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Short Fiction
Though often packed into the genre of science fiction, R. A. Lafferty might fit better into a category of the bizarre. Through a blend of folk storytelling, American tall tales, science fiction, and fantasy, all infused with his devout Catholicism, he has created an inimitable, genre-bending, sui generis style.
Lafferty has received many Hugo and Nebula Award nominations and won the Best Short Story Hugo in 1973.
Collected here are all of his public domain short stories, all of which were originally published in science fiction pulp magazines in the 1960s.
Lafferty has received many Hugo and Nebula Award nominations and won the Best Short Story Hugo in 1973.
Collected here are all of his public domain short stories, all of which were originally published in science fiction pulp magazines in the 1960s.
155 pages, ebook
Published January 1, 2021
2 people want to read
About the author
R.A. Lafferty
541 books315 followersRaphael Aloysius Lafferty, published under the name R.A. Lafferty, was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit. He also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, a history book, and a number of novels that could be loosely called historical fiction.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 23, 2025
Every Lafferty story I've read goes more or less the same.
1. Something weird happens, either to an individual or to the world, for reasons that are largely unexplained and unexplored.
2. Not-especially-ethical people deal with it the way such people do.
3. This doesn't end well.
It's not a formula I love, and I didn't much enjoy these stories, particularly since Lafferty had the misogyny that was common in his time very much on display. It's often mentioned that Lafferty, like Gene Wolfe, was a devout Catholic, but I see very little evidence of it in most of their work; the tone is generally cynical and misanthropic, and rather than being set in a well and benevolently ordered universe, their fiction shows us random, inexplicable events. At least Lafferty's characters mostly behave like human beings, even if they're generally the less admirable type of human being. I've never felt that Wolfe's characters made any sense at all.
1. Something weird happens, either to an individual or to the world, for reasons that are largely unexplained and unexplored.
2. Not-especially-ethical people deal with it the way such people do.
3. This doesn't end well.
It's not a formula I love, and I didn't much enjoy these stories, particularly since Lafferty had the misogyny that was common in his time very much on display. It's often mentioned that Lafferty, like Gene Wolfe, was a devout Catholic, but I see very little evidence of it in most of their work; the tone is generally cynical and misanthropic, and rather than being set in a well and benevolently ordered universe, their fiction shows us random, inexplicable events. At least Lafferty's characters mostly behave like human beings, even if they're generally the less admirable type of human being. I've never felt that Wolfe's characters made any sense at all.
Displaying 1 of 1 review