“Terry Carr taught me that a story must begin with a bang ... Well, maybe all stories don't have to begin with a bang, but all Terry Carr storles had to begin with a bang of some sort. Terry also told me that 'You can lose a reader, completely and forever, in fifteen seconds. Never leave him even a fifteen-second interval without a hook to jerk him back.' Anything else Terry told me is contained in those two very good pieces of advice. On Nine Hundred Grandmothers, Terry gave me his preferences of the stories to go in the book, and asked me if I wanted to make any changes. They were all good stories, and I didn't make any changes.”
—R. A. Lafferty, Interview by Tom Jackson, Lan's Lantern #39 (1991)
"They were down on the big asteroid Proavitus — a sphere that almost tinkled with the potential profit that might be shaken out of it. And the tough men of the Expedition knew their business. They signed big contracts on the native velvet-like bark scrolls and on their own parallel tapes. They impressed, inveigled and somewhat cowed the slight people of Proavitus. Here was a solid two-way market, enough to make them slaver. And there was a whole world of oddities that could lend themselves to the luxury trade." —R. A. Lafferty
"Hauser honks like a gander! That clattering laugh of Goldbeater! Snodden sniggers so loud that it echos! Cooper's boom is like barrels rolling downstairs, and your own — it'll shrivel me, Dismas. Imagine the weirdest cacophony ever — Oh no! I wasn't thinking of one so weird as that!” Musical screaming! Glorious gibbering with an undertone that could shatter rocks! Hooting of a resonance plainly too deep for so small an instrument! Yowling, hoodoo laughing, broken roaring, rhinoceros grunting! And the child came tumbling out of the tall rocks of Doolen's Mountain, leaping down the flanks of the hill as though she was a waterfall. And both the men laughed. “Your Ginny is the weirdest cacophony I can imagine, Dismas,” Dr. Minden said. “It scares me, and I love it. Your daughter is the most remarkable creature in the world." —R. A. Lafferty
"“In the street there was no motion, no real motion. A truck, first seeming at rest, moved very slowly. There was no gear in which it could move so slowly. And there was a taxi which crept along, but Charles Vincent had to look at it carefully for some time to be sure that it was in motion. Then he received a shock. He realized by the early morning light that the driver of it was dead. Dead with his eyes wide open! Slowly as it was going, and by whatever means it was moving, it should really be stopped. He walked over to it, opened the door, and pulled on the brake. Then he looked into the eyes of the dead man. Was he really dead? It was hard to be sure. He felt warm. But, even as Vincent looked, the eyes of the dead man had begun to close. And close they did and open again in a matter of about twenty seconds." —R. A. Lafferty
"“It had been a slow Tuesday night. A few hundred new products had run their course on the markets. There had been a score of dramatic hits, three-minute and five-minute capsule dramas, and several of the six-minute long-play affairs. Night Street Nine—a solidly sordid offering—seemed to be in as the drama of the night unless there should be a late hit. Hundred-storied buildings had been erected, occupied, obsoleted, and demolished again to make room for more contemporary structures. Only the mediocre would use a building that had been left over from the Day-Flies or the Dawners, or even the Nyctalops of the night before. The city was rebuilt pretty completely at least three times during an eight-hour period.”" —R. A. Lafferty
· 2010 Arthur B. Evans, The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction · 1979 James Gunn, The Road To Science Fiction #3 · 1966 Nebula Nominee, Best Short Story
"“I always said we'd find one of them that was fun,” remarked Brian. “There's been entirely too much solemnity in the universe. Did you never panic on thinking of the multiplicity of systems?” “Never,” said Georgina. “Not even when, having set down a fine probability for the totality of worlds, you realized suddenly that you had to raise it by a dozen powers yet?” “What's to panic?” “Not even when it comes over you, ‘This isn't a joke; this is serious; every one of them is serious’?” “ ‘Cosmic intimidation,’ Belloc called it. And it does tend to minimize a person.” “And did you never hope that out of all that prodigality of worlds, one at least should have been made for fun? One should have been made by a wild child or a mixed-up goblin just to put the rest of them in proper perspective, to deflate the pomposity of the cosmos.”" —R. A. Lafferty
"In the year 1893, land allotments in severalty were made to the remaining eight hundred and twenty-one Pawnee Indians. Each would receive one hundred and sixty acres of land and no more, and thereafter the Pawnees would be expected to pay taxes on their land, the same as the White-Eyes did. “Kitkehahke!” Clarence Big-Saddle cussed. “You can't kick a dog around proper on a hundred and sixty acres." —R. A. Lafferty
"Art Slick and Jim Boomer went to the rundown building next door. It was smaller, about a six-foot cube, and the sign said Public Stenographer . The clatter of a typewriter was coming from it, but the noise stopped when they opened the door. A dark pretty girl was sitting in a chair before a small table. There was nothing else in the room, and no typewriter. “I thought I heard a typewriter in here,” Art said. “Oh that is me.” The girl smiled. “Sometimes I amuse myself make typewriter noises like a public stenographer is supposed to.”" —R. A. Lafferty
"I'm Joe Spade — about as intellectual a guy as you'll find all day. I invented Wotto and Voxo and a bunch of other stuff that nobody can get along without anymore. It's on account of I have so much stuff in my head that I sometimes go to a head-grifter. This day all of them I know is out of town when I call. Lots of times everybody I know is out of town when I call. I go to a new one. The glass in his door says he is a anapsychologist, which is a head-grifter in the popular speech. “I'm Joe Spade the man that got everything,” I tell him and slap him on the back in that hearty way of mine. There is a crunch sound and at first I think I have crack his rib. Then I see I have only broke his glasses so no harm done." —R. A. Lafferty
"Is there anything you want to make disappear?” Clarence Willoughby asked his mother. “A sink full of dishes is all I can think of. How will you do it?” “I just built a disappearer. All you do is cut the other end out of a beer can. Then you take two pieces of red cardboard with peepholes in the middle and fit them in the ends. You look through the peepholes and blink. Whatever you look at will disappear.” “Oh.” “But I don't know if I can make them come back.” “We'd better try it on something else. Dishes cost money." —R. A. Lafferty
"John Sourwine is always interested in new things, or old things returned. So John went down to Barnaby's Barn to see the Odd One. There was no need to ask which one he was, though there were always strangers and traveling men and seamen unknown to John in the Barn. The Odd One stood out. He was a big, spare, tough fellow, and he said that his name was McSkee. He was eating and drinking with a chortling pleasure, and they all watched him in amazement. “It's his fourth plate of spaghetti,” Smokehouse confided to Sour John, “and that is the last of two dozen eggs...”" —R. A. Lafferty
"“We have few Scandinavian arrivals, and none of such appearance as this,” said Winston. “How many are there?” “Well, sir, when we first noticed them there were seven, and they hadn't been there a moment before.” “Seven? You're crazy. There are hundreds.” “Yes, sir. I'm crazy. A minute after there were seven, there were seventeen. But no more had come from anywhere. Then there were sixty. We separated them into groups of ten and watched them very closely. None crossed from one group to another, none came from anywhere else. But soon there were fifteen, then twenty-five, then thirty in each group." —R. A. Lafferty
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