Subject: (urth) Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 09:37:44 +0000

Some comments and a question on this story (in the anthology MOON SHOTS,
ed. Peter Crowther).

First, Roy T. Laffer is of course R. A. Lafferty, whom Wolfe has praised
in print.  Laffer is described as a "cranky old man in Tulsa."  Lafferty
is from Tulsa, and "Cranky Old Man from Tulsa" is the title of either an
essay by Lafferty or a pamphlet collecting his essays (my Lafferty
collection is inaccessible to me at the moment).  And the "big lug"
narrative voice Wolfe uses in "Junie Moon" is one that Lafferty has
occasionally used, though not often.

Second, "Junie Moon" is based on a specific Lafferty story, "You Can't
Go Back."  Just like Junie Moon, that story has a tiny moon named White
Cow Moon so close to Earth you can get there by airplane.  There are
differences, though: Lafferty's Moon doesn't orbit, but hovers (though
it can move around of its own volition) and there's no hint that it's
made of a particularly light substance.  It's an excellent story,
incidentally, and a great place to start with Lafferty if you've never
read him; it appeared in IASFM Sept. 1981, and was reprinted in BEST SF
OF THE YEAR 11, edited by Terry Carr.

Third, though "Junie Moon" isn't equal to Wolfe's best short stories and
novellas, I like it better than any other recent story of his I've read
(I haven't read STRANGE TRAVELLERS, but I've read a number of the
stories in it).

Finally, my question: at the end of the story Sam mentions seeing "the
little woman with the baby and the old man with the stick in the cave,"
but says it was probably just a dream.  Are these folkloric inhabitants
of the Moon, like the man in the Moon?  They sound like it, but I
haven't heard of them, and I haven't managed tofind a book or article on
Moon-related folklore.  Or are they related to King Arthur, another
motif in the story?  If they aren't what is their significance?

--Adam

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