Joan de Joanes (Valencia, c. 1505 - Bocairent, 1579), Pentecost . "I took a live mermaid not far from here one morning," said John Counts. And then he paused. "That pause, old Wiedervogel," he said after a bit, "that pause was for you to say 'Incredible!' or something similarly apropos." "Consider it said. Was she real?" "She said that she was. She seemed to be. She was ugly as sin . . . Her skin was green and rough... She smelled like a mermaid, or at least like a fish

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

These animals on our coming up to them stared at us and remained quiet where they stand, not knowing whether they had wings to fly away or legs to run off, and suffering us to approach them as close as we pleased. Amongst these birds were those which in India they call Dod-aersen (being a kind of very big goose); these birds are unable to fly, and instead of wings, they merely have a few small pins, yet they can run very swiftly. We drove them together into one place in such