The Best of R. A. Lafferty
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
Acclaimed as one of the most original voices in modern literature, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty has been awarded and nominated for a multitude of accolades over the span of his career, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
This collection contains 22 unique tall tales, including:
Hugo Award-winning
'Eurema's Dam' - introduced by Robert Silverberg
Hugo Award-nominated
'Continued on the Next Rock' - introduced by Nancy Kress
'Sky' - introduced by Gwenda Bond
Nebula Award-nominated
'In Our Block' - introduced by Neil Gaiman
And more stories introduced by other modern masters of SF who acknowledge
R.A. Lafferty as a major influence and force in the field.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award winner Lafferty (1914 2002) wrote the 22 stories of this distinguished collection in the 1960s and '70s. Offbeat, usually joyful, and always a few steps beyond reality, these tales showcase Lafferty's humanism and linguistic mastery. Lafferty lived most of his life in Oklahoma and drew on the U.S. Western and Native American tall-tale traditions for stories like "Narrow Valley," which celebrates human decency and resilience. In Hugo winner "Eurema's Dam," Lafferty's schlemiel inventor Albert hilariously and eerily forecasts today's computer-centric world. "The Primary Education of the Camiroi," presented as a report to a PTA, skewers self-serving and illogical leaps in education, like speed reading and curriculum overhauls; it even suggests that "a little constructive book burning, especially in the field of education" may be necessary for human progress. Each story is accompanied by an introduction by a noted contemporary science fiction author, among them Samuel R. Delany, Neil Gaiman, and Nancy Kress. In clever prose, Lafferty invites readers both to deplore human frailties and learn to laugh at them, resulting in a collection to reread and savor.
