R. A. Lafferty 14 min read

Manuel shouldn't have been hired as a census taker, he can't read a map and only grins when told North is at the top. But for his own sector he needs no map, and he counts more than people.

R. A. Lafferty's 1962 story is a delightful, tall-tale first-contact and social-SF comedy. Funny, sly, wonderfully Lafferty. Read it for prime early Lafferty, a genial Texas census-taker who tallies the wolves, badgers, and foxes, and stumbles onto something far older and stranger than the county records.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

14 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Bob Ritter