L. Sprague de Camp

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L. Sprague de Camp
Nolacon II in 1988
BornLyon Sprague de Camp
(1907-11-27)November 27, 1907
New York City, U.S.
DiedNovember 6, 2000(2000-11-06) (aged 92)
Plano, Texas, U.S.
Pen nameLyman R. Lyon (one story),[1] J. Wellington Wells[2]
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • short story author
  • essayist
  • historian
NationalityAmerican
Period1937–1996
GenreScience fiction, fantasy, alternate history, historical fiction, history
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Lyon Sprague de Camp (/ˌspreɪɡdəˈkæmp/;[3] November 27, 1907 – November 6, 2000) was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.[2]

Biography

De Camp was born in New York City, one of three sons of Lyon de Camp, a businessman in real estate and lumber,

Civil War veteran Charles Ezra Sprague.[4] De Camp once noted that he rarely used pen-names, "partly because my own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do."[5]

De Camp began his education at the Trinity School in New York, then spent ten years attending the Snyder School in North Carolina,[6] a military-style institution. His stay at the Snyder School was an attempt by his parents, who were heavy-handed disciplinarians,[4] to cure him of intellectual arrogance and lack of discipline. He was awkward and thin, an ineffective fighter, and suffered from bullying by his classmates. His experiences at the school taught him to develop a detached, analytical style considered cold by all but his closest friends,[7] though he could, like his father,[4] be disarming and funny in social situations. He would later recall these challenging childhood experiences in the semi-autobiographical story Judgment Day (1955).[7][8]

An aeronautical engineer by profession, de Camp conducted his undergraduate studies at the

Aeronautical Engineering 1930.[9] He earned his Master of Science degree in Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933. De Camp was also a surveyor and an expert in patents.[2]

His first job was with the Inventors Foundation, Inc. in Hoboken, New Jersey, which was taken over by The International Correspondence Schools. De Camp transferred to the Scranton, Pennsylvania, division. He was principal of the School of Inventing and Patenting when he resigned in 1937.[7] His first book Inventions and Their Management resulted and was published in July 1937.

On August 12, 1939, de Camp married Catherine Crook,[7][10] with whom he collaborated on science fiction and nonfiction beginning in the 1960s.[2]

De Camp (center) with Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov in 1944

During

reserve officer.[7]

De Camp was a member of the all-male literary and dining club the "Trap Door Spiders" in New York City, which served as the basis of Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the "Black Widowers." De Camp himself was the model for the character named "Geoffrey Avalon."[11]

De Camp was a founding member of the

Heroic fantasy writers that was founded during the 1960s and led by Lin Carter
, with entry by credentials as a fantasy writer alone.

The de Camps moved to Plano, Texas, in 1989, and Sprague de Camp died there on November 6, 2000, seven months after his wife,[12] on what would have been her birthday, at age 92. His ashes were inurned, together with hers, in the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

De Camp's personal library of about 1,200 books was acquired for auction by Half Price Books in 2005. The collection included books inscribed by fellow writers, such as Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, as well as de Camp himself.[13]

Coinage of "Extraterrestrial" and "E.T."

"Extraterrestrial", a coinage from "extra" + "terrestrial", meaning from beyond earth, is attested as an adjective as early as 1868, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Its first use in connection with life beyond earth was likely by H. G. Wells, in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds.[14][15] L. Sprague de Camp is credited with its first usage as a noun with the meaning of "alien life" and with coining the abbreviation "E.T." in the first part of his two-part article "Design for Life", published in the May 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.[15][14]

Hypothesis regarding sea serpent sightings

De Camp made a suggestion in 1968 that fossil discoveries had influenced modern reports of sea monster sightings. The suggestion was made in his article "Dinosaurs in Today's World" in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction v. 34, no. 3, March 1968, later reprinted in his nonfiction collection The Fringe of the Unknown, Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 1983. In 2019 de Camp's theory was scientifically tested by C. G. M. Paxton and D. Naish, who concluded that trends in the data of reported sightings appear to support his hypothesis.[16]

Body of work

De Camp was a

myth. He published numerous short stories, novels, non-fiction works and poems during his long career.[6]

De Camp had the mind of an educator, and a common theme in many of his works is a corrective impulse regarding similar previous works by other authors. A highly rational and logical thinker, he was frequently disturbed by what he regarded as logical lapses and absurdities in others' writings.[6] Some, like Asimov, felt de Camp's conscientiousness about facts limited the scope of his stories: de Camp was reluctant to use technological or scientific concepts (e.g., hyperspace or faster-than-light travel) if he regarded them as impossible.[6][8] Thus, his response to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court was to write a similar time travel novel (Lest Darkness Fall) in which the method of time travel was rationalized and the hero's technical expertise both set at a believable level and constrained by the technological limitations of the age.[6][8]

In like fashion, he reimagined

myths and legends were accepted but examined and elucidated in terms of their own systems of inherent logic. The imaginative civilizations in The Compleat Enchanter, for example, are built upon a cultural and technological reality based on scientific formulas. Characters may be transported to these different worlds, but the magic contained within those worlds is only feasible to the extent that it coincides with the technology of the day (e.g., the combustion engine).[17] De Camp's explanatory tendency also carried over into his non-fictional writings, including advice to science fiction writers on handling the different states of languages in future worlds.[18]

Science fiction

De Camp's science fiction is marked by his interests in linguistics, ancient history, and the history and philosophy of science.

Astounding Science Fiction[7]—the last issue edited by F. Orlin Tremaine, prior to the long tenure of John W. Campbell.[1] Most of his early science fiction stories were unrelated to each other, the exceptions being his "Johnny Black" tales about a black bear uplifted to human-level intelligence, and his "Drinkwhiskey Institute" stories, a series of tall tales involving time travel. Campbell's fantasy magazine, Unknown, was suited to de Camp's idiosyncratic imagination, logic, and sense of humor.[22] He contributed ten novels (five as collaborations), much of it characterized by humor and dry wit.[8] De Camp eschewed the intention of being a satirist, insisting, instead, that the stories he wrote were meant less for instruction or improvement, as satire requires, and more for the amusement of his readers.[7][8]

De Camp's treatment of

alternate history in stories such as Lest Darkness Fall (1939), "The Wheels of If" (1940), "A Gun for Dinosaur" (1956), "Aristotle and the Gun" (1958), and The Glory That Was (1960) challenged the popular notion of his time that history consisted of an arbitrary series of accidents. Instead, de Camp, through sound background knowledge and logical thought, systematically demonstrated how technological advances could determine the pattern of an eventful history. His display of technological determinism in historical recreation is considered a tour de force.[8][23] Lest Darkness Fall, "The Wheels of If" and "Aristotle and the Gun" have been recognized as seminal works in the field of alternate history.[24]

His most extended work was his "

sword and planet novels set on the planet Krishna, beginning with The Queen of Zamba.[19] His most influential Viagens novel was the non-Krishna work Rogue Queen, a tale of a hive society undermined by interstellar contact, which was one of the earliest science fiction novels to deal with sexual themes.[8]

Fantasy

A de Camp-Pratt "Gavagan's Bar" story was cover-featured on the January 1959 issue of Fantastic Universe
de Camp's heroic fantasy novel The Tritonian Ring was cover-featured on Two Complete Science-Adventure Books in 1951

De Camp was best known for his light fantasy, particularly two series written in collaboration with Pratt, the

Floyd C. Gale in 1961 said that they "were far and away the finest team of fantasy collaborators".[25] De Camp and Pratt also wrote some stand-alone novels similar in tone to the Harold Shea stories, of which the most highly regarded is Land of Unreason (1942), and de Camp wrote a few more of this genre on his own.[22]

He was also known for his sword and sorcery, a fantasy genre revived partly by his editorial work on and continuation of Robert E. Howard's Conan cycle.[2][22][26] He also edited a series of fantasy anthologies credited with helping to spark the renaissance of heroic fantasy in the late 1960s.[27]

De Camp also created three noteworthy sword and sorcery sequences. The Pusadian series (from 1951), composed of the novel The Tritonian Ring and several short stories, is set in an antediluvian era similar to Howard's.

More substantial is the Novarian series (from 1968), of which the core is the Reluctant King trilogy, beginning with The Goblin Tower, de Camp's most accomplished effort in the genre, continuing in The Clocks of Iraz, and concluding with The Unbeheaded King. The trilogy features the adventurer Jorian, ex-king of Xylar. Jorian's world is an alternate reality to which our own serves as an afterlife. Other novels in the sequence include The Fallible Fiend, a satire told from the point of view of a demon, and The Honorable Barbarian, a follow-up to the trilogy featuring Jorian's brother as the hero.

The Incorporated Knight series comprises some 1970s short stories by de Camp and two novels written in collaboration with Catherine Crook de Camp,

Mandeville's Travels
.

Historical fiction

De Camp also wrote historical fiction set in the era of classical antiquity from the height of the

Hellenistic period. Five novels published by Doubleday from 1958 to 1969[1] form a loosely connected series based on their common setting and occasional cross references. They were also linked by a common focus on the advancement of scientific knowledge, de Camp's chosen protagonists being explorers, artisans, engineers, innovators and practical philosophers rather than famous names from antiquity, who are relegated to secondary roles. The best known of his historical novels is The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate
.

Nonfiction

In 1952, Richard M. Powers provided a Galaxy Science Fiction cover highlighting essays by de Camp and by Robert A. Heinlein

De Camp's first book was Inventions and Their Management, co-written with Alf K. Berle and published by International Textbook Company in 1937: a 733-page book with a three-page list of law cases cited.[1][28]

He enjoyed

B.F Skinner; and magician James Randi.[29] Despite being a long-time writer of fantasy, de Camp did not believe in ghosts in the supernatural sense. His ghosts dwelt only in his mind as memories of his parents. His mother, he wrote in a New York Times Magazine article, died of an overdose of faith healing.[4] When considering claims of UFO sightings, astrology, and other subjects considered moot by the scientific community, de Camp would address the circular logic expressed by enthusiasts by insisting on first-hand, unbiased, measurable data to back up the claims. "In the history of cultism," de Camp said in a Science News interview, "one is always experiencing a feeling of deja vu."[29]

He explained how

Citadels of Mystery, and The Ancient Engineers
.

Some others of his many and wide-ranging nonfiction works were

dragons), Great Cities of the Ancient World and The Evolution of Naval Weapons
(a United States government textbook).

Published in the July 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, "Language for Time Travelers" won de Camp the first non-fiction readership monthly honor awarded in the magazine for his exploration of the communication difficulties for time travelers as pronunciation and semantics shift over time.[7]

De Camp's pioneering biographies of fantasy writers were many short articles and full-length studies of

Freudian theories about him.[32]

De Camp also wrote nonfiction radio scripts for Voice of America.[12]

De Camp wrote a number of lesser-known but nonetheless significant works that explored such topics as racism, which he wrote could be more accurately described as ethnocentrism, noting that no scholar comparing the merits of various ethnicities has ever sought to prove that his own ethnicity was inferior to others.[33] Isaac Asimov recalled de Camp finding the tendency of authors to portray human characters in outer-space science fiction as superior to aliens analogous to northern Europeans imagining they had some inherent superiority over other races.[34]

Awards and honors

De Camp and

Time and Chance.[2][35]

At a meeting of the executive council of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) in Denver, Colorado, in April 2011, De Camp was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism.[37] CSI was previously known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).[38]

In popular culture

L. Sprague de Camp has been depicted in fictional works by a number of other authors. Randall Garrett conflated him with J. R. R. Tolkien's Gandalf in the character of the magician "Sir Lyon Gandolphus Gray" in his Lord Darcy series. He was the model for the "Geoffrey Avalon" character in Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the "Black Widowers,"[11] and the unnamed court magician in Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Return to Xanadu" (The Enchanter Completed: A Tribute Anthology for L. Sprague de Camp, 2005).

He also appears without fictional disguise in the short stories "Green Fire" by Eileen Gunn, Andy Duncan, Pat Murphy, and Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Science Fiction, April 2000) and "Father Figures" by Susan Shwartz (The Enchanter Completed: A Tribute Anthology for L. Sprague de Camp, 2005),[39] and in the novels In the Courts of the Crimson Kings (2008) by S. M. Stirling and The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown (2011) by Paul Malmont.

A semi-fictionalized version of de Camp appears in the third episode of the 2017 TV series

Unabomber manifesto. In the scene depicting this meeting, de Camp's name appears on a placard as "L. Sprague de Camp, S.A.G.A.
Author, The Ancient Engineers." De Camp's name does not specifically appear in the episode credits, which identify the roles of actors in the scene as composite characters. The Ancient Engineers is cited in endnote 18 of the manifesto.

Selected works

Main article: L. Sprague de Camp bibliography

This selection is limited to books.

Science fiction

Fantasy

Historical fiction

In chronological order:


Anthologies

Nonfiction

Linguistic studies

Some search results can be found through Google Scholar.

See also

  • Robert E. Howard's legacy

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g L. Sprague de Camp at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB). Retrieved April 12, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Pace, Eric (November 11, 2000). "L. S. de Camp, 92, Author Of Over 100 Fantasy Novels". The New York Times. p. c16. Retrieved January 2, 2020.
  3. ^ "None But Lucifer – H.L. Gold & L. Sprague de Camp". YouTube. November 17, 2009. Archived from the original on December 11, 2021. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
  4. ^ a b c d e De Camp, L. Sprague (April 7, 1985). "Talking to Ghosts". The New York Times Magazine. p. SM38.
  5. ^ De Camp, L. Sprague. Science-Fiction Handbook (New York: Hermitage Press, 1953), p. 177.
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-0810309180
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 0-88355-158-6
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 9780684167404
    .
  9. Caltech
    ). June 13, 1930. Retrieved March 29, 2013.
  10. ^ "Catherine Crook wed in Riverside Chapel: Alumna of Barnard College is Bride of L. Sprague de Camp". New York Times. August 13, 1939. p. D2.
  11. ^ a b Asimov, Isaac. I. Asimov: a Memoir (New York, Doubleday, 1994), chapter 120 "The Trap Door Spiders."
  12. ^ a b Thurber, Jon (November 13, 2000). "Obituaries; L. Sprague de Camp; Prolific Sci-Fi Writer". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. p. B4.
  13. ^ Weeks, Jerome. "De Camp library for sale." The Dallas Morning News, October 24, 2005, p. 3G.
  14. ^ a b Cryer, Max. Common Phrases ... and the Amazing Stories Behind Them. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010, page 93.
  15. ^ a b Hendrickson, Robert. Words and Phrase Origins. 3rd ed. New York: Facts On File, 2004, page 249.
  16. ^ Paxton, C. G. M., & Naish, D. "Did Nineteenth Century Marine Vertebrate Fossil Discoveries Influence Sea Serpent Reports?" In Earth Sciences History v. 38, iss. 1 (2019), pp. 16-27. https://doi.org/10.17704/1944-6178-38.1.16
  17. JSTOR 20872772
    .
  18. ^ Meyers, Walter E. (July 1976). "The Future History and Development of the English Language". Science Fiction Studies. 3 (2): 130–142.
  19. ^ a b c Power, Colleen. "DeCamp, L. (Lyon) Sprague." Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Science Fiction (Chicago, American Library Association, 1989), pp. 170-74.
  20. ^ Laughlin, Charlotte, and Levack, Daniel J. H. De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco, Underwood/Miller, 1983, p. 192.
  21. ^ Knight, David, ed. First Flight: Maiden Voyages in Space and Time, New York, Lancer Books, 1963, p. 9.
  22. ^
    ISBN 9781558622050
    .
  23. JSTOR 25117723
    .
  24. ^ a b "Past Winners and Finalists". Sidewise Awards for Alternate History (uchronia.net). Retrieved April 23, 2013. This was a Special Achievement award "for seminal works in the field" among the first annual Sidewise Awards in 1996 (generally recognizing 1995 publications).
  25. ^ Gale, Floyd C. (December 1961). "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf". Galaxy Science Fiction. pp. 144–147.
  26. ISBN 9788833051031
    .
  27. Everett F. Bleiler
    (New York, Scribner, 1985), vol. 2, p. 929.
  28. ^ a b "Inventions and their management" (first edition). Library of Congress Catalog Record. Retrieved 2013-04-12.
  29. ^
    JSTOR 3961111
    .
  30. ^ Hartman, Matthew (February 15, 1975). "De Camp, L. Sprague; Lovecraft: A biography". Library Journal. 100 (4): 387.
  31. ^ Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (January 29, 1975). "Book of the Times: The New England Horror". New York Times Book Review. p. 30.
  32. ^ Murphy, Brian. "Blood & Thunder: The Life & Art of Robert E. Howard: A review". October 16, 2008.
  33. ^ De Camp, L. Sprague. "The Breeds of Man," Analog Science Fiction and Science Fact, April 1976.
  34. ^ Asimov, Isaac. Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection, HarperPrism, 1996.
  35. ^ a b c d "de Camp, L. Sprague" Archived October 16, 2012, at the
    Locus Publications
    . Retrieved April 2, 2013.
  36. ^ "Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master" Archived July 1, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Retrieved April 2, 2013.
  37. ^ "The Pantheon of Skeptics". CSI. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Archived from the original on January 31, 2017. Retrieved April 30, 2017.
  38. ^ "CSICOP becomes CSI after thirty years". Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. November 20, 2006. Archived from the original on August 15, 2009.
  39. ^ Stableford, Brian. Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, c2006, page 125.

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