LAFFERTY, R(aphael) A(loysius)

(1914-)

   US writer who worked in the electrical business until retiring in 1971; he came to writing only in his 40s, publishing his first sf, "Day of the Glacier", with The Original Science Fiction Stories in 1960. Over the next 25 years (he reportedly retired from writing at the age of about 70) he produced many stories - about 200 have been published - and anumber of novels. The extremely active SMALL-PRESS interest in his work gave birth to a large number of titles in the late 1980s, most of them short collections, but much RAL material remains apparently in manuscript, including several of the titles mentioned in The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists (1983) by Malcolm EDWARDS and MaximJAKUBOWSKI.There are reasons for this apparent neglect of a writer whose originality and whose value to the sf/fantasy world have never been questioned. From the first, RAL demonstrated only the slenderest interest in making his stories conform to any critical or marketing definition of either sf or fantasy. He has fairly been described as a writer of tall tales, as a cartoonist, as an author whose tone is fundamentally oral; his conservative Catholicism has been seen as permeating every word he writes (or has been ignored); he has been seen as a ransacker of old MYTHOLOGIES,and as a flippant generator of new ones; he delights in a vision of the world as being irradiated by conspiracies both godly and devilish, but at times pays scant attention to the niceties of plotting; he has been understood by some as essentially light-hearted and by others as a solitary, stringent moralist; he is technically inventive, but lunges constantly into a slapdash sublime; his skill in the deploying of various rhetorical narrative voices is manifest, but these voices are sometimes choked in baroque flamboyance. He was awarded a 1973 HUGO for Best Short Story for "Eurema's Dam" (1972); and in the 1960s and 1970s, partlythrough his (in retrospect tenuous) association with the NEW WAVE, he was seen as a figure of looming eccentricity and central import. For his career's sake, it was certainly unfortunate that his response to renown seems to have been an intensification of the oddness of his product; final judgement on the effect of this failure to observe normal canons of writing still awaits a coherent presentation of his work as a whole. However, though many stories remain uncollected, RAL did assemble severalvolumes which grant some view of the entirety, including NINE HUNDRED GRANDMOTHERS (coll 1970), Strange Doings (coll 1972), Does Anyone ElseHave Something Further to Add? (coll 1974), Ringing Changes (coll 1984; 1st published in Dutch trans as Dagan van Gras, Dagan van Stro ("Days of Grass, Days of Straw") 1979), Golden Gate and Other Stories (coll 1982), Through Elegant Eyes: Stories of Austro and the Men who Know Everything (coll 1983), and Lafferty in Orbit (coll 1991), which puts together all the work originally published in Damon KNIGHT's ORBIT series of original anthologies (1967-80). Many other stories have been printed as chapbooks (see listing below).RAL's first three novels, Past Master (1968), TheReefs of Earth (1968) and Space Chantey (1968 dos), all appeared within a few months of one another, causing some stir. Pre-publication praise for Past Master (accolades from New-Wave writers Samuel R. DELANY, RogerZELAZNY and Harlan ELLISON) demonstrated the impact his work was beginning to have, and, though it can be said that the US New Wave amounted more to an iconoclastic tone of voice than a programme, its generally sardonic air proved bracing to such mature writers as RAL, whose entry at age 45 into the field seemed to betoken its growing maturity. Past Master places Sir Thomas More on the planet Astrobe, where he is tricked into becoming WorldPresident and suffers once again a martyr's death: the contrasts between UTOPIA and life are laid down without the normal derision. Space Chantey retells HOMER's Odyssey as SPACE OPERA, very rollickingly, and is the most representative of RAL's attempts to liberate sagas by transposing them into a rambunctious, myth-saturated, never-never-land future. In The Reefs of Earth (RAL's first-completed novel) a passel of ALIEN children bumptiously attempt to rid Earth of humans, and fail. More complexly, FOURTH MANSIONS (1969), possibly RAL's most sustained single novel,articulates with some clarity the basic underlying bent of his best work: a protagonist (or several) finds a pattern of flamboyant, arcane, dreamlike clues to a conspiracy (or conspiracies) between Good and Evil whose outcome will determine the moral nature of reality to come; and enters the fray joyously (though confusingly) upon the side of the angels. Though much of RAL's work shares characters, and plot segments shuttleback and forth from book to book, he has written only one explicit genre series, the Argos Mythos: Archipelago: The First Book of The Devil is Dead Trilogy (1979), The Devil is Dead (1971), Promontory Goats (1988 chapCanada), How Many Miles to Babylon? (1989 chap Canada),Episodes of the Argo (coll 1990 chap Canada), which contains part of the conclusion of the long-written third part of the series, the More than Melchisedech sequence, now finally published in full, in 3 vols, as Tales of Chicago (1992), Tales of Midnight (1992 chap Canada) and Argo (fixup 1992 Canada).The Argos Mythos treats a group of WWII buddies as reincarnations of Jason's Argonauts, and engages them in a long, myth-saturated battle against Evil. Later novels, like Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine (1971), the life story of a COMPUTER which also features in some stories as well, begins to evince a tangledness that comes, at times, close to incoherence."The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny", the second novel-length tale assembled in Apocalypses(coll 1977), suggests that the comprehensive power of opera (MUSIC) might, in an alternate world, stop war. Dotty (1990 chap Canada), though not directly part of the Argos Mythos and ostensibly not sf or fantasy at all, embraces the "mundane" world, sf, fantasy, Jason, the Argonauts and much else in 96 packed pages. Even now the full explication of the extremities of RAL's large universe remains impossible; for it seems there is more to come.

   JC

   Other works: The Fall of Rome (1971); the Coscuin Chronicles, historical novels transfigured into fable, of which have been published The Flame is Green (1971) and Half a Sky (1984); Okla Hannali (1972), historical; Not to Mention Camels: A Science Fiction Fantasy(1976); Funnyfingers \& Cabrito (coll 1976 chap); Horns on their Heads (1976 chap); Aurelia (1982); Annals of Klepsis (1983); Snake in his Bosom and Other Stories (coll 1983 chap); Four Stories (coll 1983 chap); Heart of Stone, Dear and Other Stories (coll 1983 chap); Laughing Kelly and Other Verses (coll 1983 chap); The Man who Made Models and Other Stories(coll 1984 chap); Slippery and Other Stories (coll 1985 chap); the first two chapters of My Heart Leaps Up (1920-28) (1986 chap), followed by chapters 3 and 4 (1987 chap), 5 and 6 (1987 chap), 7 and 8 (1988 chap) and 9 and 10 (1990 chap), making up the first volume of the projected In aGreen Tree sequence, the second volume of which, Grasshoppers \& Wild Honey (1928-1942), was continued on the same basis, starting with chapters 1 and 2 (1992 chap); Serpent's Egg (1987 UK; 1 story added to the limited issue to make coll 1987); The Early Lafferty (coll 1988 chap Canada) and The Early Lafferty II (coll 1990 chap Canada); East of Laughter (1988 UK; with1 story added to the limited issue to make coll); Strange Skies (coll 1988 chap Canada), verse; The Back Door of History (coll 1988 chap Canada); The Elliptical Grave (1989; with 1 story added to the limited issue to makecoll 1989); Sindbad: The 13th Voyage (1989); Mischief Malicious (and Murder Most Strange) (coll 1991 chap Canada), which contains work from asearly as 1961; Iron Tears (coll 1992).Nonfiction: It's Down the Slippery Cellar Stairs (coll 1984 chap); True Believers (coll 1989 chap); CrankyOld Man from Tulsa: Interviews with R.A. Lafferty (coll 1990 chap Canada).

   About the author: An R.A. Lafferty Checklist (1991 chap) by Dan Knight

   See also: CITIES; END OF THE WORLD; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; HEROES; HUMOUR; INTELLIGENCE; LINGUISTICS; MESSIAHS; PERCEPTION; REINCARNATION.