R. A. Lafferty
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- "This is a do-it-yourself thriller or nightmare. Its present order is only the way it comes in the box. Arrange it as you will." ~R. A. Lafferty, The Devil is Dead
- "R.A. Lafferty, who died at 87 on March 18, was undoubtedly the finest writer of whatever it was that he did that ever there was. He was a genius, an oddball, a madman. His stories (his short stories were, in the main, more powerful than his novels) are without precedent..." -Neil Gaiman
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (November 7, 1914 - March 18, 2002) was a noted science fiction and fantasy writer of Irish descent.
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Biography
Lafferty was born on 7 November 1914 in Neola, Iowa to a Hugh David Lafferty (a broker dealing in oil leases and royalties) and Julia Mary Burke, a teacher, the youngest of 5 siblings. His first name, Raphael, derived from the day he was expected to be born on (the Feast of St. Raphael). At the age of 4, his family moved to Perry, Oklahoma. He attended night school at the University of Tulsa for two years from 1933, mostly studing math and German, but left. He then began to work for a "Clark Electric Co.", in Tulsa and apparently a newspaper as well; during this period (1939-1942), he attended the International Correspondence School. He lived most of his life in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his sister, Anna Lafferty. Lafferty served for four years in the U.S. Army during World War II when he enlisted in 1942, in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, California and Australia, New Guinea, Morotai and the Philippines (in the South Pacific Area). When he left the Army in 1946, he had become a 1st Sergeant serving as a staff sergeant and had received an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal [1]. He never married. He did not begin writing until the 1960s but he then produced more than 200 short stories and 21 novels, mostly at least nominally science fiction. His first published story was "The Wagons" in New Mexico Quarterly Review (1959) (although his first published science fiction story would be "Day of the Glacier", in The Original Science Fiction Stories, 1960), and his first published novel was Past Master (1968). Until 1971, Lafferty worked as an electrical engineer. After that, he spent his time writing until around 1980, when he retired from that activity as well, due to a stroke. In 1994, he suffered an even more severe stroke. He died 18 March 2002, aged 87 in a nursing home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma; his collected papers artefacts and ephemera were donated to the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library. Other manuscripts are housed in the University of Iowa's Library special collections department.
Fiction
Lafferty's quirky prose drew from traditional storytelling, both Irish and Native American, and his shaggy characters and tall tales are unique in science fiction. Little of Lafferty's writing is considered typical of the genre. His stories are more tall tale than traditional science fiction and are deeply influenced by his Catholic beliefs; Fourth Mansions, for example, draws on The Interior Mansions of Teresa of Avila. In any event, his writings, both topically and stylistically, are not easy to categorize. Plot is frequently secondary to anything else Lafferty does in his stories, which has caused him to have both a loyal cult following and readers who have given up attempting to read his work.
Not all of Lafferty's work was science fiction or fantasy; his novel Okla Hannali [2] tells the story of the Choctaw in Mississippi and Oklahoma.
Awards
Lafferty received Hugo nominations for Past Master, "Continued on the Next Rock," "Sky," and "Eurema's Dam," the last of which won the Best Short Story Hugo in 1973 (shared with Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth's "The Meeting.") [3] He received Nebula Award nominations for "Slow Tuesday Night," Past Master, Fourth Mansions, "Continued on the Next Rock," and The Devil is Dead. He never received a Nebula award. His collection Lafferty in Orbit was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and in 1990, Lafferty received a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2002, he received the Cordwainer Smith Foundation's Rediscovery award[4].
External links
- Template:Isfdb name
- R. A. Lafferty Devotional Page
- R. A. Lafferty: an introduction to and discussion of his fiction
- R. A. Lafferty: Effective Arcanum - a critical examination of aspects of Lafferty's prose
- "And They Took the Sky Off at Night" - an appreciation of Lafferty by editor Brian Cholfin
- Lostbooks.org: "The Devil is Dead" review
- Article on Lafferty at Everything2
- "The Flame is Green", a fine essay and review of Lafferty's (non-SF) novel of revolutionary Europe, by John J. Reilly
- "Okla Hannali", a book review and generous sampler
- Collection of obituaries
- University of Tulsa McFarlin Library's inventory of the R. A. Lafferty collection housed in their special collections department
- University of Iowa's page on their special collection of his papers
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