“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

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

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

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

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

El Morro in 1868 We will not record what he carved, as he has already done so, and besides, as we said, it was too stilted and stylish. But yet like all the other marks it was capable of variant and fuller translation. Lafferty’s short story “The Cliff Climbers” seems to have been inspired by El Morro National Monument in western New Mexico. It is a massive sandstone bluff, rising some two hundred feet from the high desert floor like a spire. Because of a reliable waterhole

You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late, But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate. Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night. — Sarah Williams, “The Old Astronomer to His Pupil” “Tell me when I'm dead,” High Rider mumbled. The girl hammered the two stalks into his eyes. Bam! Bam! “You're dead now,” she said. “This part is fun. Stars for th

Both Oliver and the shell had these deep, black, shiny eyes that were either mockingly lively or completely dead — with such shiny, black things it was hard to say which. Men have become the tools of their tools. — Henry David Thoreau Lafferty seems to have liked the idea of shells being communication devices. This is most evident in today’s short story and in his novel Sindbad: The 13th Voyage . They share a pattern. In each, shells are deceptive (at least in appearance) com

“In Outraged Stone." This is the stubborn refusal to accept that there is no transcendence, that there is no ultimate reality. When they try to tell you that you are only an artifact in a collection, that you are not alive, that you have never been alive, that is the time to get mad ”— "Introduction," Ringing Changes (1984) And the five young mind-scientists from Earth. Five? Not six? Christopher, George. Philip, Bonta, Helen,Margaret. Do they not come to six? No. There

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. — Psalm 1:1–3 “Scorner’s Seat” is a pungent, funky slice of Lafferty—a story full of algae and sewer stench. It grew out of his correspondenc

I refrain from writing "The End" here. It must not end. — "The Day After the World Ended" “C’mon, Justin,” came an ankle-high voice from a small lady, with the red-thread or fairy mark on her throat and with a Jewel-Bird egg in her navel. “These illuminated people get mighty murderous if you don't use their brand of light. They'll kill you. Let's go to the thirteenth. C’mon.” Today I want to look at Lafferty’s “The Emperor’s Shoestrings,” a fun story that doesn’t get much att

“The berserks speak of light as though it were white or golden and as though it were singular. Apparently they cannot even see the shattered and dynamic psychedelic lights nor even the kaleidoscopic psychedelic sun. And the berserks, the marching virgins, are serious in their madness.” Only at first glance. In reality he had the plastic smooth, primordial, unfinished look of a typhonian. He could still bemolded into anything. But the noise of him and of his apparatus! Most re