"“In the tracks of our spiritual father Ivan Sanderson we may now have trailed a clutch of ABSMs to their lair,” the eminent scientist Arpad Arkabaranan was saying in his rattling voice. “And that lair may not be a mountain thicket or rain forest or swamp, but these scrimpy red clay flats. I would almost give my life for the success of this quest, but it seems that it should have a more magnificent setting.” “It looks like a wild goose chase,” the eminent scientist Willy McGilly commented. But no, Willy was not downgrading their quest. He was referring to the wild geese that rose about them from the edges of the flats with clatter and whistle and honk."  —R. A. Lafferty

“The [myth] cycle at its most positive—what Lafferty elsewhere calls the ascending spiral—can be seen in the richly marvellous “Boomer Flats.” In this tale three scientists discover a group of living Neanderthals — the Lafferteian version of “the link that is never really missing, the link between the clay and the blood” — resulting in a death-and-rebirth experience in which the reader participates more literally than is usual.”

—Sheryl Smith, Riverside Quarterly Vol. 7 No. 2 (1982)