The Short Story Collections

Prompted by a question Chris Merrick asked on East of Laughter, I’ve been cataloguing the changes made when moving Lafferty's short stories from their original publications into his collected editions. Unsurprisingly, there are small cuts, a large number of accidentals, and surprising additions and clarifications. I’ll keep high-level summaries of these changes in this post as I track them, one collection at a time.

Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970):

Reprints. House style changes.

Strange Doings (1972):

Reprints. House style changes.

Golden Gate and Other Stories (1982):

Reprints. "Sky" unrevised. House style changes.

Ringing Changes (1984):

A few of the stories are worth reading in both versions. "Old Halloweens on the Guna Slopes" is the one major overhaul. Other differences are comparatively light, although "And Read the Flesh Between the Lines" has different endings. The capitalization of “Earth” in the Ringing Changes version of "Sky" begins partway through the story and is a noteworthy change. However, I wonder if it wasn’t already capitalized in the original manuscript; it's such a superior choice. The earlier Golden Gate (1982) collection follows the original typography.

There are a few amusing accidentals (among hundreds that aren’t really worth noting), the most notable being the difference between “nasty laughter” and “vasty laughter.” "Among the Hairy Earthmen" in Ringing Changes has the correction; the original publication has the contextually nonsensical "nasty laughter."

One significant, if minor, persistent change is Lafferty’s correction regarding Australopithecus, which was initially a species in the Austro stories. In later versions, this is changed to genus to match its taxonomic category. I’m curious whether Lafferty caught this himself or if someone pointed it out to him, and whether that is why it becomes something of a running joke in the The Men Who Knew Everything stories.

On this point, if you are reading the fan compilation of the story in The Man Who Told Tales, don't assume that you have the final edit.

From Ringing Changes, which gets the genus thing right:

"Roy Mega was a young man of the genus Genius who worked for Barnaby Sheen at his lab. He was from a downtown family. Austro was a still younger man of the genus Australopithecus who also worked for Barnaby in his house and at his lab. He was from the Guna Slopes in Africa."

From The Man Who Talled Tales:

"Roy Mega was a young man of the species Genius who worked for Barnaby Sheen at his lab. He was from a downtown family. Austro was a still younger man of the species Australopithecus who also worked for Barnaby—in his house and at his lab. He was from the Guna Slopes in Africa."