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.
The 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.
http:/moderan.members.easyspace.com
Return to the Front Page
|