This is the first volume of the collected stories of Roy Lisker. Written over a period of over sixty years, these works are a significant cross-cutting slice of the vast creative output of this American polymath, a mathematician, political activist, underground journalist, prankster and provocateur, poet, playwright, novelist, artist, composer, and above all, always, man of letters, who has carved out for himself an entirely original and authentic career outside the bounds of conventional institutions and produced a body of work of astonishing vitality and breadth. We regard the publication of these stories, all together for the first time, as an important event in American letters. This volume contains tales of frustrated, ego-mad, and possessed musicians, and depraved and/or misled men of science; two hysterical mathematical spoofs; and culminates in the novella The Governments of Chelm, in which the legendary shtedl of fools grapples with one system of government after another, to no avail.