"Seven Day Terror" (1962) and Exposition

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 who wrote science fiction, from the way he got started in the field to the ideas that interested him and how he approached them. But one of the strongest is exposition.

He was incredibly ingenious with it. He also seemed frustrated by how it typically plays out in the genre—the dreaded infodump and failed incluing.

Perhaps the purest example of Lafferty’s attitude toward exposition is found in "Seven-Day Terror" (If, March 1962). The story follows nine-year-old Clarence Willoughby and his little sister, Clarissa. Clarence invents a homemade “disappearer” that makes neighborhood objects vanish for seven days, though the seven-day part is withheld from the reader until the end of the story. At first, his mother, Myra, and his siblings watch with curiosity, but when Clarence keeps making fireplugs disappear, flooding the streets, things spiral out of control. City officials, scientists, and law enforcement are powerless to intervene. Then, the focal point shifts to eight-year-old Clarissa, who knows how to restore everything.

It’s sometimes listed among Lafferty’s best stories, but it stands apart in its tidiness. To me, it reads more like slick fantasy than typical Lafferty—except for one line: "I was going to make a thirteen-year one, but for that you have to color the ends with the blood from a little boy’s heart, and Cyril cried every time I tried to make a good cut.”

The story’s simplicity and comedy are framed by two moments of deliberate exposition-subverting humor, Lafferty’s commentary on exposition itself. The first belongs to Clarence at the beginning of the story, the second to Clarissa at its conclusion. The siblings are, of course, etymological doublets.

The story begins with the following lines:

“Is there anything you want to make disappear?” Clarence Willoughby asked his mother. “A sink full of dishes is all I can think of. How will you do it?” “I just built a disappearer. All you do is cut the other end out of a beer can. Then you take two pieces of red cardboard with peepholes in the middle and fit them in the ends. You look through the peepholes and blink. Whatever you look at will disappear.”

When Clarence’s mom, Myra Willoughby, asks how the device works, Clarence replies,

“Yes. You take a beer can with both ends cut out and put in two pieces of cardboard. Then you blink.”

Is this how Lafferty sees exposition in science fiction? The answer is likely yes: Lafferty takes a mid-story potshot at clumsy genre work through a trio of eminent scientists.

“This transcends the metaphysical. It impinges on the quantum continuum. In some way it obsoletes Boff,” said Dr. Velikof Vonk.

But Lafferty’s buildup to a fantastic inversion of conventional exposition comes at the end. Instead of a structured infodump, Clarissa asks for a gold watch, a hammer, a list of chemicals, a yard of black velvet, and a pound of rock candy. Readers are led to believe that these items will somehow be used to restore what has disappeared. The typical narrative strategy would have Clarissa use them and then explain it to a character like the Mayor, who stands in for the reader receiving the infodump. Instead, Lafferty gives us this exchange:

“I shudder, too, Clarissa. But tell me, why did you want the chemicals?” “For my chemistry set.” “And the black velvet?” “For doll dresses.” “And the pound of rock candy?” “How did you ever get to be mayor of this town if you have to ask questions like that? What do you think I wanted the rock candy for?” “One last question,” said the mayor. “Why did you smash my gold watch with the hammer?” “Oh,” said Clarissa, “that was for dramatic effect.”

As fun as this is, Lafferty rejects such straightforward tricks to subvert exposition in his novels. Perhaps the most rewarding example is Epiktistes in Arrive at Easterwine (1971), a novel largely written in the expository mode, yet narrated by a protagonist whose exposition is frustrated by our failures as human readers. In effect, Epikt positions us as the counterpart to the imbecilic Mayor in "Seven-Day Terror":

"Should these journals ever fall into the hands of human persons, they will encounter great difficulties in much of them. For other intelligent machines, there should be no difficulties here."

". . . there are no tokens in human imagery (and few in our own) to express these fiercer things, even though they are human things."

".People might not be able to understand the shattering bit about the night of assault and torture...Human persons...do not understand pattern; and they do not understand that its deformity is more than screw and rack and torture machine."

". . . humans are not instantaneous as we are; that they are always putting one thing after another."

"People, human persons, you are not hopeless . . . Here are your depths revealed in their true aspects, which can only seem allegory to your uninstructed visions. I instruct you now! Follow me into this and through it all . . . You do not even know which side of your eyes to look out of."

". . . it is hard for an intense-speed realizing-machine like myself to explain things to human persons."

"So there are whole episodes in these High Journals which the humans concerned will swear did not happen at all."

". . . how frustrating it is to serve such inconsequent Middle Folk."

Where this differs most from "Seven-Day Terror," I think, is in the nature of the imbecility. Hence the impatience. It is no longer about gold watches and rock candy but about the soul. And Lafferty pushes this to exhilarating heights:

"People, human persons, you are not hopeless, you are not really the nothing things that you have appeared to each other this long time. Here are your depths revealed in their true aspects, which can only seem allegory to your uninstructed visions. I instruct you now! Follow me into this and through it all. You set me up, out of your blind need, to show yourselves to you. Then look! You do not even know which side of your eyes to look out of. Understand these wild creatures that are yourselves. Never has there been offered to your vision such fascinating things as are you, and you have not seen them. See them now. See them right. Tigers and giants and kings; witches and primordials, snakes and loaded prey; incandescent fellahin in their true Cogsworthian and Shiplapian forms, and the bush named Brusca, the love-wood, the Burning Bush; insufferable elegants who take it as high as it will humanly go, Corn oil from a dead man and the Audifaxian premise, aye, and the Diogenestic conclusion; and the earlier and more elegant bush with the fuller name, Labrusca, the wild-wine."

For Lafferty, genre-based exposition is not just a means of conveying information. It stages rhetorical battles that subvert genre, pitting comprehension against mystery. Epistemic failure in receiving exposition is often his point.