Search Results for: lafferty

New Treasures: The Best of R. A. Lafferty, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Comments 10 comments

Two years ago, when The Best of R.A. Lafferty was published by Gollancz SF Masterworks, I wrote an excited New Treasures article that began like this: Fabulous! Lafferty is one of my favorite short story writers, and far too much of his work — virtually all of it, really — is either long out of print, or available only in very expensive collector’s editions from Centipede Press. The prospect of a generous collection of his best short fiction in a…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Best of R. A. Lafferty, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Comments 2 comments

At last! At last! The Best of R. A. Lafferty is available here in the United States. Back in October of last year, uber-editor Jonathan Strahan made the following terse announcement on his Facebook page, alongside a tantalizing cover reveal. The Best of R.A. Lafferty will be published by Gollancz in March 2019. The book features 22 classic Lafferty stories along with an introduction by Neil Gaiman and forewords by some of the most important writers and editors working in…

Read More Read More

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The 1973 Hugo Award for Best Short Story: “The Meeting,” by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, and “Eurema’s Dam,” by R. A. Lafferty

Comments 2 comments

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1972; cover by Ed Emshwiller Steven Silver has been doing a series covering the award winners from his age 12 year, and Steven has credited me for (indirectly) suggesting this, when I quoted Peter Graham’s statement “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12, in the “comment section” to the entry on 1973 in Jo Walton’s wonderful book An Informal History of the Hugos. You see, I was 12 in 1972, so…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: R.A. Lafferty’s “Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas”

Comments 2 comments

R.A. (Raphael Aloysius) Lafferty was born on November 7, 1914 and died on March 18, 2002. Lafferty won a Hugo Award for his short story “Eurema’s Dam” in 1973, which tied with Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth’s “The Meeting.” Lafferty’s story also won the Seiun Award in 1975 and he won a second Seiun in 1993 for the story “Groaning Hinges.” In 1971 Lafferty received a Phoenix Award from DeepSouthCon and in 1990 he was recognized with a Life Achievement…

Read More Read More

R.A. Lafferty, the Past Master of Science Fiction

Comments 12 comments

R.A Lafferty is one of my absolute favorite classic SF writers. Though I’ve never read any of his novels. Yeah, I know that sounds weird. But Lafferty is remembered today mostly for his brilliant short fiction, collected in priceless collections like Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970), Strange Doings (1972), and Lafferty in Orbit (1991). And his novels… well, they’re not so well remembered. There are a lot of theories about this. In his wonderful SF biography Past Masters (the title of…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Annals of Klepsis by R.A. Lafferty

Comments 3 comments

I haven’t used Goodreads much, but I’m beginning to see that’s a mistake. It truly is a marvelous resource for those looking for a wide range of opinions about books — especially those that have been out of print for decades. For example, here’s a small sample of reviews for R. A. Lafferty’s gonzo space-pirate novel Annals of Klepsis, published as an Ace paperback original in 1983. First up is Andrew: A surrealistic apocalypse from a master of surreal apocalyptic…

Read More Read More

The Hilarity of the Strange: The Man Underneath: The Collected Short Fiction of R. A. Lafferty, Volume 3

Comments 6 comments

The Man Underneath: The Collected Short Fiction, Volume Three Centipede Press (368 pages, $100 deluxe hardcover, April 5, 2016) He laid down a road paved with bright, deadpan madness for us to walk, mouths agape and eyes wide with wonder and trepidation. – from the introduction by Bud Webster Let’s talk about R. A. Lafferty. You may have heard of him before: a wild, raggedy old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, whose work showed up in magazines and the pulps from…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

Comments 0 Comment

Mur Lafferty’s latest novel is a space adventure set on a lone ship where the clones of a murdered crew must find their murderer — before they kill again. (On her blog Mur writes, “Clone Murder Mystery in SPACE was a rejected title. Another rejected title was from my friend Alasdair: Murder Space Clone Bastard.”) James Patrick Kelly writes “This is one of the cleverest and most exciting murder mysteries I have ever read. The confined space of the colony…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Nine Hundred Grandmothers by R.A. Lafferty

Comments 4 comments

R.A. Lafferty is one of the finest short story writers our genre has seen, and “Nine Hundred Grandmothers,” a compact masterpiece originally published in the February 1966 issue of IF magazine, is one of the best short stories ever written. The tale of an asteroid miner who can’t stop himself from asking the deep questions, and what happens when he comes across a strange and ancient race of aliens who remember how life began, it’s funny, thought provoking, and totally,…

Read More Read More

Mur Lafferty Wins 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award

Comments 0 Comment

Mur Lafferty has been awarded the 2015 Manly Wade Wellman Award, for her novel Ghost Train to New Orleans. The Manly Wade Wellman Award is granted each year by the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation, for outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors. This year’s nominees also included The Sea Without a Shore by David Drake, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by A.J. Hartley and David Hewson, Reign of Ash by Gail Z. Martin, and…

Read More Read More