We’re told not to meet our heroes, lest they disappoint. Too late for me to meet R.A. Lafferty, alas. He lived 1914 – 2002. Just think of the changes he saw. THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY compiles many of the short stories illustrating these times. From the people who make all the moveable iron type in the world, to the last of the maritime pirates, to kids playing on the block for want of other amusements (and vanishing fire hydrants result) we can trace the progression. Lafferty wrote no novels.

My first story by Lafferty was ‘Slow Tuesday Night’ in a collection of the year’s best SF; it may well be the only story I recall from that book. Editor Jonathan Strahan has sensibly placed this adventure first, and each short tale has its own new introduction from a bevy of famous names, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis among them. You could not find more Hugo and Nebula winners and nominees if you dangled a free ticket on the next space tourism flight.

Slow Tuesday Night is quintessential Lafferty. A dab of science, which seems quite reasonable although absurd. A smattering of new words or known ones used strangely. And people acting as people generally do, only faster. Because in this time, people are able to remove the slow-down which has afflicted us; fortunes can be made and lost as fads come and go, three times a night; weddings are on the cards along with the new wealth, divorces with the failures. Lafferty is exaggerating, but he is not wrong, if you consider how change and daily activity has speeded up even during the past decade. Our lives have been getting faster, and we are adapting.

Narrow Valley returns to quieter, slower times, covering land grants, settlers and dustbowl refugees. As with every collection, there will be some stories you’ll love and some that you’ll just like, even dislike a few. I enjoyed Nor Limestone Islands, which posits islands of floating stone (and we know pumice can float, but this is in the air).  In Our Block strolls down a depressed era street in the shabby edge of town, where the people are a bit odd and have neat skills. Ride a Tin Can – well. It’s sad. Anthropology and a planet where newly arrived people are exploiting the life forms. As they do. Seven-Day Terror is a hoot; kids are highly inventive, and who knows what they’ll call fun and games.

When you’ve laughed and considered and liked, maybe you’ll get on better with Sky than I did; I was reading and I thought, but I don’t want to read about drug addicts. Lafferty was showing us what he saw at that time, and the mess that people who kept tripping made of their lives. He probably was tired of them too. Some stories are dark and morbid, as who wouldn’t have dark thoughts mid-20th century and produce them again in SF stories. For this reason, I recommend not reading the whole book at once, but dipping in and absorbing a few at a time, balancing the light and the dark.

THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY combines wit, inventiveness and wordsmithing, plus the companionable chat of the introductions by various authors. I’m delighted to have read the compendium.