Apocalypses

I'm having trouble translating, finding anything on, or making sense of the term "kalo pisicho" in Lafferty's Apocalypses. Can anyone point me in the right direction? All I know for sure is it is the being the Detective, Captain Nemo, is more afraid of than anything in the world.

"kalo" would be close to the Greek for "good". "Pisicho" doesn't seem Greek to me; more like greekified Latin. Because it's Lafferty, I'd place a strong guess that he means us to understand "fish". Cf. his "queer fish" in "And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire". http://greatsfandf.com/AUTHORS/RALafferty.php The ichthyans or Queer Fish are the oddest species to be found in any of the worlds. They are pseudo-human, perhaps, but not android. The sign of the fish is not easily seen on them, and they pass as human whenever they wish: a peculiarity of them is that they often do not wish to pass as human even when their lives depend on it. They have blood in their veins, but an additional serum as well. It is only when the organizational sickness is upon them (for these organizing and building proclivities they are sometimes known as the Queer Builders or the Ants of God), that they can really be told from humans. . . . Their threat to us is more real than apparent and we tend to minimize it. This we must not do. In our unstructured, destructed, destroyed society, they must be counted as the enemies to be exterminated. It's a double danger they offer to us: to fight them on their own grounds, or to neglect to fight them. They'd almost trick us into organizing to hunt down their organization.

A naive Google search provides illumination: https://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0#complete=0&q=%22kalo+pisicho%22

Turn "psycho" into "psuche", and you have "good soul". The good soul is a good fish?

Yes, my first thought was that "pisicho" was some modified form of "psyche" or (even closer) "phisico" even though they imply different things. It is also quite close to Pisces. I have "And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire", thanks for the lead. Looks like some supplementary reading is in order.

That's even better: a triple pun on soul, fish, and physics.

It seems "pisich" is the possessive form (in Scottish Gaelic) of success / progress. This is probably a dead end, but still interesting. I like the triple pun better.

The Good Fish are, of course, Catholics...for what that's worth in this particular hunt.

One might more generally say they are members of the body of the Christ. Except it's Lafferty we're talking about, on a Gene Wolfe mailing list, so yes, probably Catholics. Ecumenical RAL was not.

Google Ngrams' earliest hit for kalo is Narrative of a journey in the Morea, 1823, by Sir William Gell. P.376, "The people seemed rather pleased that I approved of their liquor, and all in chorus cried out Kalo kalo krassi, good wine." Pisicho is also a Micronesian atoll, perhaps used as a trap for a submariner?

Ecumenical RAL was not. Don't count him out too quick on that - ever read his 'Ishmael into the Barrens' (similar in theme to 'And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire')? ('Ishmael' is collected in Four Futures, edited by Asimov.) There's a surprising Christian-Jewish-Muslim counterculture community united in theism against the dystopian secular state of the story. I think this kind of thing comes up a few more times in his body of work. It's one of the many examples throughout his fiction of a profound generosity in tension with an equally profound antipathy toward his ideological adversaries. (To be honest, I think you find something similar in Wolfe at an intellectual rather than emotional level: he doesn't show antipathy, I think - quite the reverse. But he seems to have some ideas of what 'right doctrine' (orthodoxy) is. He just argues for it very, very subtly and open-endedly and in deep, deep conversation with 'heresy' and 'infidelity'. Really, Laff did as well - he's just more cantankerous.) By the bye, my Lafferty blog gets its name from the story 'And Walk Now' in case people hadn't picked up on that: The Ants of God Are Queer Fish<http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.co.uk/> . -DOJP

IIEC Wolfe was fairly harsh on the emotional level in ascribing the cruel humor of a Turkish joke book to the Turks' lack of Christianity in the Jordan interview.

IIEC Wolfe was fairly harsh on the emotional level in ascribing the cruel humor of a Turkish joke book to the Turks' lack of Christianity in the Jordan interview. Ah, interesting. Of course, I'm not saying Wolfe's never harsh or emotional about ideological opponents - but it does seem to me that a vast and deep element of his body of work (especially the Solar Cycle) is the entering into the mindset and lives of non-Catholics and creating sympathetic characters out of that. (Also, 'IIEC'?) But looking at that bit in the interview I'd say it's a little more complex than your soundbyte implies. I hear these kinds of claims from non-Christians about Christianity ALL the time. Sometimes it's emotional and harsh and sometimes it's part of an actual honest-to-God argument and when it's the latter, even if it raises my hackles, I (as a Christian) have to simply consider its truth value. Wolfe here is raising a historical-ethical argument about the influence of Jesus on some civilisations and the absence of that influence on other civilisations. He's here pointing to what he takes to be some of the egregious samples of the latter, whereas his fiction shows he's perfectly capable of pointing to what he takes to be admirable qualities of, for instance, Arab cultures. Here's the bit from the interview for those interested (found here: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html) JJ: That is an interesting perspective on it, I hadn't thought of at all. My wife had one of her professors that taught in a Moslem country for a while and said he woke up one day and saw the children had a bunch of kittens they were throwing up in the air and hitting them with a baseball bat against the wall and the mothers just sat by and watched. He said "I am not a Christian, I am an atheist, but I am a Christian in that I could not tolerate that." There has been an influence in our society that has made us different from pagans. GW: We vastly underestimate the importance of Jesus. We think we don't. We have all these churches and we say how can we be underestimating Jesus? We don't until we start trying to figure out what it would be like if he had never lived. When you really start trying to figure out what it would be like if He never lived you realize that He is a much more pivotal figure than we give him credit for. All of these people, everybody at this convention is in that sense a Christian although most of them would tell you that they are not and some of them would tell them quite truthfully that they were Jews who practice Judaism in one of its various forms and so on and so forth. Nevertheless they have been influenced by Christ much more than they realized. We are very lucky to have had Him. We are very fortunate. A friend of mine learned to read Turkish. And he got hold of a Turkish joke book and read it. And I said, "What were the jokes like?" He said it was horrible. They were all about ugly tricks that were being played on blind people and things like that. This is what we have escaped from and we don't realize that it is there and we came very close to falling into it. We very easily could have and we still may.

I want nothing less. If you're going to be salty, be very, very salty. It's not coincidence that the best High SF writers of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries* are Roman Catholics (but I'm still sticking to my house church). * Wolfe, Lafferty, John C. Wright, Michael Flynn.

It's not coincidence that the best High SF writers of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries are Roman Catholics (but I'm still sticking to my house church).* Wolfe, Lafferty, John C. Wright, Michael Flynn.* And you could add Tim Powers to that list if you include some of the most innovative weird fiction...

Powers is a Catholic? Interesting.

And James Blaylock.

Blaylock too? I knew they were friends but all this time I had no idea he was Catholic as well...

Well, I think so. Maybe Presbyterian. I recall an interview with him somewhere. Perhaps he grew up Presbyterian. I'd have to do some digging to find it.

Not sure about Blaylock, but Powers is definitely a Catholic.

Yes, right. Sorry. I was talking about Blaylock.