One of the most individual voices in science fiction, R.A. Lafferty, died last night.
Lafferty began publishing in the late 50s. Though he had quite a few novels out, he was primarily known as a short story writer. You could always tell a Lafferty story – filled with strange, larger-than-life characters and written in a style that no one could imitate, and which crackled on the page.
His work was sometimes funny, sometimes touching, and always different. He was overlooked when awards were handed out, winning only one Hugo, for the delightful “Euremia’s Dam.” Some of my Lafferty favorites include “Slow Tuesday Night,” “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne,” “Primary Education of the Camiroi,” “Continued on Next Rock,” “Incased in Ancient Rind,” “Narrow Valley,” “The Transcendent Tigers,” “Land of the Great Horses,” and, my favorite, “What Was the Name of That Town?”
Lafferty’s output slowed, partly because he was impossible to catagorize. Nearly all of his work from the 80s on was only published in small presses. Eventally age took its toll and he was unable to write any more. Luckily some of his best collections – “900 Grandmothers” and “Lafferty in Orbit” are available. Read them. You may hate them, but if you like them at all, you’ll fall in love with his writing.
Thanks for the news and the obit.
I only read one Lafferty novel, but it was a doozy: Past Master. A strange future pulls Thomas More out of the past because he is the only totally honest human they could identify. Of course, they pick him up before he has died, so he hasn’t yet done the thing that he is admired for.
Also, didn’t Lafferty write the short story Sky? One of the all-time great SF stories.
Lafferty was just one of the fabulous set of new writers that transformed the field in the 1960s. There is nothing comparable today to the thrill of opening a magazine and encountering a new story by Lafftery, or Ellison, or Zelazny, or Silverberg, or Disch, or LeGuin, or Wilhelm or any of the dozen others who were at their peak in those days (which lasted until the early seventies).
Lafferty is certainly better known for his short stories than his novels, and that is for good reason, the delightful Past Master notwithstanding. (BTW, Past Master was published as part of the Ace Science Fiction Specials series of paperbacks, the best collection of sf novels ever done in the field. They are almost uniformly worth seeking out.) Quirky was not in use in the 60’s but if it were, Lafferty would have his picture in the dictionary next to the word. But the stories were always far more than merely quirkly, experimental, or odd. They had deep and original things to say about human nature and, while never involving science in the slightest, epitomized sf’s value of looking sideways at humanity to better expose our foibles.
Lafferty didn’t get into writing until he was in his fifties and had personal problems galore, both health and alcoholism, that slowed him down as he grew older. But he is today a Past Master par excellence.
…when I popped in to check out the Dead People Server. What a shame, but OTOH, he was quite old - hadn’t realized he was 87, or anywhere near it.
Gawd, his stuff was weird, but I loved it. Past Master was excellent, and my Lafferty collection also includes Fourth Mansions, Annals of Klepsis, The Reefs of Earth, and Apocalypses, which is actually a pair of novellas under a single cover. The first one, “Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis?” is first-rate.