Fred Kiesche

“But a lot of people have written modern-day tall tales and not one of them has come close to writing like the Bard of Tulsa. Consider such digressions as Clarence Little-Saddle’s riff on the significance of the war bonnet and the lecture on how much larger the moon appears at the horizon than overhead. Consider his beautiful use of dialect. Consider his lovely comic asides and delightful parodies of scientific argot. Tall tales are nothing if not straightforward. “Narrow Valley” is anything but. This is a sophisticated work, written by a sophisticated man.”
― R.A. Lafferty, The Best of R. A. Lafferty

“But that night when I strolled about the mission courtyard, under the spell of the starry, desert sky, I drifted back again in thought to the glorious days of Kublai Khan. My heart was hot with resentment that this thing had come. I realized then that, for better or for worse, the sanctity of the desert was gone forever. Camels will still plod their silent way across the age-old plains, but the mystery is lost. The secrets which were yielded up to but a chosen few are open now to all, and the world and his wife will speed their noisy course across the miles of rolling prairie, hearing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing of that resistless desert charm which led men out into the Great Unknown.”
― Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest'

“There was a satch filter in the comweb slot which routed advertising circulars directly to the sewers, but one item had evaded it: yet another stern letter from the city sanitation authority complaining about the lack of toilets in the apt. She’d had them taken out and enjoyed watching them crash forty-five stories to the street.”
― John Brunner, The Jagged Orbit

“In February the equipment for our summer's work in Mongolia was on its way across the desert by caravan. We had sent flour, bacon, coffee, tea, sugar, butter and dried fruit, for these could be purchased in Urga only at prohibitive prices. Even then, with camel charges at fourteen cents a cattie (1 1/3 lbs.), a fifty-pound sack of flour cost us more than six dollars by the time it reached Urga.”
― Roy Chapman Andrews, Across Mongolian Plains A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest'