Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ames-lm.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!ames-lm!jaw From: jaw@ames-lm.UUCP (James A. Woods) Newsgroups: net.books,net.sf-lovers Subject: Raphael Aloysius Lafferty Message-ID: <143@ames-lm.UUCP> Date: Thu, 2-Feb-84 20:40:15 EST Article-I.D.: ames-lm.143 Posted: Thu Feb 2 20:40:15 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Feb-84 03:12:03 EST Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA Lines: 31 # But I have dreamt a dreary dream Beyond the Isle of Skye; I saw a dead man win a fight-- And I think that man was I. Lafferty, "The Devil is Dead" citing the ballad of Chevy Chase Basic question: what is he up to these days? For the unwashed, crazy Lafferty was one of the best. Borges meets Burroughs. Author of short stories (collected in 900 Grandmothers, Strange Doings, Does Anyone Else Have Anything Further to Add?), SF novels (Past Master, Fourth Mansions, The Devil is Dead [arguably his finest], Arrive at Easterwine, Archipelago), historical fiction (Okla Hannali, The Flame is Green), and general lies (The Fall of Rome). A linguist and electrical parts buyer, born in Iowa (well known breeding grounds for good writers, e.g. Coover, Vonnegut, Sladek.) He had the sense, unlike most of us, to not start writing until his fifties. His later musings professed an embarrassing moralism, but the early stories have indelibly etched certain archetypes, created out of whole cloth, into my personal mythology. You might think his work is too left field, but then fiction, like music, is very tribal. -- James A. Woods {hao|menlo70}!ames-lm!jaw Note: this item was submitted to multiple groups, since Lafferty's cultish prose has resisted categorization as simple fantasy and SF.