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

But the synthetic Trislan was not a remembering metal. What did it have to remember? It had just been born. It was not a talking stone. It was not the Philosopher’s Stone, nor the Alchemist’s Stone, nor the Touchstone by which all things could be tested, not the King’s Stone that would cure almost all diseases and deficiencies. It hadn't the knack of inculcating sanity, piety, rectitude, good humor, and happiness. And the owners of the small totalities from the fractured ston

“It was like an old Puca comedy: one person falls into the quicksand, drags another in after him, then a third, then a fourth—until they all vanish to their deaths. Who could help laughing at a thing like that, especially when the actors were not Puca themselves but had been given parts in a play that was real?” The Reefs of Earth (1968) Reading large chunks of Lafferty is anything but straightforward. It’s not just that his thinking is wildly inventive, sharp, and lateral—i