The SF Humorists

By Martin Theodore

Though science fiction is often unintentionally funny, there have been occasional exponents of the form that were funny on purpose. Some of these people were actually very good at it, for example the late R(aphael) A(loysius) Lafferty.

Lafferty's surreal comic portraits adorned the pages of science fiction magazines and books throughout the sixties, seventies, and eighties, with his output dropping in the nineties as age and illness overtook him. But one can easily find his work at Amazon or any other reputable book retailer...and then be both charmed and amused by the likes of Homer Hoose, who had a hole on the corner. A bibliography of his work can be found at: RA Lafferty

Likewise with John Sladek, whose Reproductive System hit sf like a body blow, with aficionados of the genre giggling and snuffling along...this British writer went on to pen many fine short stories and novels, both alone and in collaboration with Thomas M Disch.

Douglas AdamsThe English have been known at times to have a rather peculiar sense of humor, and chief among the British SF humorists was the late Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhikers' Guide trilogy (now in six volumes) became a cottage industry... selling something like 18 million copies, spawning comic adaptations, a six-hour film, many imitators, and a liking for funny science fiction among members of the public, which seems to have hit its stride with the recent Men In Black films, adapted rather loosely from Lowell Cunningham's comic books.

But the British are not alone in penning funny science fiction. Ron Goulart has been writing seriously funny sf for decades, along with Isidore Haiblum, and one does not give short shrift to the king of them all, Robert Sheckley, an influential writer whose Seventh Victim was made into the film the Tenth Victim. Sheckley has been writing sidesplitting stories since the late thirties, and is still going strong. Recommended stories by this writer would include the aforementioned Seventh Victim and the short novel Options.

There are some others plying their trade as well. Reginald Bretnor has his tales of Papa Schimmelhorn, John E Stith has his frequently tongue-in-cheek tales of a hard-boiled detective in the near future, and the late Eric Frank Russell had many examples of a finely-honed sense of the ridiculous, as in his award-winning tale And Then There Were None.

One cannot go wrong with any of these worthies...a chuckle here, a guffaw there, and a belly laugh to boot are the results of casual perusal of these men's works.

Bibliographies of them all can be found at Fantastic Fiction.

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