"Who turned me on, odd fish ?" Gippo Sharpface
asked as he came in on nervous but exuberant
fox feet, with two dozen books in his arms and
one opened in his left hand. "I was in
Singapore, our mother city, the porno capital of
the world, and it hit me there. 'Why don't you
have Emanuel Visconti's Costive Cosmologies Feed ?'
I howled at the storekeeper.
...
Gippo was all this time speed-reading books and
tossing them over his shoulder behind him like
banana skins. 

"I came to you so you wouldn't be lonesome."
"I'm never lonesome with Shell. You think the 
intimacy thing will be all right, then ?"
"I sure do doubt it, but it's worth a try," 
Brenda Frances said. "For me, you're the likeliest 
jackpot in town. Where else would I find such a 
soft head with so much money attached ?"
"We read a seduction scene in a book once, " 
Oliver said. 

The dentist left, and he never did return to
his job or to his home. It was later heard of him 
that he had first abandoned dentistry and then life. 

But Sheryl Smith finds it : It's an eternal return story, the unsuccessful love that goes on forever. Anteros (=anti + eros) is the man (myth) who loves but can't be loved, and Magdalen is the woman (myth) who is loved but can't love anyone in return. They continue to meet through time, and when they do, it's a catastrophe: she's destroyed by his pursuit, and he's doomed to endless misery. All the translations - that beautiful, acrid verse - are from their encounters in the past, and the story hints that they will continue to meet and destroy each other in the future. It's a gorgeous, painful, beautifully structured tale. The imagery winnows your mind like knives and the symbols ring like gongs.

He was about the last of them.
What ? The last of the great individualists ? The
last of the true creative geniuses of the century ?
The last of the sheer precursors ?
No. No. He was the last of the dolts.
Kids were being born smarter all the time when he
came along, and they would be so forever more. He
was about the last dumb kid ever born. 

"Here's another one that Epikt received from an uncertified person," Gregory said. "It's signed Damn Knecht or Damn Knight an odd name in either case.

Lafferty refers to Damon Knight here.

When you have shot and killed a man you have in 
some measure clarified your attitude toward him. 
You have given a definite answer to a definite 
problem.For better or worse you have acted 
decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.

Why read newspapers when you can get 
your information much more directly ?  
Entrails are gut-level books with everything
in them literally.

The beginner is urged to stay with bird entrails
till he is completely proficient, and really 
there is nothing wrong with staying with them 
forever.
Entrails of only one sort are easier to read than
bird entrails, and so these are used to great 
advantage where local custom
permits. 

The name of the best-known stone in the world is 
unknown. It is usually called the Black Stone of 
Kaaba, but the Kaaba is the name of the building 
that is built around the stone. The Black Stone 
is too holy to have a name, ot to have its name 
known.

...

Selim entered the Kaaba. He was a devout Moslem
and he had certificates to prove it. He passed a 
test in Arabic; and the confidence man, who seemed 
to be well-known, guaranteed him absolutely. 

"Maurice and me is partners," 
I tell them all. "We look alike and think alike. 
We even talk alike."
"Save I in the hieratic and he in the demotic,"
Maurice say. 

This is my favorite Lafferty story.

"There is nothing magic about magic" 

"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You
are the linguist"
"Howdy," said the priest.

Hey, get in on this if you're going to. They're
building it now! If you are an arty duck or a 
philosophy buff or a peace-and-benevolence beat, 
then you can go to hell - to your own appropriate 
bureau - and be heard. But if you go for the 
high-old-time stuff, then make your wants known 
here.

"Properly to carry out the next assignment for
this class, it will be necessary that you die",
the instructor said. "Some of you may not want to
do this. If you do not, I will have to demerit you 
as for 
any other neglected assignment. 

It was dark by five in the afternoon and the
rain and the thunder were so loud that we 
couldn't be heard. We dug a pit eight feet square 
and eight feet deep along the side of Kalbfleish's 
front porch. We jimmied several down-spouts, we 
dammed up a couple of runnels, and that pit was 
filling nicely. 

"No, no, Doctor, not insane. They are absolutely 
reasonable - according to the Higher Reason. They 
are organized and directed and strictly on 
schedule. To call the incidents insane would be 
almost like calling me insane."

"Mr. Scarble, we don't keep you here for your 
pool-shooting ability, though you're good at that. 
We keep you here because you're very sick - 
mentally. Now listen to me carefully: You are a 
man, and not a spider."  

Gilford Gadberry had a contempt for dawns badly
done. He knew how blatant and stylized the outdoor 
world can be in its pristine moments: the 
contrived shagginess of grass, the stupidity of 
trees, the falsity of flowers, the oafishness of 
the birds and their inept melody.

Now - in one way of looking at it - his part in 
the census was finished. If only he had looked at 
it that way, he would have saved worry and trouble 
for everyone, and also ten thousand lives. But the 
instructions they had given him here were ambigous, 
for all that they had tried to make them clear.

So very early the next morning, Manuel rose and 
cooked beans and said, "Might as well take them 
all."

So they did. They carried it through.  And, 
for a week there , they had one of the great affairs  
of the century.  Well, maybe it was a bad century. 
And maybe the great affairs are pretty ordinary 
when they are stripped down.

   Four pieces needed in this plan
   To make the flaming rocket man
   A mask, a pitch, a brain to whiz it;
   The fourth - well, what the Devil is it? 

Floating Justice was achieved. All inequities 
were compensated. The meanest and weakest man 
in the universe now possessed the Ultimate Treasure 
of the universe. Naturally they were happy. And 
naturally their happiness endured.
"There wasn't a catch to it ?" you ask out of a 
crooked face. "There is always a catch to it. It 
always goes sour at the end."

Not long ago, a major disaster happened to 
mankind. Or else it was a rather droll 
non-happening. Something was reported to be lost, 
but the name of that something doesn't seem to 
mean anything at all. 

56 x

81 x

19 x

Contributors: Johan Elzer, Sheryl Smith