Well a Lafferty story isn't for the squeamish, that's for sure. Gory details are unavoidable and some of the victims show strange masochistic ? tendencies (f.e. in Space Chantey). Death is a persistent theme, although sometimes not as final as one might expect (as in "One at a Time". )

But this is just the wrapping, the packaging. A Lafferty story is (maybe foremost) a tall tale, a liars story, a whimsical yarn told. Most stories also treat philosophical problems, explore a notion, try to find different answers to the questions you never asked yourself. Like

• What do you do with your ancestors, if they simple don't want to die ?
• If you could change one piece of history, how would it affect your current world ?
• Do all people perceive the world the same ?
• Can murder be art ?

There is nobody, there has never been anybody who writes like Lafferty. Under the puckishness, the color-bursts, the wild, weird and wonderful characterizations, the tumbe and sparkle of language, is an undercoat of sharp and serious observation - observation of human motivations, of human institutions (universities, for example, or rituals which have lost their reason-for-being) so that, like Gulliver's Travels, almost all of Lafferty can be read as enchanting entertainments, or as sharply-etched political cartoonery, or as analogs of a superbly thought-out philosophy concerning human nature and human conduct. In other words, you get out of Lafferty, as out of Swift, whatever you're equipped to bring in.

Links to other online stories can be found on the Links page.