The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists

The Universe of God-Like Men #2

by Arthur Byron Cover, Neal Adams (Illustrator)

NEBULA NOMINEE AUTHOR'S BRILLIANT, PROFOUND, ZANY, OFF-THE-WALL SF EXTRAVAGANZA!"Unclassifiable, brilliant, takes weird to a whole new level! Highly recommended!" -Goodreads 5-star reviewSPECIAL Reprinted for the first time ever since its original 1973 appearance in the anthology "Infinity Five", the first story set in the universe of God-like Men, "IN BETWEEN THEN AND NOW."From the My Reader's Block review ""The Platypus of Doom": This gigantic, bow-tie-wearing space monster can grant the winner of the "great game"* his or her heart's desire. Sounds great, right. Well, you know the old adage....Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. [*The great game appears to be ping pong, by the way :-) ]""The Armadillo of Destruction": An immortal creature that feeds off the powerful negative energy of hate. He's often on the lookout for a new energy source--which always ends badly for the source. Leopold Janifer thinks he has found a way to beat the Armadillo's system. Is he right?""The Aardvark of Despair": Can Davis, a mean-streets private eye who has been flung through a time vortex into the future, help Dr. Bishop and his family shake off the suicidal depression that the Aardvark instills in its victims?""The Clam of Catastrophe": Will the Clam, the goddess of love, teach the first and most long-lived consulting detective to love and then turn it into disillusionment. Or will the detective find the solution the one of man's oldest problems?When you meet these monsters, never fear, for there are godlike men in this book to defeat them!"There is, under the near-farcical trappings, an examination of such things as love, hate, motivation, and the meaning of existence itself. Cover manages to pose his questions with a light touch that offers food for though as well as entertaining stories." - My Reader's Block reviews"Four absolutely staggering novelettes, saucy and sharp and fun. Cover plays games that are worthy of Philip Jose Farmer (until it was proven otherwise, I thought that Cover *was* Farmer!) The Platypus, et al, are small-g gods, interfering, in an Euripdean fashion, with the fates of mankind. The stories have hidden depths and riddles that reward the effort of solving, but, mostly, they entertain. This is thoughtful stuff, but also highly readable." -Amazon verified reviewFor fans of Diskworld and Xanth!Cover Ron Miller; Frankie Hill

Genres: Science Fiction, Humor

Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists is considered as the second book of a loose trilogy set in the universe of godlike men, but it stands (or squats of swims or slithers, whatever...) just as well on its own. It's actually more of a fix-up than a traditional novel, the four disparate sections focusing on the titular platypus (who spreads doom), the armadillo of destruction (who spreads hatred and excretes yellow balls of energy), the aardvark of despair (who spreads gloom and generates his own red ants for food), and the clam of catastrophe (who spreads disillusionment and can change her appearance into that of a voluptuous, beautiful woman.) It's a surreal and absurd book and it's very well written. It's really dark and depressing, but it's just so weird and over the top that you tend to laugh and love it. Who knew that a guy from Tazewell could come up with such a thing!? The first book of the three, the novel Autumn Angels, appeared from Pyramid Books in 1975 as part of the Harlan Ellison discovery series, Warner published this one, and the third, the much longer An East Wind Coming, was printed by Berkley in 1979, so despite the overlap of theme and character there was little recognition of connectivity at the time. This one is my favorite of the Cover books that I've read.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is classified as science fiction, but one could also classify it as fantasy, science fantasy, surrealism -- or maybe it's just unclassifiable. But the four stories contained herein are brilliant. This book takes weird to a whole new level! Highly recommended!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a weird book. I read it over twenty years ago, and mostly what I remember is the godlike beings that each of the four novellas in the book centered on: the Platypus of Doom, the Aardvark of Despair, the Armadillo of Destruction, and the Clam of Catastrophe. Yes, it was a very strange book, but I also remember it being pretty entertaining.

[Bree Clausen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book at a thrift store for $1 because of the artwork and the title. It was the biggest surprise I've ever read. This is one of my favorite books. It's out of print, and I treasure my copy. The book isn't for everyone. I've lent it out and not had the same response from my friend. The book is a compilations of a few different stories around the universe in the future. For me, the stories are so witty and imaginative. They are at the same time outrageous and plausible at the same time. I just feel like I get this book and it gets me. I love it.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of four short stories about various animals with fearsome powers. My favorite part of every story is how serious it takes itself, there is nothing weird or strange about these talking animals. They just exist and a fact of life for all other beings within that universe. Ranking the four stories the best was The Platypus of Doom, the Aardvark of Despair, the Armadillo of Destruction, then the Clam of Catastrophe.

Overall a fun book that I’m glad caught my eye at the used bookstore

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

If _Solaris_ is confounding, _The Platypus of Doom_ is simply weird.

Consisting of four novellas (plus a short story whose connection to the rest is a little unclear), it tells of ... _beings_ ... in the same universe as the Godlike Men; indeed, the last story is about a couple of Godlike Men, and we'll get to that.

1. The Platypus of Doom

This one is narrated by a loner, alienated from his race and at odds with its Big Boss Man, especially after his lover dies and her soul sent to the Land of Disappearing Waifs, the race's version of Hell, more or less. The Big Boss Man, smirking, assigns him to play the Game.

The Game takes place annually, and is played between the champions of two races, the apparently-human race to which the narrator belongs, and the Black Pirates, apparently descended from rats. The Game is ... well, to say exactly what it is would spoil a silly surprise; but it is played between one chosen member of each race. The loser dies; the winner receives a visit from the dreaded Platypus of Doom, who will give him whatever he wants most in the universe: the catch being that it will doom him in some unspecified way; not because the Platypus is evil, but because it just sort of works out that way.

His desire is simple: he wants his lover to spend eternity in the Mists of Warmth. The Platypus admits he can't do that, because, as he says, "some beings are all-powerful, and others are _all-powerful_. I'm just all-powerful. Whenm you get right down to it, I'm only a poor, mortal, extraordinarily gifted Platypus."

So he asks for a chance to do it himself, and the rest is like Orpheus, but on really strange drugs.

2. The Armadillo of Destruction

Leopold Janifer is the "lowly assistant editor, proofreader, and gofer" for a magazine about 3D Chess, and likes it like that; he loves 3D chess, and writes a series of, well, _strange_ articles about interpreting the games as stories. When he discovers that some of the stories are pornographic, he is disturbed beyond belief; and when he murders his editor, he becomes the host for the Armadillo of Destruction, a malevolent being which lives on hate and the violence it causes. So Leopold becomes the perfect host for the Armadillo, destroying people, cultures, worlds without looking back, meanly and cheaply.

Meanwhile, Martha Avar wants to be beautiful and desired, but is a fat woman living in a society that seems to treat fat women even more disdainfully than the one we live in. She joins the Space Patrol and is startlingly successful there, until, in a battle with the Black Pirates, her ship is destroyed, marooning her on Chuck You Farley, a planet of fat men and thin women, where she is heralded as a goddess of beauty.

Leopold, in the end, falls in love with Martha, and demands his freedom from the Armadillo, who gleefully lets him fight a Zombie of the Stratosphere for her hand -- a fight which ends up in the death of his opponent, himself, and Martha, in a _liebenstot_ sort of happy ending; and the Armadillo goes on to find future hosts.

3. The Aardvark of Despair

An immortal private detective finds that most of his cases are unmemorable; this story is an exception. He is living for a time (he always has to move on because his immortality gets noticed) on the planet Mirandola, where he is hired by Dr. Alfred Bishop to find out why his three daughters are unhappy. Bishop is a philosopher of happiness, who makes other people happy, by absorbing their unhappiness himself, which can be temporarily crippling.

The rest would be a simple parody of hard-boiled detection, with Bishop clearly the cause of his daughters' unhappiness, except for the discovery, at the end, of an external factor -- right, that's right, the legendary the Aardvark of Despair. Good wins over evil, or at least over despair, and the case is solved, though not at all to Dr. Bishop's satisfaction.

4. The Clam of Catastrophe

In which two godlike men -- the Consulting Detective and our narrator, the Good Doctor -- are rescued from their boredom (crime being pretty much nonexistent in the world of godlike humanity) by the appearance of the Fat Man, the Demon, and the Dapper Young Lawyer, who -- having failed to bring godlike humanity to realize their destiny by teaching them about despair -- are now trying to teach them about sexism, in the vain hope that this will accomplish, well, _something_; but godlike humanity seems quite disinterested, and the threesome want the Consulting Detective to find out just why. The Detective and the Doctor set out across the worlds to find an answer. Soon they find themselves with a hardboiled dame on the planet Mirandola, where things do not turn out as expected ... and that's really all I have to say about this one, because the plot is _so_ twisty that I don't want to give it away.

I didn't enjoy this one quite as much as I did _Autumn Angels_: but perhaps this is second-book-of-a-trilogy syndrome. At any rate, I'll be reading the third soonish...

[Raymond Elmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all know: there are books that move our minds and hearts, changing the speed of our heartbeats. Scary stories that make us sleep with the lights on. And the books that fill our souls with the need to wave sword, spur horse shouting 'Death! Death!'. As there are stories that make us drive to the shore, walk along the strand brooding upon the terrible joy and agony of existing.

Well... 'Platypus' is the book that moves a reader to laugh aloud in a funeral, swing from the chandelier in a formal ball, seize a marker and draw a smiley face on the boss's bald head in office status meetings.

These stories are not about random nihilistic antics, but an affirmation of the absolutely mad nature of living itself. Covering love and death, sorrow and joy.

Excuse me while I get a marker ready for the next status meeting.

[Roger Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Planetfall back when Infocom was still a company with a marketing budget. I'm glad I'm finally catching up in ABC's other works. The style is reminiscent of Rudy Rucker's fiction. Rick and Morty would feel at home in the Universe of Godlike Men.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun satirical look at how utterly dismal this universe can be. I rather enjoyed the 4 novellas.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat absurdist and fun cosmology against an indifferent/nihilistic universe.

[Benjamin Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Platypus of Doom and Other Nihilists is a neglected classic in the same type, and of a quality with the Hitchhikers; Guide to the Galaxy--but preceding it in publication or radio production by at least two years (as with Philip Jose Farmers' Venus of the Half-Shell"). Here are four novelettes set in the very far future featured in Covers' Autumn Angels and East Wind Coming--where a godlike Humanity is presented with the essential emptiness of existence, the tawdriness of the ambitions they thinly stretch across this emptiness--the games they play to make their infinite possibilities fit their quotidian understanding of themselves and their possibilities--all against the thinnest, yet somehow less-dismissible possibility that true love can warm and light the empty darkness--and the possibility that it can only make things much more richly and fully worse.
In the title story, the protagonist wins a ping-pong game of cosmic importance for a chance to see how the spirit of his dead beloved has fared in the now State-arbitrated afterlife; the Armadillo of Destruction has a love-teseract between an immortal if obese Goddess of Love, a zombie/cyborg space probe seeking meaning in what he/it thinks might be love, and the avatar/stooge of the semi-divine eponymous Armadillo, who has become a sort of pre-Star war Darth Vader after his old obsession, chess, went from Platonic to pornographic in his best-known matches--except weirder and wittier than a synopsis can hope to convey; the weakest piece, the Armadillo of Despair features a twentieth-century hard-boiled gumshoe blown into the Imortallized future and confronted with a master of telepathic therapy who cannot root out the despair in his rather gothic house-hold of motherless daughters replete with haunted neighboring estates--here Cover goes for the pay-off fairly straightforwardly and his usual game of shifting panels and rubbed-through layers is somewhat missed in what is still the most precise and therefore one-lining closer in the set; and the Clam of Catastrophe features a future Holmes and Watson trying to solve the appeal of the suddenly-re-emergent fad of Sexism in a romp which has not references but honest-to-god re-imaginings of three or four of the most significant moments in Doyles' canon--along with a scene of Holmes at a Discotheque, boogeying down on the floor and the jamming with the band on his violin to woo something much too like the Goddess of Love--and them some.
His immortals, in their omnipotent banality, are a competent match for Moorcocks Dancers at the End of time; less exotic and alien, but not missing the increased opportunity to comment on the human condition.
Cover does not quite have Adams' sense of frivolity, but he more than matches it with a sense of story telling, that is never funnier than when it proves to have been multi-layered and subtle--and you can never be sure what game Cover is up to until the chess-pieces are moving--and if he lacks some of Adam's easy laughter it is because he takes longer, perhaps a more authentic look at what most laughter is meant to cover. Even more than Adams, his sense of the ridiculous derives not from some prime-time slapstick but from a keen awareness of what really is ridiculous yet common everywhere.
Platypus shares this with Farmers' Venus--I am lead to believe that this is exactly why the Hitchhikers Guide series has gotten nearly all of the notice of this entire movement.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Journey into a universe where the strangest monsters ever imagined will make you shudder, laugh--and think twice!

The Platypus of Doom & Other Nihilists is a science fiction cult classic by Arthur Byron Cover. I found this by lucky happenstance on the shelves of my all-time favorite (but, alas, now defunct) used bookstore back in 1985. Then in my eagerness to share my enthusiasm for the quirky stories by Cover I loaned the book to a good friend and her good-for-nothing (not really, but in this instance) brother ran off with it and swore it was always his.

I didn't think about the book for a good long while but then when I decided to try and replace the book a few years ago I found no copies available anywhere for anything like a reasonable price. That would be the fault of AbeBooks. In 2009 they featured the book as part of their collection of weird books. The book promptly sold out at AbeBooks and paperback editions became available for outrageous prices. I was delighted to find a copy in 2011 for not much more than I originally paid in the 80s. And now I'm am delighted to have read it again.

"The Platypus of Doom": This gigantic, bow-tie-wearing space monster can grant the winner of the "great game"* his or her heart's desire. Sounds great, right. Well, you know the old adage....Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. [*The great game appears to be ping pong, by the way :-) ]

"The Armadillo of Destruction": An immortal creature that feeds off the powerful negative energy of hate. He's often on the lookout for a new energy source--which always ends badly for the source. Leopold Janifer thinks he has found a way to beat the Armadillo's system. Is he right?

"The Aardvark of Despair": Can Davis, a mean-streets private eye who has been flung through a time vortex into the future, help Dr. Bishop and his family shake off the suicidal depression that the Aardvark instills in its victims?

"The Clam of Catastrophe": Will the Clam, the goddess of love, teach the first and most long-lived consulting detective to love and then turn it into disillusionment. Or will the detective find the solution the one of man's oldest problems?

It was very nice to find that this held up to the memories I had of reading this in my teens. The monsters do have a comic element to them--in their descriptions if nothing else--but there is, under the near-farcical trappings, an examination of such things as love, hate, motivation, and the meaning of existence itself. Cover manages to pose his questions with a light touch that offers food for though as well as entertaining stories. Adding to the fun, the last two tales are also pastiches of detective fiction. "Aardvark" features the private eye and "Clam" plays on the Sherlock Holmes tradition.

First posted on my blog

[Scott Nieradka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shudder. I almost forgot this book till i stumbled across it on here, after reviewing one of mister cover's other fine novels, and a cold dark chill crept down my spine. The clam of catastrophe. Shudder.

At least though it wasnt boring.

[Brent · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I recall, the cover (by Neal Adams?) of this paperback was as god as the text. I had forgotten this! Like to see it again.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the stories are a bit dated, and the last one wasn't as good as the other three, but they were so preposterous that I really enjoyed reading them.