Tag Archives: L. Sprague de Camp

Ruminations on L. Sprague de Camp

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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. Continue reading →

Fletcher Pratt

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Fletcher Pratt (1897-1956) was born on this date, April 25.

Pratt is primarily remembered today for two things. His collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp, and two novels, The Blue Star and The Well of the Unicorn.

Although there were other collaborations between Pratt and de Camp, the Harold Shea stories arae the ones that get the most bandwidth. These were a series of novellas and short novels  begun in the early 1940s and originally published in Unknown. The series continued in the 1950s. The character Harold Shea ends up visiting a number of fantasy lands from works of literature. The mechanism through which he does this is mathematics.

The problem I had with the longer collaborations of Pratt and de Camp was that while I thought they started strong, I got the feeling the authors got bored in the middle. (I have this same reaction to many of de Camp’s solo novels as well). Maybe that’s why I prefer the Gavagan’s Bar stories. They are definitely short stories in the tradition of the British club story. Think tall tales with fantasy elements. They’re clever and fun. I really should reread them. It’s been a while.

As for the novels, I reviewed The Blue Star here at Black Gate. It was one of the first titles in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I’ve picked up several copies of the Ballantine mass market paperback edition of The Well of the Unicorn with the Hildebrandt cover over the years. I’ve not managed to work it into the reading schedule yet. My understanding is that Pratt wrote it as a rebuttal to Tolkien because there was no sex in The Lord of the Rings. I don’t know if that’s true or not.

If anyone has read Well, please share your thoughts.

A Pair by Price

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E. Hoffman Price

Pulpster E. Hoffman Price (1898-1998) was born on this date, July 3. Hoffman wrote in multiple genres. Wildside Press has published multiple Megapacks of his work. We’ll look at two stories from The 11th Golden Age of Weird Fiction Megapack: E. Hoffman Price.

Before I get to the stories, I want to gloat for a bit. Price was one of the authors published by Carcosa Press back in the 1970s.  Far Lands, Other Days was one of four published before Carcosa folded.

L. Sprague de Camp moved to Plano, a suburb of Dallas, a few years before he died. Upon his death, many of his books ended up in a the flagship location of Half Price Books. This was a big deal that was promoted by the bookstore.

Of course I went.  Most of the really desirable items were locked under glass, such as volumes inscribed to de Camp by people like Heinlein. Others, books that de Camp had owned, many with a signed bookplate, were on a set of shelves. Among them was a copy of Far Lands, Other Days. I had been wanting a copy and grabbed it.

After I got it home (I paid for it.), I was looking through it a bit more carefully than I had in the store and saw something I’d missed. The employee who had processed and priced the book had missed it, too. Understandable since it wasn’t on the title page. But there was a full page inscription to de Camp signed by Price. Continue reading →

Novalyne’s Birthday

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Novalyne Price Ellis was born on this day (March 9) in 1908.  She passed away in 1999 on March 30.  Novalyne was the author of One Who Walked Alone, a memoir of her relationship with Robert E. Howard during the last two years of his life.  It was based on her diary.

Novalyne Price moved to Cross Plains to teach English in 1934,  She soon met Robert E. Howard, and a tempestuous relationship started.  They had broken up by the summer of 1936, and Novalyne had left Cross Plains to attend graduate school in Louisiana.  She was there when she got the news of Robert’s death.

She wrote One Who Walked Alone as a rebuttal to L. Sprague de Camp’s biography of Howard, Dark Valley Destiny.  If you’ve not read her book, you should.  It’s one of the main sources of information we have about Bob.

The book was filmed in the mid-1990s and starred Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert and Renee Zellweger as Novalyne.

When de Camp Sends Serpents

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“A Sending of Serpents”
First Published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1979
Collected in The Purple Pterodactyls

L. Sprague de Camp was born today, November 27, in 1907.  Today would have been his eleventy-first birthday.

Rather than rehash biographical details, you can see last year’s post for that, I thought I would take a look at one of de Camp’s short stories.  Last year I looked at three of de Camp’s short pieces the day after his birthday, but this year I’ve only got time for the one.

In the mid to late 70s de Camp published a series of short stories about W. Wilbury Wilson, a middle aged banker who has a number of fantastic adventures.  Many of them were published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.  It may be nostalgia, but I think that period in F&SF‘s history was one of its high points.  I found about a seven year run covering that time period in a second hand shop when I was in high school, but that’s a post for another day. Continue reading →

Three by de Camp

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So earlier this evening I was reading the comments in a thread about whether or not someone new to the fantasy and science fiction fields should read Asimov, Heinlein, and Tolkien.  More than a few of the comments said that not only should a new reader not read bigoted dead white guys, those authors should go out of print.

Personally, I found many of the comments to be bigoted, at least as much if not more than the authors the comments were directed toward.  Rather than get into a fight with idiots people I don’t know on the internet, I decided I was in the mood to read some dead white guys. And since there has been a bit of discussion about the works of L. Sprague de Camp in the comments here since yesterday’s post, I  was wanting to revisit his work.  I thought I would read some of his short stories.

Here are my thoughts on what I read: Continue reading →

L. Sprague de Camp at 110

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Lyman Sprague de Camp was born on November 27, 1907.  He passed away in 2000.  I hadn’t intended to do another birthday post so soon after the ones earlier this week, but when I saw today was de Camp’s birthday, I couldn’t pass it up.  L. Sprague de Camp had one of the longest careers in the field (over 60 years) and worked as both author and editor.  He was a major player in the history of Robert E. Howard.

We’ll talk about de Camp and Howard in a bit.  First, I want to look at de Camp as a writer independent of Howard.  Among Howard fans, that work tends to be overlooked. Continue reading →

New BAF Post on The Young Magicians

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Young MagiciansI’ve got a new BAF post up at Black Gate.

This one is on The Young Magicians, the second anthology of the series that Lin Carter edited.  It’s a companion to Dragons, Elves, and Heroes.  This one starts at William Morris and continues up to what was then the present day (1969).  Included are selections by Lovecraft, Smith, Howard, Kuttner, Merritt. and de Camp, as well as Lin Carter himself.