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No Stone Unthrown and Son of No Stone Unthrown (1977)

Writer: Jon Nelson
Jon Nelson
Sep 10
5 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

Close-up of a shattered windowpane with a hole and radiating cracks.

“There’s only one thing in the world more pompous than a SF writer who takes himself too seriously.” “Whazzat?” “A SF writer who takes herself too seriously.” —Letter to Sheryl Smith, January 2, 1976

I have heard another Lafferty reader express some unease at the way Lafferty sometimes spoke about other science fiction writers. He certainly was no flatterer. We see this side of him in No Stone Unthrown, a series of short satirical squibs aimed at writers, editors, and reviewers. It is a terrific title, with its belligerent twist on “no stone unturned.” There is also material to make some readers squirm, including jokes that poke at homosexuals and Jews.


The first thrown stone alludes to Sheryl Smith. Lafferty’s letters to her in 1976 and 1977 describe the writing, revisions, and publication delays, along with his hope that the targets would take enough offense to answer back.


On June 22, 1976, he wrote to Smith about a revised selection for Riverside Quarterly. He had added verses on Barry Malzberg, L. Sprague de Camp, and Thomas Monteleone, revised the piece on Arthur C. Clarke, and restored a stanza on Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert Heinlein with one word changed. He had pulled weaker stanzas and some attacks on reviewers and editors, lest readers take him for a “sore-head.” “Those guys did put some big bumps on my head,” he wrote, “but they’re not so sore as they were.”


This restraint had its limits. He wanted the poems available for the Kansas City convention: “If the Riverside Quarterly isn’t out with them by K.C. convention time, then how am I going to get all those people mad at me?”


The delays gave him further occasions to joke about his intentions. In February 1977, he reassured Smith that the poems “shouldn’t get me killed.” His targets might reply in doggerel in the same magazine, helping it regain acceptance. In June, he asked, “When will people finally see the real me, the valid side of me?” He followed this with another question: “How much longer can I live this nice-guy deception?”


By September 9, 1977, he was disappointed. The delay had blunted the verses, and he had come to think better of several targets. He still wanted them published “just for orneriness.” They finally appeared in the December 1977 issue of Riverside Quarterly and were later collected in Strange Skies (1988).


The only writer I have found commenting on the verses is Robert Bloch, whom Lafferty enjoyed. Bloch suggested that Lafferty might be canonized or caponized.


What follows are the poems, with notes on each.



Scanned opening page of R. A. Lafferty’s No Stone Unthrown combined with Son of No Stone Unthrown, showing its title and first satirical verses.
Lafferty’s satirical verse Smitty, introduced as a possible reference to Sheryl Smith, with explanatory notes in the surrounding article.


“Smitty” = Sheryl Smith, poetry editor of Riverside Quarterly.


“The woman tempted me” = Adam blaming Eve after the Fall, Genesis 3:12.


“When comes the time to rue it” = anticipated retaliation from the victims; possibly a mock reckoning at Judgment.


“Warped and witty” = the qualities Lafferty himself displays.


“Code name” = an ordinary nickname treated as secret identification; sets up the parade of transparent initials.



Black-and-white portrait of Philip José Farmer resting his chin on his hand.
Lafferty’s P.J.F. verse about Philip José Farmer, using fish names and literary wordplay.

Sturgeon = Theodore Sturgeon. Trout = Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut’s fictional science-fiction writer/plays on Sturgeon’s.


Farmer published Venus on the Half-Shell (1975) as Kilgore Trout.


“Ditchy water” = pornography.


“What kind of fish he” = unfinished “what kind of fish he is”; also sounds like fishy.


“Slippery dick” is my best guess:


A pale pink fish with a dark horizontal stripe swimming above a rocky bottom.


Black-and-white portrait of Gene Wolfe wearing a light jacket.
Lafferty’s G.W. verse about Gene Wolfe, with wordplay on dog heads, wolves, and Texas.


“Counting dog heads” = The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972).


“Dog heads” / “runs with” = play on Wolfe: wolf running with a pack.


“Ran him out of Texas” = Wolfe’s real Texas connections: Texas A&M and the University of Houston.


Black-and-white outdoor portrait of Barry Malzberg wearing glasses, a suit, and tie.
Lafferty’s B.M. verse about Barry Malzberg, using satirical bird imagery.


“Jive” = glib talk or nonsense; also music. “Juke” = jukebox or noisy entertainment. “Jive or juke bird” = noisy, showy literary performer. Jew pun.


“New Jersey” = Malzberg’s residence.


The original Riverside Quarterly printing adds: “Moral: he’s not all that big; he’s mostly feathers.”



Black-and-white portrait of L. Sprague de Camp wearing glasses and a suit.
Lafferty’s L.S.D.C. verse comparing L. Sprague de Camp with Colonel Sanders.

“Ancient worlds and wonders” = de Camp’s historical fiction, fantasy, and antiquarian interests


“Colonel Saunders” = Colonel Harland Sanders, Kentucky Fried Chicken.


“Vandyke” = moustache and pointed beard; named after Anthony van Dyck.


Black-and-white seated portrait of Ursula K. Le Guin.
Black-and-white portrait of Robert A. Heinlein with a mustache and open collar.
Lafferty’s paired satirical verse about Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein.

“Adult juvenilers” = writers or readers of juvenile fiction; adult pretensions; Le Guin’s Earthsea books and Heinlein’s juveniles.


“While-a-time’s ... whilers” = people whiling away time. “Uptightly” = solemn, inhibited, or excessively self-conscious.


“More mannish-writing Heinlein” / “less mannish-writing Ursula” = reciprocal insult: Le Guin supposedly more masculine than Heinlein.



Black-and-white photograph of Arthur C. Clarke standing beside large film reels.
Lafferty’s A.C.C. verse, also titled Is That You, Art?, about Arthur C. Clarke.


“Two-O-O-One” = 2001: A Space Odyssey, developed with Stanley Kubrick.


“Echo bouncer” = radar; Clarke served as an RAF radar instructor. “Heart” = its inner workings.


“Dinkum-chart” = Clarke’s “Chart of the Future” in Profiles of the Future (1962). Dinkum = genuine or authentic.


“The Devil whoops” / “It’s clever, but is it Art?” = Rudyard Kipling’s “The Conundrum of the Workshops.” “Art” = artistic achievement and Arthur.



Magazine feature titled Nickelodeon’s Naked Neo-Pro Discovery, with two photographs of Steven Utley and text by Howard Waldrop.
Lafferty’s S.U. satirical verse about Steven Utley.

Utley’s nude centerfold in Nickelodeon 1 (1975), edited by Tom Reamy and Ken Keller.


“Hung” = penis size. “Texas elephant” = extravagant boast, deflated into “mouse”; reversal of everything being bigger in Texas.


“Neos” = newcomers in fandom or the profession. “Pride of neos” = supposed champion.


“Ninth preliminee event” = boxing announcement; low on the bill, far from the main attraction.


“Preliminee” = preliminary. “Elefent” = elephant. “A propowse” = apropos



Black-and-white photograph of Harlan Ellison wearing large tinted glasses at a gathering.
Lafferty’s H.E. satirical verse about Harlan Ellison, invoking Alexander, dark glasses, and eternal youth.

Alexander = Alexander the Great, weeping because no worlds remained to conquer.


Atropos = the Fate who cuts life’s thread. Refusing her the cut = mock immortality.


“Thirty-nine forever” = Jack Benny’s permanent comic age; immortality reduced to vanity or arrested maturity. Ellison turned thirty-nine in 1973.


Lafferty’s tenth satirical verse groups several science-fiction writers under their initials and jokes about bearded authors.

Mike and Ike = Rube Goldberg’s comic-strip pair, Mike and Ike: They Look Alike.


I assume P.D.D. is P.K.D.


Four-panel Mike and Ike comic in which one lookalike sends the other to greet a hostile dog.

Black-and-white photograph of Samuel R. Delany holding an open patterned notebook.
Lafferty’s S. (C.) D. satirical verse about Samuel Chip Delany.

“C.” = Chip, his nickname.


“Sev’nty-nine and eight-C pages” = 879 pages, length of the 1975 Bantam Dhalgren. Roman C = 100.


“Sweet sucker of divergent blossoms” = oral-sex innuendo



Black-and-white outdoor portrait of Robert Silverberg with long hair and a beard.
Lafferty’s R.S. verse about Robert Silverberg, using Mephistophelean imagery.

“Magnetic less” = less charismatic. “Lower level” / “fame so high” = literary rank.


Black-and-white portrait of Thomas F. Monteleone beside bookshelves.
Lafferty’s T.F.M. satirical verse about Thomas F. Monteleone’s literary ambitions.

First novel, Seeds of Change (1975).


“Tinny drum” = noisy, thin; beating one’s own drum = self-promotion.


“Bang and boff” = strike; also have sex.

“andy offutt” = Andrew Jefferson Offutt, SF and fantasy writer who was also a pornographer; John Cleve among his pseudonyms


“Aim high!” = mock encouragement


“come / To fill the shoes” = sexual pun



Black-and-white photograph of Ben Bova holding a microphone.
Lafferty’s B.B. satirical verse about Ben Bova.

“Noble nose and noble profile” = mock praise of Bova’s appearance; Italian but looks Jewish


“Glim” = see.


“Profile/off-ile” and “gimmick/patronymic” = forced rhymes.


Off-ile/Offal = Kosher joke.


“Ben’s part of his patronymic” = Hebrew ben, “son”


Black-and-white photograph of Isaac Asimov smiling at a table beside shelves of books.
Lafferty’s I.A. verse about Isaac Asimov’s prolific writing and devoted readers.

“Cribs” = copies or borrows. “Cobbles” = assembles from available pieces. “Invents” = creates. Hacky.


Gott Selbst = German, God Himself. Joke alluding to Asimov's The Gods Themselves (1972).


Black-and-white photograph of a bespectacled man with a mustache gesturing with both hands.
Lafferty’s F.P. satirical verse about Frederik Pohl and the comic character Andy Gump.

Andy Gump = chinless, self-important protagonist of Sidney Smith’s The Gumps, begun in 1917; ambitions exceeding judgment.


Color photograph of David Gerrold wearing a convention badge and dark sweater vest.
Lafferty’s D.G. satirical verse about David Gerrold, discussed in the article’s accompanying notes.

“Fishy” = dubious. “Swishy” = effeminate, carrying the period’s anti-gay insult. “Nothing-there” = alleged lack of substance.


“Deprav-ed” = depraved given an extra syllable to rhyme with “David.” Maybe at the sexual experimentation of The Man Who Folded Himself (1973).


“But girls say” = possibly a jab at Gerrold’s comic public persona. His 1969 “The Awful Offal” presented him as handsome, virile, and pursued by women at convention


Black-and-white photograph of Poul Anderson wearing glasses and a novelty headband with stalks.
Lafferty’s P.A. verse about Poul Anderson, playing on his Danish ancestry and literary awards.

“Danegeld” = tribute paid to Danish or Viking forces. Anderson’s Danish ancestry turns his repeated awards into tribute paid to a formidable Dane. Like RAL, a conservative. Kipling’s “Dane-geld.”


Award background = Hugos for “The Queen of Air and Darkness” (1972) and “Goat Song” (1973). Lafferty won for “Eurema’s Dam” in another category in 1973.


“We’ll never catch the Danes” = mock envy of a successful rival.


“Naturally curly hair” = possibly Frieda’s refrain in Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts.


Lafferty’s satirical verse about reviewers, headed R.E.V.I.E.W.E.R.S.


Lafferty’s satirical verse about editors, headed E.D.I.T.O.R.S.

Envoi to Lafferty’s satirical verses, taking aim at self-importance and sacred cows in science fiction.


Lafferty’s R.A.L. self-satire, comparing himself to a minstrel with a broken harp and invoking Tulsa.



Bibliographical Note


First published as “No Stone Unthrown” in Riverside Quarterly, December 1977, beginning on page 265.


Collected as “No Stone Unthrown and Son of No Stone Unthrown” in Strange Skies (United Mythologies Press, 1988), beginning on page 9. The collection was limited to three hundred signed, numbered copies.


Sources: Internet Speculative Fiction Database, “No Stone Unthrown,” https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2417169; Riverside Quarterly, December 1977, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?579640; and Strange Skies, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?390469.

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