R A Lafferty

R A Lafferty (born Raphael Aloysius Lafferty November 7, 1914 - March 18, 2002) was a noted science fiction and fantasy writer of Irish descent, famous for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit. He also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, In a Green Tree, a history book, The Fall of Rome, and a number of novels that could be more or less loosely called historical fiction.

Lafferty was born on 7 November 1914 in Neola, Iowa to Hugh David Lafferty (a broker dealing in oil leases and royalties) and Julia Mary Burke, a teacher, the youngest of five siblings. His first name, Raphael, derived from the day he was expected to be born on (the Feast of St. Raphael). At the age of 4, his family moved to Perry, Oklahoma. He attended night school at the University of Tulsa for two years from 1933, mostly studying math and German, but left. He then began to work for a "Clark Electric Co.", in Tulsa and apparently a newspaper as well; during this period (1939-1942), he attended the International Correspondence School.

R A Lafferty lived most of his life in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with his sister, Anna Lafferty. Lafferty served for four years in the U.S. Army during World War II when he enlisted in 1942, in Texas, North Carolina, Florida, California and Australia, New Guinea, Morotai and the Philippines (in the South Pacific Area). When he left the Army in 1946, he had become a 1st Sergeant serving as a staff sergeant and had received an Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal [1]. He never married.

R A Lafferty did not begin writing until the 1950s but he then produced thirty-two novels and more than two hundred short stories, most of them at least nominally science fiction. His first published story was "The Wagons" in New Mexico Quarterly Review (1959) (although his first published science fiction story would be "Day of the Glacier", in The Original Science Fiction Stories, 1960), and his first published novel was Past Master (1968).

Until 1971, R A Lafferty worked as an electrical engineer. After that, he spent his time writing until around 1980, when he retired from that activity as well, due to a stroke. In 1994, he suffered an even more severe stroke. He died 18 March 2002, aged 87 in a nursing home in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. His collected papers artefacts and ephemera were donated to the University of Tulsa's McFarlin Library. Other manuscripts are housed in the University of Iowa's Library special collections department.

Selected Bibliography

Novels

• Past Master (1968)
• The Reefs of Earth (1968)
• Space Chantey (1968)
• Fourth Mansions (1969)
• Arrive at Easterwine (1971)
• The Devil is Dead (1971)
• The Flame Is Green (1971)
• Apocalypses (1977)
• Reefs of Earth (1977)
• Aurelia (1982)
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1982)
• Annals of Klepsis (1983)
• Half a Sky (1984)
• My Heart Leaps Up, Chapters 1 & 2 (1986)
• East of Laughter (1988)
• My Heart Leaps Up (1989)
• The Elliptical Grave (1989)
• My Heart Leaps Up, Chapters 9 & 10 (1990)
• Dotty (1990)
• Iron Tears (1992)
• Tales of Midnight (1992)
• Tales of Chicago (1992)
• Argo (1992)
• Alaric: The Day the World Ended (1993)

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