Clone of RAL's Voice

“The Forty-Seventh Island” is one of Lafferty’s weaker stories. It isn’t short on invention; what it lacks is the theotropic dissonance...

Forza [force] and froda [fraud] being the two essential elements of sin, it follows that they must be the two cardinal virtues of human...

This post is prickly and polemical. Deliberately so. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia  and its online iteration are important resources...

Several million evolvate computers, computers who said that they were the only true born-again humans, accompanied the pilgrimage or tour...

Lafferty had a soft spot for Neanderthals and every kind of ape-man. My favorite instance of this appears at the end of Arrive at...

The question then arises, what poverty is required by the practice of this counsel or, in other words, what poverty suffices for the...

Picking up on yesterday’s post and the theme of Gnosticism, I want to look its presence in Lafferty’s work a little further. Lafferty...

Five more centuries were to pass before the structure of human relations had so changed that the use of this instrument met a more...

When people talk about The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeney , two words inevitably come up: consensus reality. Ask what it’s...

Stanley Elkin once said that he did shtick upon shtick until he got carpentry. In the same vein, there’s a maneuver so core to Lafferty’s...

When Does Originality Cease to Be a Literary Virtue? Few writers test this boundary as thoroughly as R.A. Lafferty. His sentences are...

Today, I want to think about the metaphysics of time in "Selenium Ghosts." Before turning to that issue, let’s take stock of some of what...

I’ve been closely reading "Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteenth Century." In the coming days, I’ll make several posts about it and post my...

From a reproduction of the wonderful Hereford Mappa Mundi (ca. 1300 AD). The inscription on Sardinia: Sardinia Grece Sandaliotes dicta a...

This blog is built around one of my favorite pieces of dialogue from Lafferty’s Serpent’s Egg  (1987). It’s about mysteries—my favorite...

A while back, I shared some thoughts on East of Laughter  in response to a discussion about certain obiter dicta  on pornography in an...

While thinking about Past Master  (1968), I returned to Lafferty’s short story "Condillac’s Statue or Wrens in His Head." It offers...

Rock Candy Patent Drawing, 1881 There are quite a few reasons for thinking about Lafferty not as a science fiction writer but as a writer...

Lafferty’s description and visual imagery are as idiosyncratic as every other aspect of the man's work. Today, I want to consider a trick...