Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
All Hail the King of Cats
At the end of the universe, there is a mountain. Every thousand years, a bird flies to strop its beak on that mountain. When the mountain is worn to nothing, the universe ends. The mountain is down to a few grains of sand.
“Cat’s Paw, A Novel of the King of Cats” a fantasy by Robert A. Hoyt, opens as a bird readies for its passage to the mountain at the end of the universe. Unless it is stopped, it will be the final passage. The universe will end.
Meanwhile, in Broxton, CO, Tom, an alcoholic alley cat, encounters a white Persian cat while scouting for pizza and beer in a pizzeria dumpster. She is female, which interests Tom, who . . . tomcats around. She also appears lost and pregnant, with a fancy collar that shows she is an indoor cat.
Fairy tales served as medieval entertainment. They were cautionary tales, with advice about how to live your life as much as fables. They were not just for children.
Take a typical college-aged man from the Midwest in today’s America. Give him the ambition to slay dragons and become a knight errant. It is unrealistic, but it is his dream. Then let him discover magic really works. He slays a fire-breathing dragon (with his mom’s Volvo), and is invited to join Knight Watch, an organization dedicated to protecting ordinary Americans from intrusions by supernatural enemies
Illarion Glaskov is a miller’s son in a small farming village in the far north of Kolakolvia. It is so remote the Czar’s tax collectors have not visited it for years, and the Empire has forgotten to levy conscripts from it. That suits Glaskov. He would be the one drafted. He would as soon marry his fiancé Hana, raise a family and run the family mill.
J.R.R. Tolkien may be the most beloved twentieth-century author with the most diverse reader base. He appealed to Christian and New Age audiences as well as readers across the political spectrum. Fame and fortune were the last things he really sought. An Oxford professor, he just wanted to tell some stories.
In 2011, “Toward the Gleam” appeared. A fantasy, the book’s premise was that J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth legendarium were based on actual events. Author T. M. Doran bases a central character on Tolkien, John Hill, who find a prehistoric manuscript preserved over thousands of years. Set in the twentieth century, “Towards the Gleam” follows forces of good and evil contending for possession of the manuscript.
