R. A. Lafferty

Born in Neola, Iowa, in 1914 and long based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, R. A. Lafferty was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction whose work became especially admired in the 1960s and 1970s. Before writing full-time, he worked for years in the electrical business and began publishing science fiction only in his forties, an unusually late start that makes the confidence and strangeness of his voice feel even more remarkable.

Lafferty is remembered for short stories and novels that sound unlike anyone else: funny, sly, wildly imaginative, and often built in the shape of a spoken tale rather than a conventional modern story. Readers and critics have often pointed to his love of myth, Irish storytelling traditions, and playful language, along with the philosophical and religious ideas that run through his fiction. Among his best-known novels are Past Master and Fourth Mansions.

He published more than 200 short stories and a large body of novels, earning a lasting reputation as a writer other writers treasured. Even when his books were hard to find, his reputation only grew, because his work offered something rare in speculative fiction: a sense that anything could happen, and that behind the joke or the yarn there might be a profound truth.