The Obscure Sci-Fi Author Who Became Tulsa’s Tall-Tale Biographer

‘Where do you get your stories, Oread?’
‘I tell my mother I make them out of iron.’
‘And where do you really get them?’
‘I make them out of iron.’
—“Funnyfingers,” 1965

In the caves along the west side of the Arkansas River, a girl who isn’t really a girl at all makes words in a smithy. She's as clever as she is lovely, but don't let her childlike stature fool you: she's as ancient as the hills themselves. 

Elsewhere across the river, a pair of gentlemen wander a shantytown that’s seemingly sprung up overnight, where odd-speaking people peddle their wares and services with smiles and neighborly congeniality. Down the street, a kid picks up a small tube that can make objects disappear just by looking through it, causing all sorts of mayhem for the usually quiet community. And somewhere out in the Cimarron, a cadre of academics have drinks with a living comet, all of them waiting to be reborn through a baptism of mud and earth.

These are just a few of the people and places you'll meet in the fiction of the late Raphael Aloysius (R.A.) Lafferty, an Iowa-born but Tulsa-based writer who churned out some of the most imaginative speculative fiction of the 1960s and 1970s. He’s one of the most readable, delightful authors I’ve encountered. And with his stylistic blend of science fiction with folkish, tall-tale wit, he may also be the most Tulsan. 

Lafferty moved here with his family at age four, and aside from a stint in the Army, he lived here until his death. During the many years he worked in an electrical supply shop downtown, Lafferty published over 200 short stories and 32 novels, most of which capture a Tulsa that doesn’t exist anymore—at least not in a physical sense. His Tulsa is one of cable cars, of taking the rails to Sand Springs, of banks of caves along the Arkansas river used as hideouts for bootlegging and storage. His story “Grey Ghost: A Reminiscence” takes place on Halloween night in 1924 at the old Electric Park dog track that Lafferty locates “south of Tulsa between Peoria and the Arkansas River,” offering a window into his childhood experience of a bygone Tulsa preserved in prose.

Despite his impressive output, his work tends to linger in relative obscurity. If anyone comes to Lafferty at all these days, it’s likely at the recommendation of another, more famous author. Jeff VanderMeer, Samuel R. Delany, Connie Willis, and John Scalzi all consider him either an influence or a favorite. His most notable champion for decades has been Neil Gaiman, who cites Lafferty as one of his earliest influences and obsessions (an unfortunate connection for Lafferty, given the recent revelations about Gaiman’s coercive manipulation of women).