“I am like that hard-luck guy in the funny-paper or Job in the Bible.” Advanced Lafferty today. "Narrow Valley" has about three-quarters of a century in its plot. In 1893, after being assigned a 160-acre plot of land subject to taxation, there was a Pawnee Indian named Clarence Big-Saddle. Big-Saddle performs a makeshift spell using substituted ingredients and an incorrect magic word. Yet the ritual alters the property. It compresses the half-mile-wide valley into what appear

“But on the third hand, and often to the exasperation of critics, the writer usually knows what is wrong or right with a story better than a critic does.” — Letter The drowsy stillness of the afternoon was shattered by what sounded to his strained senses like G. K. Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin. — P. G. Wodehouse To start a fight with someone who loves Chesterton, say that Chesterton was an alcoholic. Though it is in poor taste to mention, one of the qualities Lafferty

“Well, I started writing everything. I wrote a Saturday Evening Post  story and an American Magazine  story and a Collier’s  story, and some sort of a western story, and science fiction and mystery stories. I sent them around. The science fiction story sold and the others didn’t, so after several repetitions then, I just wrote science fiction. It took me about a year before I was selling.” —1983 interview with Schweitzer Andrew Ferguson has already noted the most important fa