Today, as  I’m writing this, is November 7, the birthday of L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000).. As I mentioned in the post on Poul Anderson two days ago, de Camp was one of the writers from the pulp era who was equally adept at both science fiction and fantasy.

One of the favorite things among Howard fans is to discuss, if that isn’t too light a word, his impact on Robert E. Howard’s legacy. That isn’t going to be the point of this post.

Rather, I want to comment on his own fiction. L. Sprague de Camp was a prolific writer at both novel and short story lengths. He started out in the pulps, so much of his early fiction was of shorster lengths. Near the end of his career, most of his fiction was in the form of novels. The market had changed.

One exception, though, was the series of stories he wrote about Reginal Rivers,  He was a time safari guide who made his debut in the classic story “A Gun for Dinosaur” in 1956. De Camp didn’t write another story about him until 1992. There were four Regiinald Rivers stories published in 1992 and five published in 1993. They were collected in Rivers of Time. Also 1993.

De Camp’s fantasy stories tended to have a dry humor coupled with an ironic wit. That was probably most evident in his Harold Shea stories and the Gavagan’s Bar stories, both series written in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt.

That’s not to say he only wrote humorous fantasy with Pratt. A number of de Camp’s early and later short fantasys stories contain humor.

In addition to writing fiction, de Camp also wrote poetry. This was during a time when poetry wasn’t widely published in genre publications.

Much of L. Sprage de Camp’s science fiction was in the series Viagens Interplanetarianis. Those weren’t all the science fiction he wrote. but nearly all of it was novel length. Most of de Camp’s science fiction was in the forms of short stories or novellette.

De Camp also wrote a handful of historical novels of the sword and Sandals variety. I’ll try to do a post on one or more of those in  the future.

So he have another birthday of another pulp era author who was adept at both science fiction and fantasy. And sadlyl, another whose work is fading into obscurity.

What’s your favorite L. Sprague de Camp story?