Beyond Horatio's Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle

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David Stevens. Beyond Horatio's Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle

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BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY DAVID STEVENS

Beyond Horatio’s Philosophy: The Fantasy of Peter S. Beagle

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There are other significant differences from the published version as well. The butterfly was the one original character beyond the unicorn who survived, but its dialogue was wider-ranging. There was a dragon which was a major character which disappeared completely, and the time was most definitely the twentieth century instead of once-upon-a-time. Beagle in his Afterword says of both of these things that in order “to recast the story as a fairy-tale, the dragon had to go, along with the entire twentieth century.”

There are two encounters that stand out in The Lost Version, one with a beautiful female demon sent to pursue Azazel and Webster and who fools Azazel into giving her all of his jewelry, and the other with a modern city. The first is a source of mirth, as the demon is beaten at her own game, while the second appears merely to provide an excuse for Beagle’s lamentation on life in the modern world. Neither episode survived into the published version, although a fat man who tries to capture the unicorn while seeing her as only a horse appears with his wife in The Lost Version, and there is a encounter with a virgin that also survives.

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