{"id":19764,"date":"2021-04-22T12:02:27","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T17:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=19764"},"modified":"2023-06-01T10:25:48","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T15:25:48","slug":"unpublished-lafferty-novels-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=19764","title":{"rendered":"Unpublished Lafferty Novels Redux"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some nine years ago, I published this post<\/a> on Andrew Ferguson\u2019s NYRSF<\/i> piece on unpublished R. A. Lafferty works. These included: <\/p>\n

  • Loup Garou<\/b>, a werewolf mystery\n
  • Civil Blood<\/b>, an anti-communist novel\n
  • Antonio Vescovo<\/b>, a very early novel described as “a cross between Rabelais and The Lives of the Saints<\/b>”\n
  • Dark Shine<\/b>, about gifted children and an evil protagonist, and\n
  • When All the World Was Young<\/b>, a plague novel in which everyone over the age of 10 is killed.\n<\/li>\n

    I also knew about the unpublished “In a Green Tree” novels:<\/p>\n

  • Grasshoppers and Wild Honey 1928-1942<\/b> (first two chapters published, the rest unpublished)\n
  • Deep Scars of the Thunder 1942-1960<\/b>\n
  • Incidents of Travel in Flatland 1960-1978<\/b><\/li>\n

    (A project fifth volume, In the Akrokeraunian Mountains 1978-1990<\/b>, was evidently started but never completed<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

    I was also aware of the third and fourth volumes in the Coscuin Chronicles series:<\/p>\n

  • Sardinian Summer<\/b>\n
  • First and Last Island<\/b><\/li>\n

    However, this wiki<\/a> (evidently created by Ferguson) includes still more novels I haven’t heard about before:<\/p>\n

  • Esteban<\/b>, “a historical novel<\/a> tracking the life and travels of the African slave who was the first ‘white’ (i.e., non-Native) man to enter much of what would become the southwestern United States”\n
  • Fair Hills of Ocean, Oh!<\/b>, “About a dolphin who is a quadruple-agent spy<\/a> and the invasion of dry land by the king of the oceans.”\n
  • Iron Tongue of Midnight<\/b> (I know nothing about, except it shares the same title as a 1988 Lafferty poem)\n
  • Mantis<\/b> (evidently a mystery novel)\n<\/li>\n

    Not listed there, and only listed on a couple of dubious webpages, so I have my doubts as to whether it actually exists, is The Giant Ratchet of Sumatra<\/b> (with Sharon Scott). There is<\/i> a reference to a first chapter manuscript<\/a> in the University of Tulsa archives, but I see no sign that it had ever been completed. <\/p>\n

    Excluding the dubious and unfinished, by my count that’s fourteen unpublished Lafferty novels<\/i>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Some nine years ago, I published this post on Andrew Ferguson\u2019s NYRSF piece on unpublished R. A. Lafferty works. These included: Loup Garou, a werewolf mystery Civil Blood, an anti-communist novel Antonio Vescovo, a very early novel described as “a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":118,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,137,5],"tags":[2492,1973,1983,84,1970,1315],"class_list":["post-19764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fantasy","category-science-fiction","tag-andrew-ferguson","tag-books","tag-fantasy","tag-r-a-lafferty","tag-science-fiction","tag-unpublished-works"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19764"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22219,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19764\/revisions\/22219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}