Past Master
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Raphael Aloysius Lafferty (November 7, 1914–March 18, 2002) was born in Neola, Iowa, the youngest of five children; his father Hugh David Lafferty was an oil lease broker and his mother Julia Mary (Burke) Lafferty a teacher. At age four, he moved with his family to Perry, Oklahoma, and later to Tulsa, where he would live most of his life with his mother and sister Anna. After graduating from Cascia Hall Preparatory School in 1932, he attended night classes at the University of Tulsa for two years while beginning a career as an electrical supply clerk; he later completed courses in electrical engineering by correspondence, and spent a year in Washington, D.C., as a civil service messenger. Language-learning became a lifelong hobby.
In 1942 Lafferty enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving in the 229th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion in the Pacific. He returned to Tulsa in 1946, where he worked for Clark Electrical Company until his retirement in 1971. He published his first short story—“The Wagons,” in the Spring 1959 New Mexico Quarterly Review—at forty-five, and soon attracted the attention of influential editors such as Frederik Pohl, Terry Carr, Damon Knight, Robert Silverberg, and Judith Merril for his science fiction. His first novel, Past Master, appeared in 1968, followed the same year by The Reefs of Earth and Space Chantey; later novels included Fourth Mansions (1969), The Devil Is Dead (1971), Arrive at Easterwine: The Autobiography of a Ktistec Machine (1971), Okla Hannali (1972), Not to Mention Camels (1976), Archipelago (1979), Aurelia (1982), Annals of Klepsis (1983), Serpent’s Egg (1987), East of Laughter (1988), How Many Miles to Babylon? (1989), Sindbad: The 13th Voyage (1989), Dotty (1990), and More Than Melchisedech (1992). He began collecting his short stories with Nine Hundred Grandmothers in 1970, subsequently publishing Strange Doings (1972), Does Anyone Else Have Something Further to Add? (1974), Funnyfingers & Cabrito (1976), Apocalypses (1977), Golden Gate and Other Stories (1982), Heart of Stone, Dear and Other Stories (1983), Snake in His Bosom and Other Stories (1983), Through Elegant Eyes (1983), Ringing Changes (1984), Slippery and Other Stories (1985), The Early Lafferty (1988), The Back Door of History (1988), The Early Lafferty II (1990), Episodes of the Argo (1990), Lafferty in Orbit (1991), Mischief Malicious (And Murder Most Strange) (1991), and Iron Tears (1992). He received the 1973 Hugo Award for his short story “Eurema’s Dam.”
Though he publicly retired from his literary career in 1984, Lafferty wrote his last stories around 1991. In 1990 he was honored with a Life Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention. He died in a Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, nursing home after a series of strokes. Several of his novels remain unpublished.
Andrew Ferguson, a leading Lafferty scholar, is currently finishing up a biography of this neglected master. He serves as visiting assistant professor of English and Digital Studies at the University of Maryland.