Platypus of Truth

The Return of Sir Richard Grenville The Sir Richard Grenville mentioned in the poem is probably this one who died fighting against the Spanish.   This poem is swift and eerie -the sort of thing that wouldn't stand by itself but helps add color to an already established world.  This sort of multi-genre world-building is reminiscent of what Tolkien was attempting at the same time period in his unpublished Silmarillion . Wings in the Night As predicted, Howard uses the wilderness of Africa to test the faith of Solomon Kane and in the face of overwhelming suffering it for a moment breaks.  There are some key points to notice here: The first is that the interruption of Kane's faith allows Howard's real beliefs to come through: the triumph of Aryan man through a violent process of natural selection (Blech!).  There's one horrid little paragraph here that reads like something straight out of Hitler's Reich.  The sad thing is that these views were considered respe

Squaresoft stopped working with Nintendo right about the time I was finishing high school.  I and Nintendo went one way, Square went the other.  In retrospect, it seems like Squaresoft made the right decision.  Nintendo's killer apps remain wonderful, but they've been lagging ever since.  Now what all this means is that I only played through an hour or two of Final Fantasy VII when I was a teenager.  I remember sitting in a friends attic one summer and getting a look at it.  Then other friends came over and we moved on to Resident Evil...  Anyhow, time marched on and I never did manage to pick up a Playstation.  Then, just this past Christmas, some of my students tipped me off to the fact that Steam was selling Final Fantasy VII at an absurdly low price.  I jumped on it and have logged about fifteen hours on the game. I have to admit, it took me a little time to get used to post-apocalyptic, heavy-industrial feel of the game.  Once I got my bearings, however, it turned out to

The One Black Stain In an interesting twist, the world of Solomon Kane is revealed not only in prose but in three short, narrative poems.  The meter of these poems has the bounce of country ballad required for narrating stories of this kind and it's an excellent addition to the world.  Howard apparently learned from this inventing entire faux epic cycles to quote from in his Conan tales.  One distinction from the Conan narratives, however, is that the Kane poems attempt to link Kane in to our real world by means of characters and places.  The One Black Stain, for instance, features a show-down between Solomon Kane and the historical figure Francis Drake.  This real-world element gives Howard's Kane a sense of immediacy in a way that the characters of the mythical Hyborian age lack.  Quite frankly, I like it, and wish he'd been able to write a few more of Kane's exploits before moving on. The Blue Flame of Vengeance This is that title than which no pulpier can be

Rattle of Bones Rattle of Bones  brings Kane back from the wilds of Africa and places him firmly on European soil.  The genre shifts along with the setting bringing us back to the ghost stories that opened the collection.  Here, in his (almost) native habitat, Kane feels more true to character.  I can't help wishing that Howard had told more of this kind of story and I do note that other authors who have handled the character seem to share my tastes, keeping their Kane away from "exotic" locals. Speaking of other authors, Rattle of Bones  feels like a spiritual cousin to Anthony Boucher's They Bite .  Boucher's is the superior work, but Howard's attempt to handle the material is nothing to sniff at.  I avoid mentioning specifics since much of the effect of They Bite  relies on surprise and I wouldn't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't read it.  The only problem with Howard's story, in fact, is that, unlike Boucher's, the ending i

Red Shadows It's onward with Solomon Kane for the time being right now.  After the grim success of the first two stories, I decided to press on to the third.  Red Shadows takes Kane on his first globe-trotting mission as he seeks to avenge the brutal murder of a young girl by a roguish French thief.   The fight will eventually take Kane where most early 20th century pulp goes: the heart of Africa. While chocked full of swashbuckling adventure, I felt that Howard occasionally lost his hold on the character in this third Solomon Kane offering.  Howard, whether he knew it or not, writes like a true Nietzscheian worshiping strength with ardent zeal.  What he really wants is an excuse to throw his character into one of the boxing matches that he so obsessed over in the real world.  This passion, perhaps fully resolved in the creation of Conan, remains in tension with the fundamentally religious and Puritan character that Howard created in Kane.  Every Puritan has to have his "

It's a new year of blogging here at Platypus of Truth, and what better way to begin the new year than with a review of last year's posts.  Let's note that 2013 was the busiest year yet with 117 posts.  That's a full 14 (or two weeks worth) more than the already record-breaking 2012.  Two things helped fuel this phenomenal spike in content: another "Summer of Shannara" and trips to Italy and New England. The New "Summer of Shannara" starts here . "Italian Reflections" begins here . "New England Reflections" begins here . Platypus of Truth has always been more of a literary blog than anything else, but I have enjoyed my foray into travel blogging.  Since all that travel has left available funds rather low, I don't know if I'll have a chance to do any more of this sort of blogging in 2014.  Still, you never know what the future holds.  One new thing that I tried this year that didn't cost anything was posting "