Nine Hundred Grandmothers

Lafferty is the most "me" author I've read in a long time. Relegated to the "sci-fi ghetto", his stories are more of a type of American magical realism than science fiction. A lot of them take place in ambiguous time periods that resemble some kind of mythic past and future combined. A few of them take place on an epic, tragic scale, but most of them are comic with inventive wordplay. It's a shame that this collection, like much of Lafferty's work, is out of print.

4.5 stars.
My first encounter with R. A. Laugh-ferty. His humor and cleverness are quite astounding. He sets up gags and jokes in the middle of serious situations. His humor is often so unexpectedly outrageous it is harrowing. He made me catch my breath and squint my eyes. It is all a matter of subverting expectations. And he has a way of throwing out an offensively absurd line and then justifying it a few lines later. Anything can happen at any moment. And yet it all adds up to a satisfying conclusion.

In several of the stories, RAL seems to be commenting on Capitalism, contraception, xenophobia, economy, relationships, mortality, and conventional science fiction tropes. But often, it is impossible to separate straight satire from show more facetious propaganda.

These stories are wacky, gruesome, inappropriate, hilarious, abstract, and still compact. They operate almost entirely on dream-logic, and are guaranteed to baffle and entertain. A few times I was ready to move on, in the sense that I felt I had already gotten the joke, but he felt the need to throw in a few more punch lines. His wit is ripe though, and holds up well with the passage of time. Some of the stories are re-readable in my opinion, but knowing the plot-twists, or predicting them can ruin part of the fun. He still reads like a Golden Age science fiction author, and can run circles around some of his contemporaries as far as plot goes.

My only gripe is his choppy, chunky, rough sentence structure. Occasionally reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's sloppily constructed, contrari-wise, underachieving sentences, Lafferty's take some getting used to. But he is worth it. The clownish antics border on bizzaro-genius. show less

A collection of science fiction short stories published in 1970. This was one of the earliest collections of R. A. Lafferty's stories which are both weird and funny: so think of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles or Cordwainer Smith's collections of short stories to get an idea of the sort of territory that we are in. Lafferty however pushes his stories to extremes with their twisted logic and devil may care approach. They move along at breakneck speed with no unnecessary time spent on world building, character development or atmosphere. its all about the weird development of the storyline. The reader must take everything on trust and enjoy the ride.

My favourite stories were the title story:
A Special Aspects agent arrives on an asteroid show more where the inhabitants speak about the living dolls. He finds out that the people never die they just get older and smaller. He goes deep underground to find the oldest grandmother.

The Six FIngers of Time
A man wakes up one morning to find that the world has almost come to a stop. People are like statues, but they are moving imperceptibly. The man realises that it is he that is moving a hundred times faster. He takes advantage of the situation.

Frog on the mountain
The civilised race the Rogha have been reduced to a few survivors; the barbarian Organta are taking over the planet. Garamask a professional hunter arrives to complete a legendary killing sequence of exotic animals. He hires Chova an Organta as a guide who he thinks has killed his friend allyn on a previous expedition. A blood and guts story of survival and revenge.

Snuffles
On Belotta the planet of fun a small human expeditionary force are tracked down by a bearlike creature who is a self styled creator of worlds.

The name of the Snake
A missionary from earth is determined to root out sin on the planet Analos. Unfortunately in the Utopian society that exists there, the Land-master says there is no sin and proves conclusively that sin no longer exists. The missionary insists that there is...........

All the People
A politician claims he knows 30,000 people, a Philosopher says he knows 12; he is a little absent minded. Tony the tin man who the children and dogs make a mockery of knows everybody; not realising he is a super computer.
One at a time
The story of a man who has learnt to die without any stress so that he can resurrect himself for super indulgent weekends before it is time for him to die again.

I enjoyed most of these stories some of which make pertinent points about our own situation on our planet today, but I did not feel that this was the main aim of the stories. They are more like what if....... situations, what if you could move so fast that other people were standing still, what if a back street entepeneur could make anything you asked for in a few minutes, what if migrants from another planet appeared on earth in such numbers that there was no longer room to walk on the sidewalks, what if an advanced civilisation had a school curriculum so pertinent that it put anything humans had to shame. It has to be said that a few of the stories are just too silly and as short as they are outstay their welcome, however there is so much originality and fun to most of them that I was eager to turn the pages to the next one - 4 stars. show less

There is no rating. There is every rating. Lafferty just is what he is and you ingest his off-logic like a drug and follow the ride. Never get too emotionally invested, yet giggle along with his great human pessimist joke. I love this stuff and yet it never gets me too deep, so I'm compromising on a four. I agree with whoever it was who said Lafferty is weird like Dick but interested a lot more in systems than people. It's all ABOUT systems, great big Rube Goldberg devices of systems that chew folks up and spit them out weirder, and maybe you get eaten by an insect alternate universe clone of your wife along the way.

No ha llegado a gustarme este volumen de cuentos de R.A. Lafferty. Me gusta el humor, la ironía y la sátira. Pocas veces me he reído tanto como con David Lodge, Martin Amis, Kurt Vonnegut o John Fante. Quizá no me gusta tanto aplicado a la ciencia ficción, creo yo. Añado que también me gusta (poco) el surrealismo, pero con lo que no puedo es con el absurdo. Y en esta antología hay mucho, demasiado, en mi opinión.

‘Novecientas abuelas’ (Nine Hundred Grandmothers, 1970; original que en español, por esas cosas extrañas de las editoriales, se dividió en dos volúmenes, el presente y ‘Los seis dedos del tiempo’), empieza de manera magnífica con el relato que da título al libro. En él, Cerán Bibueno, Experto en Aspectos show more Especiales, se dispone a descubrir el secreto de los proavitoi, una raza alienígena, que según ellos nunca mueren. Me parece que es el único relato que rescato de la recopilación. El resto, bastante flojo, en mi opinión. show less

An entertaining collection of Lafferty's short stories that sometimes gets repetitive but is always interesting.

900 grootmoeders is een verzameling van korte verhalen geschreven door R. A. Lafferty. Het boek bevat 21 verhalen en een voorwoord geschreven door de auteur.
De verhalen in dit boek zijn tien tot enkele tientallen pagina’s lang en lopen uiteen van science fiction tot historische fictie. Ze zijn allemaal geschreven tussen 1960 en 1970, wat voor Lafferty zijn beginperiode als schrijver was.