01AD: "Mr. Hamadryad"

“Mr. Hamadryad” is a wonderfully weird Lafferty story. It follows a traveling coconut salesman who has three encounters with an eccentric cosmologist whose explanations of ancient monuments lead to a disturbing account of the world’s past and future. Meeting in Dongola, Oklahoma City, and Easter Island, the two figures discuss fallen races, faith that moves mountains, and, a topic that Lafferty explored quite a few times, the approaching replacement of our muddled human world by something different. This time the something is orderly yet immeasurably cruel. We also learn about the one place on earth God cannot see because it hides in the shadow of his thumb.

Over the past few months, I’ve made several dramatized audio versions of Lafferty’s stories to listen to on the drive to work. I thought I’d share some of them here. Here is the first. For some reason, Satie’s Gnossienne No. 1 really complements the strangeness of the story, at least to my taste.