interurban Queen,” Rocky McCrocky, the cartooning of Enniscorthy Sweeny, Dorg and cave art as cartooning, and so on. There is an alternate universe in which Lafferty’s stories get adapted during the second flourishing of horror anthology comics in the 1960s and ea

The quicksand eels will finally eat all his flesh and bones, but they cannot eat his form or his displacement. But these cranky old ko-el ghosts are the ancestors of some of us. When they kill and dismember one of our children, it may be a descendant of theirs. Cannot dead ancestors do whatever they wish with their descendants? The NFL season, my favorite time of the year, started last week, which brought to mind one of Lafferty’s great unsung works, an odd one even by Laffer

This might be a rather far-fetched analogy, but Lafferty’s style is somewhat similar to that of Seabozu, the ghost monster that appeared in episode 35 of the tokusatsu drama Ultraman (the original series), titled “Monster Graveyard” (directed by Akio Jissoji, written by Mamoru Sasaki). As anyone who has seen this episode knows, Seabozu is a monster with a grotesque appearance, with its exposed skeleton, and is known as a “ghost monster.” However, Seabozu did not appear on Ear

John Logie Baird demonstrating a Nipkow disk in 1927 It is worth preserving as a remnant of that early era when there were giants on the earth. And, if it is preserved, someday someone will gaze into the old kerosene-powered receiver and cry out in astonishment in the words of the Greatest Bard: "—what poet-race shot such Cyclopean arches at the stars?" Whoever you are, and whenever or whereever you read this first story in the book, it will be best story you will r

Works resource updated. I have turned it into the research tool I wish had existed when I began reading Lafferty. It brings together a large body of information in a searchable catalogue. You can browse Lafferty’s works, publication appearances, completion dates, reviews, variants, translations, links to cover art and full issue scans, and references to archival holdings at the University of Tulsa and the University of Iowa, from which manuscript scans may be ordered. The pro

That photo is of Knight with his friends Terry Bisson and R. A. Lafferty. In my office at the college, I keep it pinned to a corkboard. Someone once said, "Is that your dad?" Then I got to talk about Dan and RAL. Dan Knight is one of the heroes of Lafferty's publication history and one of my favorite people. I count him a dear friend. Without him, we would not have Dotty. We would not have More Than Melchisedech. We would not have many important Lafferty pieces. Knight was bu

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

"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 An

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 Long Long

“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 fact

A short post about something that does not seem to be recognized by most Lafferty fans, and that seems to me important: the place of the historical fiction in the Lafferty canon. Most people who love Lafferty love Okla Hannali, which was published by Doubleday in 1972, reprinted by Pocket Books in 1973, and later issued by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1991 as part of its American Indian Series. Lafferty was amused by this Oklahoma Press cover, writing, But the picture

I wanted to jot down a few thoughts about how I understand Lafferty’s career as a writer of novels. The best thematic interpretation along developmental lines is Daniel Otto Jack Petersen’s idea that we move from pre-apocalyptic to apocalyptic, then end with post-apocalyptic, but this shades into exceptions. Another view is Andrew Ferguson’s idea that Lafferty gets a second wind after his break following the publication of Annals of Klepsis. He has a dual-track account that e

Prompted by a question Chris Merrick asked on East of Laughter, I’ve been cataloguing the changes made when moving Lafferty's short stories from their original publications into his collected editions. Unsurprisingly, there are small cuts, a large number of accidentals, and surprising additions and clarifications. I’ll keep high-level summaries of these changes in this post as I track them, one collection at a time. Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970): Reprints. House style cha