The Ugly Sea

By R.A. Lafferty

The Sea is ugly and monotonous, with only four or five faces, and all of them coarse, but mankind has just decided to deny this ugliness for subconscious reasons. Lafferty was the winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Award and a six time Nebula Award Nominee. His quirky style made his work hard to pigeonhole and market, but he still managed to influence a wide array of today’s best writers. Simply on of the best writers the science fiction and fantasy field has ever produced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilder Publications, Inc.
• Release date: May 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781515444237

R.A. Lafferty

R. A. Lafferty (1914-2002) lived almost his entire life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After service in the South Pacific during World War II, he worked as an electrical engineer. He began selling fiction regularly in the early 1960s, and went full-time as a writer in 1971. His work draws on many influences, ranging from Irish and Native American tales to the writings of St. Teresa of Avila. His novels include Past Master (1968), Fourth Mansions (1969), and the Native American historical Okla Hannali (1972).

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The Ugly Sea

by R. A. Lafferty

©2020 Positronic Publishing

The Ugly Sea is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for brief quotations for review purposes only.

ISBN 13: 978-1-5154-4423-7

Table of Contents

The Ugly Sea

The Ugly Sea

The sea is ugly, said Sour John, "and it’s peculiar that I’m the only one who ever noticed it. There have been millions of words written on the sea, but nobody has written this. For a time I thought it was just my imagination, that it was only ugly to me. Then I analyzed it and found that it really is ugly.

"It is foul. It is dirtier than a cesspool; yet men who would not willingly bathe in a cesspool will bathe in it. It has the aroma of an open sewer; yet those who would not make a pilgrimage to a sewer will do so to the sea. It is untidy; it is possibly the most untidy thing in the world. And I doubt if there is any practical way to improve it. It cannot be drained; it cannot be covered up; it can only be ignored.

"Everything about it is ignoble. Its animals