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.