The Joy of Erudition > Recent Status Updates

I swear Jack just dropped a Baldur's Gate 2 reference with a line so close to something Irenicus said I don't think it's a coincidence, especially since they're both mad scientists.

A surprising number of dick jokes in this.

"Atlantean Genesis", an essay by Patrice Louinet, ends the book, and this is also where the so-called "introduction" should have been -- at the end. This essay traces Howard's influences, the origins of some of his ideas, includes quotes from his letters that illustrate his publishing difficulties, and speculates on where he might have taken the series if he hadn't switched to Conan.

The draft versions of "The Shadow Kingdom", "Delcardes' Cat", and "The King and the Oak" are included here, but there are hardly any differences from the published versions. The biggest difference is in "Delcardes' Cat", where Howard went back and added several references to Thulsa Doom after deciding late in the story to have him show up near the end. Most people can skip reading these.

The "Am-ra of the Ta-an" fragments are included in this book even though Kull is not in them, possibly because Am-ra appears as a side character in the unpublished "Exile of Atlantis". These fragments (including a decent stretch of narrative and dialogue) seem to describe a Stone Age setting, and feel much more like Burroughs than what either Kull or Conan would be. I would have liked to see more of this setting.