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Annals of Klepsis
OH COME TO KLEPSIS TO
CLAIM YOUR SHARE . . .
AND BREATHE THE RANK
AND LAWLESS AIR! Plots and intrigues and romances abound.
Smoke pictures, ghosts, and treasure chests to be found.
Magnifying monocles and hallucinogenic grapes--
the unvoiced dreams of the dregs of space. Long John Tony Tyrone, the peg-legged historian, journeys there . . .
And marries a Princess with rainbow hair. But the Ghost of Christopher Brannagan will not rest
Until mathematician Aloysius has put to the test
His theory concerning the Doomsday Equation
Which might save the planet from total devastation.
Or might not.
CLAIM YOUR SHARE . . .
AND BREATHE THE RANK
AND LAWLESS AIR! Plots and intrigues and romances abound.
Smoke pictures, ghosts, and treasure chests to be found.
Magnifying monocles and hallucinogenic grapes--
the unvoiced dreams of the dregs of space. Long John Tony Tyrone, the peg-legged historian, journeys there . . .
And marries a Princess with rainbow hair. But the Ghost of Christopher Brannagan will not rest
Until mathematician Aloysius has put to the test
His theory concerning the Doomsday Equation
Which might save the planet from total devastation.
Or might not.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
3 people are currently reading
127 people want to read
About the author
R.A. Lafferty
541 books317 followersRaphael Aloysius Lafferty, published under the name R.A. Lafferty, was an American science fiction and fantasy writer known for his original use of language, metaphor, and narrative structure, as well as for his etymological wit. He also wrote a set of four autobiographical novels, a history book, and a number of novels that could be loosely called historical fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
March 11, 2026
Lafferty at most playful. Given the Astro-nautical slant (look at that cover) I was expecting something like his reimaging of The Odyssey in Space Chantey, and this picks up some of its concerns with storytelling and the persistance of legends. But it balances at the edge of legendary prehistory and the advent of history, on world just preparing to escape from its vaguely cyclic time and into a modern era, if it can escape the mathematically-assured apocalypse. Lafferty was himself a historian (and wrote an entire history of the fall of Rome), but also an armchair theologian -- this bears the marks of both. Breezy and well-charactered in the way of mythic tales (a typical Lafferty approach is to build a character from a single trait that he sticks in the name, but he gets more effective mileage out of that than you might expect), occasionally stuck in odd digressive discourse, occasionally those are the best bits.
May 16, 2020
Another jaw-droppingly good Lafferty novel that makes you wonder how he is as obscure as he is.
Annals of Klepsis ["Klepsis" is Greek for "theft", as in kleptomania] is, as with all Lafferty novels, crazy on the surface. It's about a planet founded and loosely ruled by a dynasty of peg-legged Irish pirates. It is mainly covered in fresh water. Land is rare-ish, and arrayed in a series narrow peninsulas [pay attention! surely another Greece reference!] The circumstances of Klepsis are utterly fantastical, brutal and the product of blinding creativity. People and legendary figures wink in and out of existence, and live non-linear lives. Strange and improbable creatures abound. The nature of reality is clearly not fixed. There are ghosts and false twins. Quasimodo lives there. Sailing vessels flash across deep space and back in the blink of an eye. Or maybe they don't, and the crew just didn't realize they were players in an elaborate stage production [hmm... where do our first plays come from?]. Lafferty occasionally ties events and settings explicitly to Homer [Klepsis' fresh water oceans are "wine dark"]. The inhabitants accept these circumstances phlegmatically and practically. On this level Klepsis is fun, funny and fascinating. Just sitting back and allowing Lafferty's yarn-spinning is great, though perhaps not to everyone's taste.
Klepsis is, I think, unique among Lafferty's novels in that it is a first person narration. The narrator is a historian. Klepsis's first historian. This, along with the veiled references to ancient Greece and the antediluvian Mediterranean, is key.
Because as with all Lafferty's novels, the wingding wackiness is not really the point. I'm only scratching the surface here. What Klepsis really is is Lafferty's meditation on the human experience of comprehending time.
So on the first level, this involves our transition from pre-historical eras of myth/legend to the historical era. Because while the first and founding stories of civilization (Genesis, the Iliad, etc) are familiar and baked into our culture in the extreme, when you think about it they are insane and improbable. Bizarre monsters, undying people, immortals who defy all laws of natures. Klepsis offers an alternative version of people living in a prehistoric era, but one that's not at all familiar. How strange it is! The story, then, is about the trauma of a society moving from the wild, colorful, free-form reality of an unfixed consciousness of myth-time to the "Annals" of fixed historical chronology. What does that look like to a person inside the society? It is freaking bizarre.
On the second level, Klepsis represents a vision of what it means to transition from actual non-time to time, i.e., the Big Bang (which was, incidentally, first proposed by a Catholic priest). Lafferty was a devout Catholic, and his work often offers a subtle message about how he believes reality fits into his faith. Here he wants, I think, to compare humanity's shift from ahistorical to historical, with the universe's shift from nonexistence to existence. We have scarce ability to comprehend the former, and pretty much no ability to comprehend the latter.
There is such a huge amount to unpack. Lafferty needs more attention! He is absolutely brilliant and unique.
Annals of Klepsis ["Klepsis" is Greek for "theft", as in kleptomania] is, as with all Lafferty novels, crazy on the surface. It's about a planet founded and loosely ruled by a dynasty of peg-legged Irish pirates. It is mainly covered in fresh water. Land is rare-ish, and arrayed in a series narrow peninsulas [pay attention! surely another Greece reference!] The circumstances of Klepsis are utterly fantastical, brutal and the product of blinding creativity. People and legendary figures wink in and out of existence, and live non-linear lives. Strange and improbable creatures abound. The nature of reality is clearly not fixed. There are ghosts and false twins. Quasimodo lives there. Sailing vessels flash across deep space and back in the blink of an eye. Or maybe they don't, and the crew just didn't realize they were players in an elaborate stage production [hmm... where do our first plays come from?]. Lafferty occasionally ties events and settings explicitly to Homer [Klepsis' fresh water oceans are "wine dark"]. The inhabitants accept these circumstances phlegmatically and practically. On this level Klepsis is fun, funny and fascinating. Just sitting back and allowing Lafferty's yarn-spinning is great, though perhaps not to everyone's taste.
Klepsis is, I think, unique among Lafferty's novels in that it is a first person narration. The narrator is a historian. Klepsis's first historian. This, along with the veiled references to ancient Greece and the antediluvian Mediterranean, is key.
Because as with all Lafferty's novels, the wingding wackiness is not really the point. I'm only scratching the surface here. What Klepsis really is is Lafferty's meditation on the human experience of comprehending time.
So on the first level, this involves our transition from pre-historical eras of myth/legend to the historical era. Because while the first and founding stories of civilization (Genesis, the Iliad, etc) are familiar and baked into our culture in the extreme, when you think about it they are insane and improbable. Bizarre monsters, undying people, immortals who defy all laws of natures. Klepsis offers an alternative version of people living in a prehistoric era, but one that's not at all familiar. How strange it is! The story, then, is about the trauma of a society moving from the wild, colorful, free-form reality of an unfixed consciousness of myth-time to the "Annals" of fixed historical chronology. What does that look like to a person inside the society? It is freaking bizarre.
On the second level, Klepsis represents a vision of what it means to transition from actual non-time to time, i.e., the Big Bang (which was, incidentally, first proposed by a Catholic priest). Lafferty was a devout Catholic, and his work often offers a subtle message about how he believes reality fits into his faith. Here he wants, I think, to compare humanity's shift from ahistorical to historical, with the universe's shift from nonexistence to existence. We have scarce ability to comprehend the former, and pretty much no ability to comprehend the latter.
There is such a huge amount to unpack. Lafferty needs more attention! He is absolutely brilliant and unique.
Read
March 16, 2009First off, that "plot synopsis" above (which also appears on the back of the paperback copy I had) is a lie, or at least a misconception- it pretty much sums up what happens in maybe the last 20 pages of the book.
The book's setting is sort of a blend of science fiction, in that it takes place on another planet, with "zap guns" (not called that) and everything, and fantasy, in the way Alice in Wonderland is fantasy. The very loose sprawling story takes place on Klepsis, a pirate planet, who for the last 200 hundred years has been in a state of pre-history, a state of legend. One of the thousands of things Lafferty postulates is that all pre-history and pre-legend does not take place in linear time, but because it is pre-history it all takes place at the same time; thus Hercules was a contemporary of Achilles, and thus the proportion of ghosts in this book.
Well, it wasn't my favorite story by him, I once again got very lost at the end, and all the time I have to say I was thinking of criticisms of my own book, which has been called whimsical but overly self-indulgent and confusing. Well, I like books like that, and that certainly fits Lafferty's bill, but sometimes that criticism got to me, and didn't allow me to enjoy the sprawling nature of this book as much as I could have. And sometimes this book did strike me as very self-indulgent.
Considering it was published in the early 80's, it made me wonder early on the evolution (if any) in Lafferty's writing. Is this the kind of story Vonnegut [sic:] would've written if he didn't skip out on the pitfalls of science fiction and Make It Big? I don't know. I feel like Lafferty was very self-involved and overly content with his stories and fame and fortune not only didn't appeal to him, but wouldn't have changed his writing in any way.
Though all the characters in this book are pirates, and most of them Irish pirates at least in name, very little pirating happens, except for on the very big scale.
Random Sample what-the-fuck Platonic moment:
"'It is because people are so sketchy that they cannot be anything except imaginary,' Brannagan's Ghost went on again as if he had not heard the railers. 'You have seen comic artists and caricaturists who can suggest a face and a person with no more than several broken lines on a paper. Human persons are like that, mere suggestions made out of long and short broken lines. Most humans cannot hold one millionth of their brain content in their conscious mind at one time. So then, that brain content is largely imaginary, or it is a group-shared thing to be dipped into. It is the ink pot from which the lines are drawn.'" (119)
Random Everyday Lafferty Passage:
"Then the Empress Angela rode in on a hippopotamus with a slave in chains, looking fearful and unhappy and yet quietly dignified, tied to the tail of the behemothish beast. You could have heard a shipload of hardware drop, so quiet did it become for a moment. The Empress was in scarlet for mourning. She was not in mourning for her husband Prince Henry, who was probably still alive and plotting against her. She was not in mourning for her dead lover Prince Franco, for he had not been her lover though many people believed that he had been. She was not in mourning for her father who was long dead, nor for her mother who was still alive, nor for her children of which she had none. And those were the only relationships for which a woman could go into mourning on Klepsis. The Empress was clad in mourning-scarlet because she felt like mourning and because she looked so good in scarlet." (190)
The book's setting is sort of a blend of science fiction, in that it takes place on another planet, with "zap guns" (not called that) and everything, and fantasy, in the way Alice in Wonderland is fantasy. The very loose sprawling story takes place on Klepsis, a pirate planet, who for the last 200 hundred years has been in a state of pre-history, a state of legend. One of the thousands of things Lafferty postulates is that all pre-history and pre-legend does not take place in linear time, but because it is pre-history it all takes place at the same time; thus Hercules was a contemporary of Achilles, and thus the proportion of ghosts in this book.
Well, it wasn't my favorite story by him, I once again got very lost at the end, and all the time I have to say I was thinking of criticisms of my own book, which has been called whimsical but overly self-indulgent and confusing. Well, I like books like that, and that certainly fits Lafferty's bill, but sometimes that criticism got to me, and didn't allow me to enjoy the sprawling nature of this book as much as I could have. And sometimes this book did strike me as very self-indulgent.
Considering it was published in the early 80's, it made me wonder early on the evolution (if any) in Lafferty's writing. Is this the kind of story Vonnegut [sic:] would've written if he didn't skip out on the pitfalls of science fiction and Make It Big? I don't know. I feel like Lafferty was very self-involved and overly content with his stories and fame and fortune not only didn't appeal to him, but wouldn't have changed his writing in any way.
Though all the characters in this book are pirates, and most of them Irish pirates at least in name, very little pirating happens, except for on the very big scale.
Random Sample what-the-fuck Platonic moment:
"'It is because people are so sketchy that they cannot be anything except imaginary,' Brannagan's Ghost went on again as if he had not heard the railers. 'You have seen comic artists and caricaturists who can suggest a face and a person with no more than several broken lines on a paper. Human persons are like that, mere suggestions made out of long and short broken lines. Most humans cannot hold one millionth of their brain content in their conscious mind at one time. So then, that brain content is largely imaginary, or it is a group-shared thing to be dipped into. It is the ink pot from which the lines are drawn.'" (119)
Random Everyday Lafferty Passage:
"Then the Empress Angela rode in on a hippopotamus with a slave in chains, looking fearful and unhappy and yet quietly dignified, tied to the tail of the behemothish beast. You could have heard a shipload of hardware drop, so quiet did it become for a moment. The Empress was in scarlet for mourning. She was not in mourning for her husband Prince Henry, who was probably still alive and plotting against her. She was not in mourning for her dead lover Prince Franco, for he had not been her lover though many people believed that he had been. She was not in mourning for her father who was long dead, nor for her mother who was still alive, nor for her children of which she had none. And those were the only relationships for which a woman could go into mourning on Klepsis. The Empress was clad in mourning-scarlet because she felt like mourning and because she looked so good in scarlet." (190)
October 5, 2017
As a kid, I read only fantasy and sci-fi short stories. I read anthologies, never paying attention to author names. Upon reaching a certain amount of years and bodily hair, I moved to books. I stumbled across a lunatic wonder called Apocalypses.
Working backwards in thought, I was able to identify stories years past that must have been written by Lafferty. The style-characteristics were consistent:
1) they moved freely outside all lines.
2) they were funny and weird, yet comprehensible; even eloquent.
3) They were marvelously crafted, always my latest favorites.
Annals of Klepsis is:
1) A short novel about a mad planet of peg-legged Irishmen.
2) A deep analysis of the concepts of history and reality within social paradigms.
3) A dream shared by escaped asylum inmante sitting next you on the bus.
4) All of the above. <--- correct answer
Fantasy writers talk endlessly about 'world-building'. A language, a map showing 'The Sea of This' beside 'The mountains of that' and the ancient capital of the 'Kingdom of What'. Add background murders, ancient feuds and curses; then let simmer.
Most of the thought-creation process is focused on 'What will sound realistic in terms of like everyone else's fantasy world'. We copy and paste planets now-a-days; and imagination pays the cost.
The shear power of imagination and 'I don't care what anyone else thinks' is seldom seen in fantasy. Anyone looking for it? Go visit Klepsis: planet of peg-legged Irish pirates.
Working backwards in thought, I was able to identify stories years past that must have been written by Lafferty. The style-characteristics were consistent:
1) they moved freely outside all lines.
2) they were funny and weird, yet comprehensible; even eloquent.
3) They were marvelously crafted, always my latest favorites.
Annals of Klepsis is:
1) A short novel about a mad planet of peg-legged Irishmen.
2) A deep analysis of the concepts of history and reality within social paradigms.
3) A dream shared by escaped asylum inmante sitting next you on the bus.
4) All of the above. <--- correct answer
Fantasy writers talk endlessly about 'world-building'. A language, a map showing 'The Sea of This' beside 'The mountains of that' and the ancient capital of the 'Kingdom of What'. Add background murders, ancient feuds and curses; then let simmer.
Most of the thought-creation process is focused on 'What will sound realistic in terms of like everyone else's fantasy world'. We copy and paste planets now-a-days; and imagination pays the cost.
The shear power of imagination and 'I don't care what anyone else thinks' is seldom seen in fantasy. Anyone looking for it? Go visit Klepsis: planet of peg-legged Irish pirates.
October 20, 2007
a surrealistic apocalypse from a master of surreal apocalypitic fantasy. lafferty's novels function with the logic of a bugs bunny cartoon written by kafka.
March 18, 2021
The first WTF moment happens on the first page, and Lafferty keeps them coming without giving any respite to the reader. This fits squarely in the tradition of surreal Irish humour; a phantasmagoric picaresque, side-splittinlgy funny and yet deeply and weirdly metaphysical, a sort of wise surrealism cast in a space-operatic (for lack of better word) disguise. Lafferty had the gift of gab indeed. Shades of Vonnegut AND Dick both, but neither are really good referents; his voice is really unique. Highly recommended, as long as you leave all your expectations at the door, or--if you are a peg-legged Irish space pirate--on the spaceship that had brought you to this planet.
May 29, 2019
Whew. There's no question that Lafferty has quite an imagination to come up with something like this. Trouble is, I have no idea what the "something" is. Even describing it is a challenge. There's this "historian" who arrives at the planet Klepsis to learn its history. The problem is, Klepsis is like a Cuisinart of all sorts of legends and eras of history and theories and superstitions, and it is constantly changing things, so that nothing is actually real. (The apparent ruling body, for example, is a bunch of pirates, most of whom have peg legs.) A little of this goes a long way with me. By page 25 I was ready to call it quits, but I never do that, so I slogged through until the end. Whew!
September 21, 2025
Letto, si fa per dire. Già dalle prime pagine mi sono persa in dettagli e notizie pedanti senza che ci fosse un minimo di storia. E’ raro che non finisca un libro ma proprio non ci sono riuscita a continuare…
Lafferty ha uno stile che può essere divertente e folgorante nei racconti brevi, ma nei romanzi lunghi tende a stratificare: una marea di personaggi dai nomi bizzarri, rimandi colti, battute surreali, divagazioni filosofiche o teologiche. Non mi aspettavo una trama scorrevole, o “classica, conoscendolo, ma per me questo libro è illeggibile 😔
Lafferty ha uno stile che può essere divertente e folgorante nei racconti brevi, ma nei romanzi lunghi tende a stratificare: una marea di personaggi dai nomi bizzarri, rimandi colti, battute surreali, divagazioni filosofiche o teologiche. Non mi aspettavo una trama scorrevole, o “classica, conoscendolo, ma per me questo libro è illeggibile 😔
September 11, 2019
Utterly odd, thoroughly unique and highly improbable... I'm sure it's so surreal and strange that not to many people's tastes, but I enjoyed it immensely.
September 5, 2020
So much fun. A wild story that gets exponentially wilder. Funny too. Sort of about an impending galactic apocalypse that might be caused by the beginning of history on a planet without any. Or maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity. One of my favorite scenes takes place inside a barbecued whale. Another involves a giant, vicious bird who is also a distinguished mathematical physicist.
April 18, 2014
‘OH COME TO KLEPSIS TO
CLAIM YOUR SHARE…
AND BREATHE THE RANK
AND LAWLESS AIR!
Plots and intrigue and romance abound.
Smoke pictures, ghosts, and treasure chests to be found.
Magnifying monocles and hallucinogenic grapes – the unvoiced reams of the dregs of space.
Long John Tony Tyrone, the peg-legged historian, journeys there… And marries a princess with rainbow hair.
But the Ghost of Christopher Brannagan will not rest
Until mathematician Aloysius has put to the test
His theory concerning the Doomsday Equation
Which might save the planet from total devastation.
Or might not.’
Blurb from the 1983 Ace paperback edition
Lafferty, as his fans and admirers testify in the first few pages of this book, is very much an individual voice, although one can see echoes of jack Vance and Gene Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut and Cordwainer Smith.
Klepsis is a planet of pirates, founded by one Christopher Brannagan, and extends an open invitation to any ‘peg-legged’ Irish person to travel to Klepsis to be welcomed and given whatever help is needed.
Long John Tyrone travels to Klepsis in an attempt to record its history (although Klepsis appears to have no history).
Tyrone meets up with prince Franco, the twin brother of evil Prince Henry, the current ruler of Klepsis. Prince Franco has the advantageous ability of being able to disappear at will. Things get odder. Ghosts abound, and are possibly not ghosts but just insubstantial live people.
Dead people are often brought back to life and pirate ships – with the magical aid of monkey-? Humans from far Tarshish, are able to sail from an ocean on one world straight into an ocean on another.
The ghost of the original Brannigan suspects that the whole human hegemony of seventeen worlds is merely a simulation running in the mind of the sleeping dwarf Quasimodo, who is unfortunately about to die.
It is a strange and beautiful novel, spiced with a sprinkling of dry wit.
The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and yet in perfect keeping with the rest of the novel.
Lafferty could well have inspired the much later fantastic landscapes of McCarthy and John C Wright, since there appears to be a common baroque romanticism to all three author’s work.
CLAIM YOUR SHARE…
AND BREATHE THE RANK
AND LAWLESS AIR!
Plots and intrigue and romance abound.
Smoke pictures, ghosts, and treasure chests to be found.
Magnifying monocles and hallucinogenic grapes – the unvoiced reams of the dregs of space.
Long John Tony Tyrone, the peg-legged historian, journeys there… And marries a princess with rainbow hair.
But the Ghost of Christopher Brannagan will not rest
Until mathematician Aloysius has put to the test
His theory concerning the Doomsday Equation
Which might save the planet from total devastation.
Or might not.’
Blurb from the 1983 Ace paperback edition
Lafferty, as his fans and admirers testify in the first few pages of this book, is very much an individual voice, although one can see echoes of jack Vance and Gene Wolfe, Kurt Vonnegut and Cordwainer Smith.
Klepsis is a planet of pirates, founded by one Christopher Brannagan, and extends an open invitation to any ‘peg-legged’ Irish person to travel to Klepsis to be welcomed and given whatever help is needed.
Long John Tyrone travels to Klepsis in an attempt to record its history (although Klepsis appears to have no history).
Tyrone meets up with prince Franco, the twin brother of evil Prince Henry, the current ruler of Klepsis. Prince Franco has the advantageous ability of being able to disappear at will. Things get odder. Ghosts abound, and are possibly not ghosts but just insubstantial live people.
Dead people are often brought back to life and pirate ships – with the magical aid of monkey-? Humans from far Tarshish, are able to sail from an ocean on one world straight into an ocean on another.
The ghost of the original Brannigan suspects that the whole human hegemony of seventeen worlds is merely a simulation running in the mind of the sleeping dwarf Quasimodo, who is unfortunately about to die.
It is a strange and beautiful novel, spiced with a sprinkling of dry wit.
The ending is deliberately ambiguous, and yet in perfect keeping with the rest of the novel.
Lafferty could well have inspired the much later fantastic landscapes of McCarthy and John C Wright, since there appears to be a common baroque romanticism to all three author’s work.
July 5, 2025
Lafferty was one of the most original SF and fantasy authors of all time. His one of a kind style works best at shorter lengths, although he has written some excellent novels. Unfortunately, Annals of Klepsis is not excellent. In parts, it is excellent and often very funny. Imagine a planet of peg-legged pirates with Irish names, who are not necessarily Irish. Imagine a interplanetary human civilization whose very existence depends on a sleeping dwarf. As you can probably imagine, it would be very hard to tie together these disparate and outrageous plot elements, but Lafferty nearly pulls it off. Of course, he may have succeeded brilliantly, but I am just to obtuse to get it.
May 28, 2013
A nonlinear plot that truly impresses is a rarity to be coveted. But I got the feeling here that, if there was a niche audience of some kind, I wasn't a part of it. Annals of Klepsis had it's moments, and Lafferty was obviously a very imaginative writer in his own right, but it's my opinion that this book promises much more than it delivers to the casual reader.
November 29, 2009
A historian travels to Klepsis to record the history of the planet of peg-legged Irishmen. After that the story starts to get weird.
August 18, 2019
I feel as if I have just awakened from a long, strange dream.
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