“Ginny Wrapped in the Sun” (1967) draws on a few unusual sources, including Isaac Asimov. Lafferty takes what should be a reassuring calculation from Asimov and turns it into evidence that humanity may be living on borrowed time. The source of the calculation is pretty obscure, and I came across it in some incidental reading. Lafferty, breaking into science fiction, must have read “The Slowly Moving Finger,” published in the February 1964 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and

Lafferty's Door The things that the people were doing right now were a little bit extreme. Granted that they all loved one another. Granted that they were all present and were not doing these things behind each others’ backs. But the quick loving was going on a bit too hotly. And there shouldn’t have been that sort of mixing of generations. Well, everybody loved the several young girls who were there for the ‘evening’ (Mary Jill O’Trassy and Chiara and Teresa Benedict and

“It is your business to know everything!” she exploded at me. “We have rigged you for that. You cannot hide anything in you. I can steal it all out of you. And you have no censor.” “Oh yes. I have set one up for myself in myself.” “Then I will demolish it! I have never found anyone that I cannot invade. I will invade you as the devil is sometimes able to invade even the virtuous. I will invade you, machine! I will eat your barriers and drink your brains. And there is another