R. A. Lafferty Books

This may not be the best of Lafferty's novels (that honor would probably fall to OKLA HANNALI or THE FALL OF ROME) but it's high-quality stuff, real magic. Discover the distinguishing marks of the one, real, Sindbad the Sailor, Master-Spy; find out why Scheherazade is so fond of a particular blue bottle; discover the two kinds of solution to all mathematical problems, and more... There's enough adventure and sheer fun in this one to make it a decent introduction to Lafferty, but the deeper method to the madness is still there to be found.

This may not be the best of Lafferty's novels (that honor would probably fall to OKLA HANNALI or THE FALL OF ROME) but it's high-quality stuff, real magic. Discover the distinguishing marks of the one, real, Sindbad the Sailor, Master-Spy; find out why Scheherazade is so fond of a particular blue bottle; discover the two kinds of solution to all mathematical problems, and more... There's enough adventure and sheer fun in this one to make it a decent introduction to Lafferty, but the deeper method to the madness is still there to be found.

5 stars is very subjective here; I loved this, but can see how it wouldn't be to everyone's taste, not even, perhaps, to every Lafferty fan's taste.

This is a short story collection linked together by common characters--Austro, and the men who knew everything (and one who didn't, old Laff himself). The individual stories are very good, some (such as "Brain Fever Season") are extraordinary, as good as anything Lafferty has written, and full of the wonder and wisdom of his weird, wooly way of looking at the world. However, some are pretty mediocre for Lafferty--but they are rescued by the format; the stories that don't work as stories work as chapters in a very strange novel about Austro and company.

All in all, a book that every Lafferty fan should give a try (and certainly every Lafferty fan should read at least some of these stories) but not a good place for a Lafferty neophyte to start.

I purchased this book because it was listed on Neil Gaimen's top ten and found an interesting collection of sci-fi short stories.

A collection of sci-fi/fantasy tales from the 1960's. While Lafferty certainly has some pretty good ideas, the payoffs are never as good as their setups. Instead of finding a clever way out of the near-impossible dilemmas, the protagonist is simply killed off - end of story. In fact failure is a major theme in these tales, and that may be why this collection ultimately fails as well. Especially jarring is the level of graphic violence that was probably considered so revolutionary at the time that the author made it his trademark. To this reviewer's taste, the violence is often wholly gratuitous, as with the piecemeal maiming of the protagonist in "Frog Man of the Mountain". Another annoying tendency is for the longer stories ("Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne", for example) to rely on repetition, rather than any kind of plot progression. And his characters are almost uniformly distasteful, perhaps to inure us to the brutal action they engage in. Just how much pleasure does Lafferty expect us to derive from watching explorers be mauled by an extraterrestrial bear (in "Snuffles")? This reviewer was delighted by the lighter, whimsical entries, especially with the hysterical "Seven Day Terror", which deals with a family of precocious children and perhaps consequently was the least violent of the tales in this volume. But if most of these stories are supposed to be funny, then Lafferty's humor is very, very black indeed. A curious blend of sci-fi/fantasy and horror (although there's really not much hard science here) these tales might be favorites of those who have a taste for violence, but they left this reviewer more repelled than anything else.

the first story is the greatest, the rest of the books short stories are very good but some are so enigmatic that I am not sure of what they were trying to tell me. Overall a good read

The short stories of R.A.Lafferty are (still?) a treasure known to not many people. Forget about writers filed under "Fantasy" and leading you to another Middle Earth copy. THIS is Fantasy and it will lead you both to the End of Time/Universe AND to your own block where aliens just started a new trade on the other side of the road for "Jupiter only offers freezing cold and you can only do business with insects" (story: "In our block")
I read and re-read this compilation since I was 18 years old. It tickles ALL your senses. And leaves you rolling on the floor sometimes too. Buy it, you will be amazed!

This is the only collection of R. A. Lafferty's short stories that I've read (a later addition: well, not anymore), so I can't say how it compares with the rest, but based on how good this one is, I would say every one of them is worth acquiring (a later addition: true: get all of them). I think Lafferty is an obscure genius, and that more people should know his work. Lafferty's publisher once remarked that he has seen Lafferty's work "continually being compared to that of James Joyce by people who do not make such comparisons lightly". And in a better world, as one author pointed out, Lafferty would be as famous as Joyce, and other such renowned writers.

The Wildside Press edition is good. The paper looks and feels like it will last and last, no matter what. The image area leaves plenty of room for your hands to hold the book, while you are reading, without touching the ink. The binding is tough, yet the pages open well.

The font size is on the small side, but that is about the only complain I can think of.

Whether you like this collection or not, do not miss Lafferty's novel, The Devil Is Dead.

A very good and unusual historical novel. Lafferty was best known for his many Science Fiction short stories, though his unconventional work is difficult to classify. Okla Hannali tells the story of the "civilized" Indian tribes who were expelled from the South and resettled in what became Oklahoma. Lafferty uses the life of a single Choctaw man to recount several important episodes in the history of the Indian Nations of Oklahoma. Written well with folk tale and mythical aspects integrated into the story. There are elements of what might be called magical realism though use of this term suggests derivation from Garcia Marquez or other South Americans. It is likely, however, that Lafferty developed these techniques on his own. This is arguably one of Lafferty's more conventional works and well worth searching out.

Fans of R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) can make a very strong case for him as the greatest American author who has ever lived. Yet even so, he has always been an little-known author and now seems fading towards total obscurity. Both in the speculative fiction community and in the world of 'serious' literature, few of even the most devoted fans will recognize his name. If Lafferty does drop out of people's awareness entirely, the world will lose more than merely a lot of great books. Lafferty's body of work, produced in a amazingly short thirteen years, is one of the great creative achievements of the human race.

"Okla Hannali", not even viewed as one of Lafferty's better novels, is a stunning achievement. Every element of the author's craft is used to near perfection: plot, character, setting, emotional arch, and language. And language. No review could do justice to Lafferty's brilliance with words, yet I must try.

"Okla Hannali" is written in many voices. An individual paragraph may sound entirely different from the next, with different vocabulary and different structure. Yet as with all of Lafferty, there is an enormous amount of method behind the madness. The voices Lafferty chooses are at every time the appropriate voices. They are the words, the styles, the flows that are exactly right for communicating the story. Lafferty set out to tell the history of the Choctaw people. To do so he had to overcome both the racist view of Indians as savages and the romanticized view of them as peace-loving and perfect. Crushing these barriers meant using some odd linguistic styles.

For instance, Lafferty tells us early on that the Choctaws never understood punctuation, and simply spoke in a stream of words without clear starts and ends. He captures this style:

"Pushmataha say that I leave my grin there grinning at him and walk out from behind it and take a ramble and a drink and a nap all the while he was hold his breath and swell up and turn purple and then I come back rested and slip into my grin again and so have him tricked"

Is reading this difficult? That's your call, of course, but you get used to it as the book goes along. But this is important. Lafferty wants to show you what life was like among the Choctaw Indians. What life was really really like.

Of course Lafferty would never settle for merely so small a goal. There is purpose here. The purpose is to document the abuses that were heaped on the Indians during the eighteenth century, bu the government. To show that no matter what excuses are offered up, there's no decent explanation for what was done to the Native American tribes in these years. And to that end, Lafferty fights with every imaginable weapon: understatement, overstatement, misdirection, fantasy sequences, subplots, historical notes, and more. Most often, though, he tells the truth. For instance when the Indians assess the land that the government tricked them into accepting in Oklahoma:

"They examined the land to the south for a month. They all realized now - (what the worldly of them had always known) - that the north-south distance was about a third of that represented to them, and that the unidsputed domain of the Plains Indians was much closer than they had been told. Three quarters of the land for which they had traded their southern acres did not exist."

R. A. Lafferty believed in things. He believed strongly, believed passionately, and fought to make readers see things his way. "Okla Hannali" is a majestic novel (though as I said it's not even one of his better books) It swings from outrageous comedy to terrible tragedy to poignant romance to gritty action so deftly that you don't notice till the end that the entire world, for one group of people was destroyed.

A well written and engrossing story of a society and people depicted through an account of the life and experiences of a notable and idealized prominent tribal character, Okla Hannali. The main character's experiences and views embody and illustrate the ideals and principles of a developed yet, beset people. The character parallels the people's adaptation, acquiescence, manipulation and eventual conquest by accommodation of the factors which beset them.

The Choctaw evaluate and accommodate the pressure of the immigrant American drive to acquire their native lands. The tribal people adapt by shifting their territory and preserving their society in a new area. They master the new lands and restructure their society again in the area newly adopted.

The reader feels empathy with the Choctaw. The book gives new understanding and experience of the people. Their blended culture exists today in the area described in the book. It is real.

I started reading Okla Hannali after a friend told me it was one of his favorite Lafferty books. I grew up in Oklahoma, I'm part Cherokee, I'm sympathetic to what he's trying to do, and I like most of Lafferty's work. But I didn't get far with this one. It's written as a pseudo-historical tall-tale, in what purports to be Choctaw conversational style, which comes across as, well, gibberish. I couldn't get interested in the characters or their story. Caveat lector.

For a successful novel about Indians in Oklahoma, I recommend Larry McMurtry's ZEKE AND NED, about the Cherokees after their forced resettlement into eastern Oklahoma. Not preachy and very nicely done.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

As a life time lover of books, I now give book reviews. Years ago, I found "Okla Hannali" in a state lodge book store. I first reviewed it for a group of federated women. Some of them were teachers, and I was invited to give it to two high schools. In all, I probably gave it a dozen times and it was always well received. There was laughter, and at the end when the old chief died, there were tears. Recently, one of my daughters-in-law, who is part Choctaw, discovered it and tells me it is being taught in a class at the University of Oklahoma at Norman.

This book is a hidden masterpiece. The use of poetry is brilliant - even each of the chapter titles come together to form one poem. The characters are the perfect blend of innocence and wickedness. Like no other book you will read!

The story is indescribable; it involves six kids who are aliens from another planet with "Addams Family" tastes but played out realistically. The result is murder, mayhem, and -- strangely -- hilarity too. A VERY weird tale! But the strangest and most memorable part of the book for me was its table of contents -- each chapter title of which formed the line of a POEM! The poem is as weird as the book, and describes the story perfectly.

Six children of the alien Puca families visiting Earth (seven if you count Bad John), decide to make the world a better place, mainly by killing all the people on it, starting with their own parents. As is usually the case with Lafferty's stories, nothing is quite what it seems on the surface, or even below the surface. Is it an exploration of the nature of good and evil? Yes, but also not. It's funny and weird, told in Lafferty's unusual High Tall Tale style, written at the peak of his most creative period, originally published in 1968.

The Reefs of Earth is my favorite SF&F book ever found in 43 years of reading. I buy every copy I find in used book stores, just to be able to give a copy of this book to my best friends, and I long ago read my own two copies until they fell apart. Raphael Aloysius Lafferty, always excellent, outdoes himself in telling the story of "six kids, seven if you count bad John", and their efforts to take over the world from the clueless rednecks, parents, and other riffraff currently in charge. Even the prose is poetry, but the poetry, also part of the book, is excellent, good in the sense of Beowulf and battle poetry, not Shakespeare and romantic poetry. He writes about BIG, *hairy* people, ones who usually don't get along very well with one another, and if you have an ear for language, you'll love it.

Serpent's Egg
Wait! Any book that has an epilog written by a sea louse is worth fifteen bucks. But watch closely the innocent shinny plain brown cover of Serpent's Egg...it thumps...it moves. Inside is a yoke (get it, you know, like a joke but more) that will change your scheme of things forevermore. And when in 2035 the sea lice take over the job of recording the World's history (of course, little sea lice can't think, they will only write down the thoughts of the whales who are great thinkers but can neither read nor write) and they will drop the custom of good and evil and instead divide mankind into two distinct categories - those who read Lafferty and those who don't.

So don't be left out. Here is an example of Lafferty's writting style that will happen in ten years or so...

"The Ambulatory Computers themselves had no real sex, of course, but it had become their custom to declare themselves for one sex or the other. And ninty percent of them had declared themselves male. The ten percent who had declared themselves to be female were thus outnumbered nine to one, so they made themselves nine times more intense on the sex issue. They insisted that fifty percent of all computers should declare themselves to be female. Then they amended the fifty percent to fifty-seven percent to atone for past inequities. They used the slogan 'There can be no freedom until there is equality; be it compelled that all Amblulatory Computers shall conform to the fair fifty-seven percent in their declarations.'
It wasn't a good slogan, even though it was put to music and sung in all sorts of places. A good slogan, whether a human or a computer slogan, should be capable of being spoken in a single breath."

The best take I've read on Lafferty is from John Clute's Encyclopaedia of Fantasy. He echoes the view that R.A. Lafferty is his own man, and you've got to read all of him to even start to know what he's about. Someone new to Lafferty would be better off starting with Fourth Mansions or Past Master or Reefs of Earth or the many volumes of short stories. Those books make some concessions to the general reader, while this one decidedly does not.

Thanks to Wildside Press for making this novel available. I had looked for a long time for a "new" Lafferty novel and could only find more short stories. Nothing against those; I read his stories avidly before ever cracking the cover of a novel, but I enjoy it when Lafferty stretches out in a full-length work and invites us into his universe.

Serpent's Egg takes place in the indeterminate future of 2035 when all sorts of experiments are taking place between animals, humans and humanoid computers, resulting in various hybrid offspring. These mega-persons all reach maturity at ten years old, but should they prove to be a serpent's egg, a threat to the "floating world", assassins are sent after them by the Kangaroo Court, seen as a portent in the sky of a kangaroo. The offspring of four experiments join up to form a magic twelve, including in their number a psychic python, an unborn elephant, a wolverine, a bear, a computer, and a few humans. It's all very Laffertarian and it probably doesn't give anything away to say that the epilog (written by a whale) claims that half the book is lies.

I had a copy of Wildside Press' collection of Lafferty stories, Iron Tears, which had a lot of typos in it. It may have since been edited, however, since my edition doesn't have the introduction by Michael Swanwick included in the newer edition. Regardless, this book has few typos and is well-produced. It's also as much reading as a whole book of short stories, just right for Laffertarian bedtime reading.

I bought this book because I love fantacy novels. Although, the stories are well written and classics. The book reminded me of assigned literature from english class, a bit dry. I did find a couple of stories cute, but not great. This book is easy to put down. If you wish to know the evolution of fanticy novels then you would enjoy this book.

This is a very good fantasy anthology. It's got excellent stories like 'Troll Bridge' by Pratchett, 'Stealing God' by Doyle & Macdonald, 'Liane the Wayfarer' by Vance, 'More Spinned Against' by Wyndham, and the classic 'Unicorn Variations' by Zelazny.

Not all of the stories are excellent. I didn't enjoy the older ones (I always have a difficult time with pre-1900 fantasy) by Ingelow, Dickens, or M.R. James. The Harrison story had so much information in it that it was difficult to follow.

What makes this anthology stand out from others are the short introductions given by other authors in which they explain why they enjoy that particular story. They don't always go into great detail (Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tanya Huff wrote very short pieces, but the intros by Donaldson and George R.R. Martin were particularly interesting.

This anthology brought several good stories to my attention that I likely would never have otherwise read, notably the Wyndham and Doyle/Macdonald pieces. There's a lot of good fiction in here for a low price. Check it out.

I enjoyed last year's predecessor volume, My Favorite Science Fiction Story, but this volume is even better. The premise is that eighteen bestselling fantasy writers were asked to pick their all-time favorite fantasy story (by another writer). The result is a very eclectic assortment of tales. Most of these stories I had never seen before (even though I had read other stories by the same authors), but the most enjoyable part was reading the introductions, and discovering why each author picked the story he or she did.

I loved M. John Harrison's story "The Dancer from the Dance," but I think I liked it more than I would have otherwise, just because Stephen Donaldson's very evocative introduction sets the stage so well. Also, I have always loved Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" stories, and I loved reading Robert Silverberg and George R. R. Martin each explaining why they chose a different story from that book, and seeing how their opinions closely mirrored my own. Neil Gaiman chose a story by R. A. Lafferty that I had never read before. Not only did I love the story, but it also made me reexamine some of Gaiman's own work, and think about the ways which Lafferty might have influenced his writing.

If you are looking for the fantasy found in endless volumes of Tolkein ripoffs and Jordan wannabes, this is not the book for you. (Even Margaret Weis, who has often been a guilty practitioner of the aforementioned, picks a beautiful story by Charles Dickens to introduce.) But if you are looking for one of the most interesting and well-rounded collections of first-rate fantasy literature to be found in print today, you should buy this book.

This book has a variety of well chosen stories, with the exception of "Stealing God" which I did not like. The writers have chosen works that are classic yet show a great variety. Must reads include the two Vance stories, the Harrison, and the Zelazny. This book is a good safe bet for the fantasy fan.

Gord Wilson (below) asks what happened to this. Well, the reprint edition doesn't include it. I asked Michael AWB if he could put the intro online, and he has: michaelswanwick[dot]com/nonfic/duck[dot]html

I haven't actually seen the book, so my rating (required by Ammie) is the average of the other 2 reviews.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman
Swanwick Site Committee

As always, Lafferty is unique -- you're going to like some, hate some, and go away baffled from some.

Why three stars? More Lafferty is always good, and appearances to the contrary, there is a lot more Lafferty, but you can never find it. Wildside Press has done us all a great service in (re)publishing the most unique sci-fi writer to ever wield a quill, but this book could stand some careful editing. Maybe it has since been edited, though, because my copy doesn't have an intro. by Michael Swanwick. If so, someone please note that in their review. My copy gathers fifteen stories by R.A.L., who seems to have written a million stories, other collections being Ringing Changes, Does Anyone Have Anything Further to Add and Nine Hundred Grandmothers. Lafferty in Orbit is a collection of stories that appeared in Orbit magazine, with an intro. by Damon Knight. My favorite Lafferty novel, Fourth Mansions, is out of print again, I think. But I just found Space Chantey, which ranks up there with Annals of Klepsis, Arrive at Easterwine and Past Master as his best. Not to Mention Camels is also pretty good. From what I've read, some readers liked The Devil is Dead, which was very memorable--hauntingly so--but I have no idea what it was about. Lafferty writes as if under the influence of a strong, vision-inducing drug, but it's more like the reader slips into a trance reading the story, and when you finish the story, you wake up. Lafferty delivers far more than bottom line sci-fi, and a few typos, while distracting, cannot blur his vision.

R.A. Lafferty was a master of wonderful and bizarre fiction. The 14 stories collected here are a fine example of Lafferty's style. The stories are divided into two sections; those dealing with 'Secret Places' and those dealing with 'Mean Men'. Every once in a while a story will take place in a strange place AND have angry characters, so the division isn't perfect, but it's only a contrivance. The real joy is in the stories themselves...and they are good ones.

My favorite story in this volume is "Groaning Hinges of the World". What a feast for the imagination. The setting is a South Seas island. A fisherman is at sea when he hears a tremendous grinding noise. He returns and finds that a tribe of islanders that had previously been passive were now vicious warriors. The fisherman recalls an old legend that parts of the Earth would occasionally turn on their hinges, replacing the known land with a land of opposites. The new vicious warriors kidnap, rape, and murder. The other islanders live in fear until they decide to manually flip the Hinges over. This story is indicative of Lafferty's fiction; bizarre and some of the most original work you'll ever read.

"Mad Man" takes place in a future where robots are common. Robots require fluids from an extremely angry human to function. So, scientists run a factory where they employ men with short tempers in mind-numbingly repetitive and frustrating tasks. When the man loses his temper, they take a sample of his blood. Bizarre and original.

Most of the other stories are equally weird. Entertaining too. Lafferty was an unappreciated genius. His works are being reprinted by the wonderful Wildside Press. Fans of discerning fiction should be jumping for joy. Unfortunately, even in death Lafferty is an unknown to most fans of speculative fiction. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him: You have much to look forward to! Lafferty was a prolific writer and there are dozens of his novels and collections on the market. Enjoy people. You will not be sorry. Highly recommended.

No one has ever bothered to attempt to imitate him, because it plainly can't be done. There was only one R. A. Lafferty, and there will never be another. But oh, how he multiplies and throngs when you enter the halls of mirrors where he presides!

Lafferty doesn't knuckle under to the discipline of the narrative arc, preferring to leap from peak to peak. As a result, his novels can be as exhausting as they are exhilarating. So it's best to acclimate to him via his short stories, which tend to be taller than other short stories are. He doesn't bother with character development; his protagonists are either blank canvases written upon by the dire finger of events, or else implausibly talented off-centrics. He only sometimes bothers with plot. The tales are jazz riffs on outlandish notions, extended with always comic, sometimes sinister, and preposterously casual flair, pure joy of invention. Nobody, at least nobody like me, can listen to just one.

Most of his work has been out of print, and praise is due to Wildside Press for bringing so much of it back. The classic short story collection "Nine Hundred Grandmothers" has thankfully stayed available, and is the best place to start. This volume, unlike "Lafferty in Orbit", is all new stories, not overlapping with Grandmothers, and is the best place to continue. Then you're ready to tackle the novels.

My personal favorites are "Boomer Flats", in which three Magi come to a nonexistent river town to be born, to flirt with abominable snow girls, and take field notes on pool playing comets. "The Man Underneath", in which a stage magician, with the aid of his beautiful assistant Veronica, disappears into his disappearing act. "The Groaning Hinges of the World", described in the preceding review. And the one about Adam's three brothers, who didn't fall under the curse, and the one about the mayor looking for an honorable way to sell out his city, and the one about the headhunting asteroid claimjumper...

Okay, so I liked them all. Four and a half stars, but only by comparison with the five star "Grandmothers".