R. A. Lafferty

Born in Neola, Iowa, in 1914 and raised from childhood in Perry, Oklahoma, R. A. Lafferty became one of the most distinctive American speculative writers of the 20th century. He attended the University of Tulsa, served in the U.S. Army during World War II, and spent many years working in the electrical business before turning to writing more seriously.

That unusual path shaped his career. Lafferty published his first science-fiction story in 1960, when he was already in his forties, and retired in 1970 to write full time. He became especially admired for short stories and novels from the 1960s and 1970s that mixed folklore, comedy, philosophy, history, and a storyteller's delight in exaggeration. Readers often remember him less for fitting neatly into a genre than for sounding like nobody else.

Alongside science fiction and fantasy, he also wrote historical work and autobiographical fiction. His reputation has endured because his fiction feels both old and new at the same time: rooted in oral storytelling, yet wildly inventive in form and language. He died in 2002.