There came a roaring like horses in the sky. Then was the multiplex crash (God save his soul, his body is done for) of bloody torso and severed limbs falling into the room from a great height, splintering the table at which the five of them sat, breaking the room, splattering them all with blood. But the ceiling above was unbreached and unharmed and there was no point of entry.
“I am not man enough even to watch it,” Buford Strange gurgled, and he slumped sideways unconscious.
“Timacheff, you fool!” Vincent Rue bawled to the space above them. “Watch your damned special effects! You’re wrecking the place!”
Unquestionably, that Timacheff was good. He used his special effects in classes on phenomenology that he taught up there.
“The head, the head! Don’t let them forget the head!” Day-Torch cried in a flaming voice.
“I just remembered that Timacheff is out of town and is holding no classes today,” Kit-Fox muttered in vulpine wonder.
“Make room for me! Oh, make room for me!” Adrian Mountain boomed. Then he was gone from the midst of them. He would be a factor, though, “in days to come.”
“The head, the head!” Day-Torch flamed and scorched.
Christopher and Vincent tried to straighten up the unconscious Buford Strange. They shook him, but he came apart and one arm came off him. He was revealed as a straw-man filled with bloody straw, and no more.
“Why, he’s naught but a poorly made scarecrow,” Christopher Foxx said in wonder. “He was right that one who falls back from it cannot become an ordinary man again. He will be less than man.”
“That’s funny. He always looked like a man to me,” Vincent Rue said.
“The head, the head! You forget the head. Let the head fall down!” Day-Torch cried.
And the head fell down.
It smashed itself like a bursting pumpkin on the broken floor.
4.
Under the town is a woolier town,
And the blood splashed up and the head fell down.
—Ballads, Henry Drumhead
About the Author
R. A. Lafferty began selling fiction regularly in the early 1960s and went full-time as a writer in 1971. His novels include Past Master (1968), Fourth Mansions (1969), and the Native American historical Okla Hannali (1972). You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Not to Mention R. A. Lafferty: A Personal Introduction
Neil Gaiman
Slow Tuesday Night
(Introduction by Michael Dirda)
Narrow Valley
(Introduction by Michael Swanwick)
Nor Limestone Islands
(Introduction by Michael Bishop)
Interurban Queen
(Introduction by Terry Bisson)
Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne
(Introduction by Jack Dann)
In Our Block
(Introduction by Neil Gaiman)
Ride a Tin Can
(Introduction by Neil Gaiman)
Nine Hundred Grandmothers
(Introduction by Patton Oswalt / Afterword by Andy Duncan)
Land of the Great Horses
(Introduction by Harlan Ellison / Afterword by Gregory Frost)
Eurema’s Dam
(Introduction by Robert Silverberg)
Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies
(Introduction by Kelly Robson)
The Primary Education of the Camiroi
(Introduction by Samuel R. Delany)
Continued on Next Rock
(Introduction by Nancy Kress / Afterword by R. A. Lafferty)
Sky
(Introduction by Gwenda Bond)
Cliffs That Laughed
(Introduction by Gregory Feeley)
Seven-Day Terror
(Introduction by Connie Willis)
Boomer Flats
(Introduction by Cat Rambo)
Old Foot Forgot
(Introduction by John Scalzi)
The World as Will and Wallpaper
(Introduction by Samuel R. Delany)
Funnyfingers
(Introduction by Andrew Ferguson)
Thieving Bear Planet
(Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer)
Days of Grass, Days of Straw
(Introduction by Gary K. Wolfe)
About the Author
Copyright Acknowledgments
Copyright
Copyright Acknowledgments
“Seven-Day Terror” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in If, March 1962.
“Slow Tuesday Night” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Galaxy Magazine, April 1965.
“In Our Block” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in If, July 1965.
“Nine Hundred Grandmothers” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in If, February 1966.
“Narrow Valley” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1966.
“The Primary Education of the Camiroi” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Galaxy Magazine, December 1966.
“Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Galaxy Magazine, February 1967.
“Land of the Great Horses” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison ed.
“Cliffs That Laughed” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in The Magazine of Horror, March 1969.
“Ride a Tin Can” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in If, April 1970.
“Continued on Next Rock” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Orbit 7, Damon Knight ed.
“Old Foot Forgot” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Orbit 7, Damon Knight ed.
“Interurban Queen” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Orbit 8, Damon Knight ed.
“Nor Limestone Islands” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Universe 1, Terry Carr ed.
“Sky” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in New Dimensions I, Robert Silverberg ed.
“Boomer Flats” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in If, July-August 1971.
“Eurema’s Dam” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in New Dimensions II, Robert Silverberg ed.
“The World as Will and Wallpaper” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Future City, Roger Elwood ed.
“Days of Grass, Days of Straw” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in New Dimensions 3, Robert Silverberg ed.
“Funnyfingers” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Funnyfingers & Cabrito.
“Selenium Ghosts of the Eighteen Seventies” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Universe 8, Terry Carr ed.
“Thieving Bear Planet” by R. A. Lafferty © The Locus Science Fiction Foundation. First published in Universe 12, Terry Carr ed.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories a
re either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BEST OF R. A. LAFFERTY
Copyright © 2019 by The Locus Science Fiction Foundation
All introductions and afterwords are copyright © 2018 by their respective authors and are used with permission.
All rights reserved.
Cover photograph by Danny Xu / Shutterstock.com
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill
A Tor Essentials Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lafferty, R. A., author.
The best of R. A. Lafferty / edited by Jonathan Strahan.—First edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
ISBN 978-1-250-79481-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-77853-6 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-77868-0 (ebook)
1. Science fiction, American—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A28
813'.54—dc23
2020044266
ISBN 978-1-250-77853-6 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-250-79481-9 (paper over board)
ISBN 978-1-250-77868-0 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250778680
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Gollancz, an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd
First U.S. Edition: February 2021
1. I recommend Paul Kincaid’s excellent article in Through the Dark Labyrinth, https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/ttdlabyrinth.wordpress.com/2014/08/01/reprint-thus-we-frustrate-charlemagne/amp/
The Best of R. A. Lafferty Page 39
