Lafferty's Planets: An Axilological Orrery

Some notes on Lafferty's planets, especially for those new to Lafferty.

As a kid, I loved the idea of Heinlein’s Future History, Poul Anderson’s Technic Civilization, and Niven’s Known Space. Lafferty won't give you anything like that. More often than not, his planets are hyper-concentrated ideas taken to their logical and hyperbolic extremes, a kind of planetary monomania. Each world is its central concept: Pudibundia is Politeness so absolute it becomes dangerous; Skandia is Overpopulation; Bellota is Cosmic Joke; Paleder World is Pseudo-Perfection as a Dead End; and so on. This is closer to the parade of emblems one finds in The Faerie Queene than to the Instrumentality of Mankind.

At some point, Lafferty decided to patch together a universe—one that, to my eye, first really comes together in his story "World Abounding" (1971)—building it up from what he had already written and from the synthesis of human mythology, folklore, and theology that was always his stock-in-trade. His planets are chunks of what has been called the cauldron of story. The inhabitants of Analos are the original gargoyles, and the giants on Lamos are, basically, Laestrygonians. Lafferty’s version of planetary romance is to reimagine the Garden of Eden as a con job on the un-catechized. The result is that his planets are allegorical nodes, and his universe is a moral orrery.

How unsurprising, then, that the laws governing that orrery are metaphysical and psychological. Reality itself can be subjectively conditioned, as on Aeaea or Robinsonnade, or puzzlingly undecidable, as on Bellota. Wherever you are in this universe, conceptual principles will be governing you: Floating Justice, the Doomsday Equation, Phelan’s Corollary, and so on.

In Lafferty’s approach to planetary science fiction, there isn't much concern for seamless canon. As in all his work, there are multiple, surging fronts of reality, overlapping, diverging, cross-pressuring, and contradicting one another. At the center of this inventiveness is a constant variable: Earth, an ambiguous anchor. It is failed first chance, the cosmic prison of evil (Pandora World, Hell Planet), the meanest of worlds and source of sickness, the backward baseline against which all others are measured, for all of them are schizo-gashes of earth.

May there be more inhabited worlds than one? Whet not your knives at me, people! You thought that the question was answered forever in the affirmative, did you? And if one does not give the required affirmative answer to the Establishment, that is the end of him? We will see. — “More Worlds Than One?” (1979)

Celestial Body	Classification	System/Sun	Key Features
Gaea (Earth, World, Old Earth)	Habitable Planet	Sol System (Sol)	Baseline for human biology, site of Skandia Visitation, target of Aratean Dispersal. Origin of colonists on Robinsonnade. Home of rare snake species Celebes Caledoniscopia.
Selkirk System (The Asteroid Islands of Selkirk)	Planetary System	Selkirk System (Selkirk Sun)	System containing forty-seven Earth-type planets in a narrow belt. Way-station where colonists are filtered for superstitious beliefs before being sent to Further Worlds. Planets named after secular liberal figures (Nietzsche, Darwin, Truman, Yellow Dog).
Robinsonnade (The Forty-seventh Island)	Habitable Planet / Asteroid	Selkirk System (Selkirk Sun)	One of the forty-seven island planets. Colonized 20 Earth-years ago by four families to create a colony free of superstition. Deemed "tainted" and quarantined. Prone to strange manifestations (mirages, bi-location, alien snakes, Shadow-Man).
Puca Home World	Habitable Planet	Unknown	Unnamed strange planet from which the Puca originate. Geography consists of inextricably mixed land and water, with endless caves.
Puni Planet	Habitable Planet	Unknown	Rich but undeveloped world inhabited by the Puni, a technologically primitive (stone/glass age) but highly intelligent and treacherous species. Master mimics capable of perfectly impersonating humans.
Hippodamia	Asteroid-Station	Unknown	Undistinguished asteroid-station. Features a dangerous "compensating dome"—an intelligent, inescapable trap causing victims to die of exertion or heart failure. Inhabited by hog-fat creature named Porcellus.
Thieving Bear Planet	Habitable Planet	Unknown	Post-spinning, ecologically serene planet with strange effect forcing visitors to record falsehoods in their logs. Inhabited by Thieving Bears (Ursus furfificus), giant pack rats that feed on physical and mental substance of visitors. Haunted by ghosts during "electric nights."
Kentauron Mikron	Habitable Planet	Proxima System (Orion Sun)	Sindbad's home world. Known as "Melody World," famous for its "wisey air" and exporting potent anti-depressant drugs.
Camiroi	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Most advanced of the four "human worlds," with a hyper-advanced, rigorous education system and extremely fluid legal and political structure.
Astrobe	Habitable Planet	Proxima System (Orion Sun)	Mankind's "third chance." An opulent, golden urban world with vast cities and blighted slums. Astrobe apples are part of traditional explorer's meal.
Dahae (Paleder World)	Habitable Planet	Proxima System (Orion Sun)	Also known as Paleder World. Adult inhabitants are "post-conscious," living in passionless perfection. Creates psychic imbalance where their children become "monstrous," telepathic beings manifesting deadly illusions.
Skandia	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Homeworld of the Skandian, a species obsessed with extreme overpopulation and fertility.
Pulibundia	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Homeworld of the Puli, metamorphic shapeshifters whose direct gaze is lethal.
Analos	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Homeworld of the Analoi, a gargoyle-like species that feigns post-human perfection but secretly maintains savage rituals, including cannibalism.
Proseritus	Habitable Asteroid	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Homeworld of the biologically immortal Proseritae, who shrink over millennia into living dolls.
Paravata	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	High-gravity world where the larval Oqvata can only become the elite Itogha through a ritual hunt, one of the 76 deficient worlds.
Shelni Planet	Habitable Planet	Alpha System (Sun Alpha)	Homeworld of the Shelni, a gentle, goblin-like species harvested for canned food; described as a world for harmony and beauty.
Emporion	Habitable Planet	Beta System (Sun Beta)	An "inelegant" Trader Planet characterized as having no law.
Apateon	Habitable Planet	Beta System (Sun Beta)	An inelegant Trader Planet characterized as having no ethics. Home world of the genetic engineer Griggles Swing.
Klepsis	Habitable Planet	Beta System (Sun Beta)	Inelegant Trader Planet governed by Covenanted Piracy, with a freshwater ocean. Famously has "no history" and is the location of the "tertiary focus" of the Doomsday Equation.
Aphthnonia	Habitable Planet	Beta System (Sun Beta)	The Hasty Planet with hyper-accelerated life cycles and "terminal cultures." Known for impudent artists.
Bellota	Habitable Planet	Beta System (Sun Beta)	A midget world created as a joke by its sole major inhabitant, the telepathic and temperamental creator-being known as Snuffles. Has anomalous phyla. a burlesque ecology.
Aranea	Planet-sized Asteroid	Creycon Belt (Sun Beta)	Homeworld of dodecaped spiders who force visitors into a metamorphosis via cocooning.
Various Minor Worlds	Various	Various	Includes: Tarshish, Shining World, Wallenda World, Rouletteunwelt, Krastron-Kosmos, Caroll's Planet, Lotophage, Lemos, Strenesca, Polyphemis, Arsena, Yellow Dog, Hellpepper Planet, Sad Dog Planet, Calden Trelast, Nine Worlds, Apateon, Womboggle World, Fleuvre World, Ghar, New Dakota, Nine Sky Gelfporte, Peluria, Di Carissimus, Mars, Jupiter, Callisto, Orpheus, Bandicoot, Priestly Planet, Areostor, New Shanghai, Hokey Planet, Far Tortugas, Pirate-Emirate Asteroids, Hound Dog Hulk, Beggars' Choice, Delphinia, Dobson's World, Geloiopeia, Horner's Corner, Kolokythokephale, New Shem, Ragdale, 5BOK394, Merowter, McStonella, Leucite, Debter's Hole, Barbary, Suzuki-Mi, Stoker's teals, Wrack World, Ganymede.

Cosmological Principles

Principle	Description
The Particular Universe (The 17-World Construct)	The humanly inhabited universe is an unstable, closed system described as a kinetic three-dimensional ellipse containing four suns (Sol, Proxima, Alpha, Beta) and seventeen habitable worlds. The Doomsday Equation threatens its existence.
The Selkirk System (The 47 Asteroid Islands)	A system of forty-seven Earth-type planets orbiting the Selkirk Sun. Functions as a quarantine and filtering zone for colonists, weeding out those with superstitious beliefs before they can proceed to Further Worlds. Planets like Robinsonnade that fail this purge are left marooned.
Universal Immortality	The discovery of a cure for mortality which was found to be a simple disease. This event ushered in the "after-life" and prompted the creation of bureaus to construct eternal Heavens and Hells.
Floating Justice	The ethical equivalent of geological isostasis. A principle of cosmic rebalancing where every inequity is eventually corrected. Its final tenet states that "the meanest man of all the worlds will possess the ultimate treasure of the worlds."
Post-Consciousness & Psychic Imbalance	A state achieved by a hyper-advanced race (Paleder/Dahae) that has evolved beyond consciousness. This creates a "kick-back" where all the cast-off psychic energy is inherited by their children, who then manifest this as deadly psychic storms and hyper-realistic illusions.
The Cycle of Dying Worlds	A theory that worlds have a finite span and die periodically. Rebirth is not guaranteed and requires a 'transcendent yeast'—a simple chemical psychic catalyst . . . to be added to the mass of the dead world.
Multiple Realities & Skylarking	The universe contains multiple superimposed realities. The perceived world is dependent on the reality one accepts. 'Skylarking' is a form of subjective/psychic travel used to explore these realities and other worlds.
Dark Companions & Planetary Constancy	The theory that every world has a 'Dark Companion' or anti-world. This is related to the Law of Planetary Constancy, which states that all worlds are approximately equal in potential.
Phelan's Corollary / Law of Levity	A heretical doctrine about field forces. It posits a 'law of levity' that can supersede gravity, explaining the anomalous gravity on small bodies like Kentron-Kosmos and Bellota.