L. Sprague DeCamp

L. Sprague DeCamp was something of an oddity for a fantasy author - an intensely, almost infuriatingly practical man whose imagination seems to have been shackled by his ultra-logical mind.  His writing, too, was always professional and clean, but lacking in fury, passion and color.  All that said, he was a major force in fantasy and sci-fi in the 40's and 50's.

Lest Darkness Fall is the story of Martin Padway, a modern (well, 1939) man who falls back in time to 535 AD - the time of the fall of Rome and the onset of the Dark Ages, and tells of Martin's attempt to use his knowledge to halt the oncoming Dark Age and replace it with an era of greater enlightenment.  

A major flaw that has been noted in the book is DeCamp's own certainty of his rightness and intelligence - Padway is smarter than anyone else, is always right, and his plans never go awry.  This is typical DeCamp-ian thinking.  But it's still a fun read.  Like all DeCamp, his attention to historical detail is solid, and he has moments of genuine wit.

Between 1940 and 1954, DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt wrote as series of novellas chronicling the adventures of Harold Shea, a psychologist who uses a system of symbolic logic to project himself (and later, his colleagues)  into the worlds of fantasy and myth.  The first, and best, of these, has Shea finding himself in Asgard, helping Odin and company against a horde of trolls and giants.  Later, with partner Reed Chalmers and others, Shea visits the settings of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the Finnish Kalavela and finally the lands of Irish myth in the final novella, "The Green Magician."  The stories are light-hearted, deriving their humor from the culture shock of Shea and Chalmers' encounters and from the reality that they usually do not understand the local systems well enough to be able to predict the actual effects of the spells they attempt, and from the interaction of the psychologists' logical, rationalistic thinking with the wildly counterintuitive physics of the worlds they visit. These stories were highly thought of.   Boucher and McComas described the series as "a high point in the application of sternest intellectual logic to screwball fantasy.". Damon Knight characterized the series as "relaced, ribald adventure . . . priceless," saying that "no fantasy reader should be without them."  In 1977, Richard A. Lupoff described the series as "whole planes above the hackneyed gut-spillers and skull-smashers that pass for heroic fantasy." They've been collected several times, most recently and completely as The Mathematics of Magic: The Enchanter Stories of DeCamp and Pratt, including a couple of later tales DeCamp wrote solo, taking Shea to Oz and Barsoom.  In recent years, a collection of original Shea tales by other authors, The Exotic Enchanter, has been released.

Solomon's Stone: After an unintentionally successful demon-summoning, accountant Prosper Nash finds himself on the astral plane, inhabiting the body of Jean-Prospere, Chevalier de Néche—the swashbuckling cavalier he likes to imagine himself as—and in by a New York filled with characters from similar wish-fulfillment daydreams of other mundane souls. The demon is possessing his body on a mundane plane, and he attempts to find his way back. This involves the Shamir, the Solomon's Stone of the title, and plentiful swashbuckling adventure, and a plot in which Prosper Nash's accounting abilities prove as useful as Chevalier de Néche's athletic ones

The Land of Unreason, also written with Pratt, concerns Fred Barber, an American staying as a guest in an English country home during World War II, consumes a bowl of milk left as an offering for the fairies, substituting liquor in its place. The rightful recipient of the offering, drunk and offended at the substitution, takes vengeance by kidnapping Barber off to the Land of Faerie as a changeling, a fate normally reserved for infants. He finds Faerie beset by a menace echoing the war in his own world. Trapped in a magical realm where rationality as he knows it is turned upside-down and failure to follow the rules can have dire consequences, Barber undertakes a quest in the service of Oberon, the fairy king, in order to be returned to his own world. The outcome, befitting a realm in which nothing is as expected, is one that neither he nor the reader anticipates, for Fred Barber is not quite the man he thinks he is...  

The Carnelian Cube again co-written with Pratt,  tells the tale of an archeologist named Arthur Finch who confiscates a weird stone -- the eponymous carnelian cube -- from one of the workers at his dig in Turkey. The stone, it turns out, belonged to the Pythagorean philosopher Apollonius of Tyana, to whom later generations attributed various occult powers. When Finch places the stone under his pillow and goes to sleep dreaming of a more perfect, "rational" world, he awakens to find himself in a parallel Earth, where everything is done on a solely rational basis, resulting in the elevation of self-interest above all else. Finch wishes to escape but, unfortunately, the carnelian cube does not make its way with him and he must seek out the parallel version of the worker from whom he confiscated the stone so he can return home. Regain the cube he does, but with unintended effects, for each time he steals it and dreams, he finds himself transported into yet another parallel world that isn't quite what he wanted.
The Undesired Princess  concerns Rollin Hobart, a man transported to another plane whose natural laws are those of Aristotelian logic; that is, everything is either one thing or another, with nothing in between and no gray areas. Similarly, everything is limited in color and, with the exception of the inhabitants, in shape: leaves are blue or yellow and are flat, regular polygons in shape; the title character has paper-white skin and lips of primary color red. He must learn to use and master the inflexible laws of this universe in order to survive and ultimately return home. In the course of his adventures he picks up a royal local lady-love and rises to become the master of the plane, but elects to abandon both to return to his mundane life. The lady, however, has her own ideas about that...

Pusasian series

Is an early sword and sorcery series, patterned after Robert E. Howard.  

The Tritonian Ring: When the gods resolve to destroy Lorsk, principal kingdom of the sinking continent of Pusad, because Prince Vakar, heir to its throne, is thought to be a threat to them, the king sends the prince on a quest to save the realm from destruction. Vakar is tasked with traveling the known world in search of what the gods most fear, accompanied only by his servant, Fual. He finds himself hampered by ignorance of just what that might be and continual attempts to murder him by parties unknown; meanwhile, his treasonous brother Kuros is plotting with the pirates of the Gorgon Isles, Lorsk's enemies, to overthrow their father. On his quest Vakar encounters Amazons, a seductive queen who is under a spell, an amorous centauress, sorcerers who command legions of headless warriors, and the dangerous Gorgonians themselves, masters of the medusas with their paralyzing glares.

DeCamp also wrote a handful of short stories in the Pusad setting, which have been collected with the original novel.


Viagens Interplanetaries (Krishna) series 

Is DeCamp's "sword and planet" series of novels - "pure entertainment in the form of light, humorous, swashbuckling, interplanetary adventure-romances - a sort of sophisticated Burroughs-type story, more carefully thought out than their prototypes." (so said DeCamp, with his usual smugness).  


The Queen of Zamba (also known as Cosmic Manhunt and tells of how Canadian private investigator Victor Hasselborg trails a tycoon's daughter after she leaves Earth for Krishna in the company of English adventurer Anthony Fallon.

The Hand of Zei  tells of travel writer Dirk Barnevelt and lecturer George Tangaloa, associates of interplanetary explorer and documentarian Igor Shtain, are drafted on Shtain's disappearance to complete his commission to explore the Sargasso Sea-like Sunqar area of the planet Krishna's Banjao Sea — and to find Shtain, who is suspected to have been kidnapped to Krishna. 


The Continent Makers collects early short stories in the Krishna cycle.

Rogue Queen, probably DeCamp's most celebrated work, deals with an unintended sexual revolution that erupts when an exploratory ship lands on a planet with a rigid, sexually segregated society. It is considered one of DeCamp's best.

The Virgin of Zesh follows the exploits of Althea Kirwin, a nun of the Ecumenical Monotheist religion. Unfortunately she suffers from romantic entanglements: from a big Russsian brute who gets her drunk and married, to fleeing to safety into the Krishnan hinterlands where she meets a brute of a different nature who is far more savage but far more civilized. In between which are encounters with a back-to-nature cult (a must for semi-barbaric planets) and a power grabbing local with plans of conquest.


The Tower of Zanid re-introduces Anthony Fallon, an English adventurer who sets out to become ruler of a kingdom. Unfortunately the locals don't merely roll over and let him have his will, and to boot the local Earth delegates are in there in part to prevent just such shenanigans on the part of would be swashbucklers.

Hostage of Zir introduces Fergus Reith, the "hero" as such of several subsequent Krishnan books, a stand-in Tour Guide for the Magic Carpet Travel Agency wrastled into leading a simple tour guide on the planet. The first tour group. Easy enough. By the end of the book Reith is torn between completing the task and boiling the members of the group in hot oil, and that illustrates the travails these mild, ordinary people put him through with their zany and constant antics. From such simple feats as insulting locals and risking a lynch mob to such exotic fare as getting kidnapped in a power ploy, they provide non-stop hair pulling entertainment. Not the least bit the local natives are slightly green skinned and have feathery tufts from their eyebrows. And prove to be quiet "human" despite those differences!

The Prisoner of Zhamanak relates the quest of Terran consul Percy Mjipa (first introduced in previously published but chronologically later The Tower of Zanid) to free the trouble-prone Alicia Dyckman from captivity in the hostile native kingdom of Zhamanak; Dyckman meets and becomes involved with Fergus Reith at the end of the story.

The Bones of Zora reunites Fergus Reith and Alicia Dyckman, divorced after a disastrous marriage, as they find themselves assisting rival palaeontologists attempting to prove competing theories regarding the evolutionary past of Krishna.


The Stones of Nomuru  pits archaeologist Keith Salazar in defence of his dig against both the development plans of an avaricious fellow colonist and invasion by a warlord on the planet Kukulkan.

The Swords of Zinjaban  again reunites Fergus Reith and Alicia Dyckman as liaisons for a Terran company hoping to film the first movie on the planet, first as guides helping the advance party scout locations, and then as advisers to the actual production. Complications turn up in the form of several of Reith's old flames and an invasion of the nomadic hordes of Qaath.

The Venom Trees of Sunga set a generation after The Stones of Nomuru, follows Keith's son, biologist Kirk Salazar as he studies a local species and seeks to protect its habitat amid a struggle between a logging magnate and Terran cultists.

Novarian series

The Goblin Tower: Xylar's kings have it rough. Every five years the current king is beheaded and any audience member who catches the head reluctantly becomes the next king. After King Jorian is rescued by the magician Karadur, he promises to obtain the Kist of Avlen, filled with magical spells. The two men set out on a series of episodic adventures and encounter bizarre creatures of every sort, including a snake princess and a minor god. Like other picaresque novels, this fantasy lampoons the customs of the various societies. Jorian tells many captivating stories before the plot reaches a surprising climax..

The Fallible Fiend tells of Zdim, a demon, conjured by a wizard, into a world where he just doesn't want to be. He's also a lousy indentured servant. He thinks-too literally-for his own good. And throughout the story he never quite gets the hang of humans or the Primal Plane (or rather the 12th plan being that he knows he's from the Primal Plane). Of course, one misadventure leads to another.

The Clocks of Iraz:  After narrowly escaping Xylar with his head, Jorian wandered far from the Twelve Cities, finding himself in one deadly situation after another all throughout the land. All he really wants is a normal, quiet life with the chosen wife he had to leave behind in Xylar. At the beginning of this novel, he has secured a surveying job not far from Xylar, finally achieving some level of anonymity. As soon as he receives a message from Karadur, who has found his way to Iraz, asking his help and promising assistance in rescuing his wife from Xylar, imminent danger immediately appears in the form of Xylarian guards who recognize their unbeheaded king. Managing a wild, very narrow escape, Jorian makes his way to Iraz, where Karadur asks him to repair the gigantic water clock that his father originally built for the king years ago. Of course, things are never quite so simple for Jorian. This time, instead of meeting danger at every turn, danger comes to him in the form of a coordinated siege of Iraz. Can this Barbarian Savior save the kingdom, not to mention his own hide--again?

The Unbeheaded King picks up after Jorian has escaped the seige of Iraz and represents the last attempt to rescue his lady love Estrildis from captivity. Xylar will exchange her gladly for his head; as ex-king he blocks them from gaining a new king becuase their political system requires the king's head be chopped off after five years and tossed into the crowd to see who catches it and becomes the lucky person for the next five year term.

The Honorable Barbarian:  the antic adventures of Kerin who is fleeing matrimony with the amorous Adeliza. He is accompanied by a sprite who is to keep him safe until he is returned to Adeliza. This is a fate that his family has tried to save him from by sending him on a perilous mission.

Conan stories

Tales of Conan is a  collection of four fantasy short stories written by Robert E. Howard as adventure yarns mostly set in the Middle Ages, rewritten as Conan stories by de Camp, who also added the fantastic element. 
 

The Return of Conan:  a year of peace for King Conan and his new queen Zenobia is broken when the latter is abducted by a demon. Conan learns from the wizard Pelias of Koth that the eastern sorcerer Yah Chieng of Khitai is responsible, and begins a quest to recover her, little realizing that the fate of the world as well as Aquilonia rests on the outcome of the contest.  Written with Bjorn Nyberg.

Conan of the Isles: now in his 60's, with a teenaged son and afraid of dying old and infirm in bed,  confronts the Red Terror, a bizarre, magical dark force whose victims disappear without a trace, descends upon Aquilonia, King Conan sets out to destroy its source, evil, conquest-hungry sorcerer-priests from across the sea. (written with Lin Carter)

Conan the Buccaneer:  Conan, now in his late thirties and captain of the Wastrel, becomes embroiled in the politics of the kingdom of Zingara when he seeks the rumored treasure on the Nameless Isle. The fugitive Princess Chabela, the privateer Zarono, and the Stygian sorcerer Thoth-Amon are among those mixed up in the treasure quest. (written with Lin Carter)

Conan of Aquilonia: four stories of an older Conan and Conn fighting the forces of dark sorcery.  (written with Lin Carter)

Conan the Liberator: Following the events of the story "The Treasure of Tranicos", Conan joins a conspiracy of former comrades-in-arms to overthrow Numedides, the mad and tyrannical king of Aquilonia. As commander of the rebel forces, he has the prospect of becoming king himself if they succeed, but he has not only Numedides' loyal troops, led by General Procas, to overcome, but the spells of the evil sorcerer Thulandra Thuu.
(written with Lin Carter)

Conan and the Spider God:  Conan finds himself in the kingdom of Zamora, a fugitive under suspicion of kidnapping Jamilah, the wife of the king of Turan. Discovering she has actually been taken by devotees of the Zamoran spider god Zath, he sets out for the city of Yezud (first mentioned in the Howard story "The People of the Black Circle") to rescue the captive, and incidentally steal the opals set as eyes in the god's temple image.

DeCamp, Carter, and DeCamp's wife also wrote a novelization of the 1982 "Conan" film.

He published several original tales and "posthumous collaborations" in the Conan paperbacks in the 60's and 70's.  


Other Works 


The Wheels of If collects some of DeCamp's early science fiction stories.  Genus Homo is a collaboration with P. Schuyler Miller that deals with some very "Planet of the Apes"-ish concepts.  Tales from Gavagan's Bar collects a series of humorous, Twilight Zone-ish modern fantasies Pratt and DeCamp wrote together in the early 1950's.  Some of them are quite funny.  The Glory That Was is a mixture of dystopia, time-travel, and historical novel. A Gun For A Dinosaur is another collection of early sci-fi stories.  The Best of L. Sprague DeCamp contains most of his most famous stories.  The Reluctant Shaman, The Purple Pterodactyls, Rivers of Time, Sprague DeCamp's New Anthology of Science Fiction, Scribblings, Aristotle and the Gun, and Years in the Making are others.

None But Lucifer is a dark fantasy involving deals with the devil, written with H.L. Gold.

The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate is a historical novel of ancient Persia, involving Bessas of Zarispa, a young officer of the 'Immortals' regiment, as he searches for the ingredients of a potion that the King has been told will give him immortality; the blood of a dragon and the ear of a king. Unbeknownst to Bessas, the third ingredient is the heart of a hero, and therefore Bessas' own. Relying on information given him by the priests of Marduk in Babylon that a reptile depicted in reliefs on their temple, the sirrush, is a real dragon and lives at the headwaters of the Nile, Bessas sets out for the source of the Nile, accompanied by his former tutor, Myron of Miletos, who is bored of teaching and wants to make a name for himself in the field of philosophy.

The Arrows of Hercules tells us of  the engineer Zopyros of Tarentum, a follower of the Pythagorean philosophical school. Having invented an improved type of catapult, he is drafted into Syracuse's war effort against Carthage by the tyrant Dionysios, creator of the first military ordnance department known to history. The historical Battle of Motya of 399 BC is a major event in the novel. Also portrayed is the incident upon which the legend of the Sword of Damocles is supposedly based.

An Elephant for Aristotle concerns the adventures of Leon of Atrax, a Thessalian cavalry commander who has been tasked by Alexander the Great to bring an elephant captured from the Indian ruler Porus, to Athens as a present for Alexander's old tutor, Aristotle. 

The `Bronze God of Rhodes' deals with the family life of a young man, Chares of Lindos, an artist just completing his apprenticeship, and wishing to step out on his own. Here de Camp succeeds in bring the past into the present by showing would times--even ancient times--just don't change. Chares wants to be on his own and not go into the family business. Of course, the ancient world has its own complications as life grows more difficult for Chares with the coming of war, the difficulties of ancient sea travel and shady dealings, all with an exotic flavor. But, all the desperation and anxiety is tempered with humor. De Camp shows that in ancient Rhodes a sense of humor and the ability to tell tall-tales was just as important then as now.

The Golden Wind concerns the adventures of Eudoxus of Cyzicus and Hippalus on the first voyages by sea from Egypt to India. Following these, it deals with Eudoxus' efforts to circumvent the newly established Egyptian monopoly on trade with India by pioneering a new route around the west coast of Africa, which are ultimately defeated by misadventure and the sheer extent of the continent.

The Great Fetish  On the  Planet Kforri a young teacher, Marko Prokopiu, is convicted and jailed. His heinous crime: preaching the false and unholy belief that Kforri was originally settled by men arriving from Earth in flying machines - a dangerous heresy against the official doctrine of divine evolution. Goaded into jail-break by his wife's desertion and mightily armed with his father's great ax, Marko rushes to avenge his marital honour. With an eminent philosopher, Dr. Halran, inventor of the incredible hot-air balloon, Marko journeys perilously to exotic lands - to decadent Anglonia, hostile Afka, civilised Eropia and, at last, the all-female Isle of Mnaenn. There, by clever ruse and uncommon physical daring, he must recover the Great Fetish and solve the riddle of planet Kforri's ancient history, or meet a fate more complicated than death!

The Incorporated Knight is an expansion of four novellas, set in an alternate-world medieval Europe, involving an unlucky knight's quest for magic and love.  A sequel, The Pixilated Peeress, involving a fugitive countess and misadventures, was published as well.  Both of these are among DeCamp's last fantasy novels, and were written with his wife, Catherine Crook.

In 1963, DeCamp edited a paperback anthology, Swords and Sorcery, that was a landmark in establishing the genre, featuring stories by R.E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Poul Anderson, Fritz Leiber et al.  Later anthologies were The Spell of Seven, The Fantastic Swordsmen, Warlocks and Warriors, 3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Tales Beyond Time.

He also published three books of poetry: Demons and Dinosuars, Heroes and Hobgoblins, Phantoms and Fancies.

Non-Fiction

DeCamp wrote extensively on science, engineering, history and archaeology. While most of these books are now pretty dated, some, especially Lands Beyond, Lost Continents, Spirits Stars and Spells, The Ancient Engineers, and Great Cities of the Ancient World, are worth a look for fantasy gamers and world-builders.  He published several books of essays on science, fantasy fiction, etc (Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants, Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages, Footprints On Sand).

Finally, and most controversially, DeCamp wrote four biographical works about fantasy authors: Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerors, a collection of essays on William Morris, Lord Dunsany, H. P. Lovecraft, E. R. Eddison, Robert E. Howard, Fletcher Pratt, Clark Ashton Smith, J. R. R. Tolkien, and T. H. White, in which he attempts to claim sword and sorcery as equal to, or superior to, any other form of modern fiction, Lovecraft: A Biography, a study of H.P. Lovecraft, and two books on Robert E. Howard: The Miscast Barbarian and Dark Valley Destiny.

These last two tend to throw hardcore fans into paroxysms of fury, and you can easily find internet postings condemning them outright and claiming DeCamp was nothing more than a jealous hack trying to tear down HPL and REH.  This is hyperbole.  The more obvious story is that the ultra-practical, ultra-logical, ultra-rational DeCamp found two such eccentric and neurotic individuals as Lovecraft and Howard (and they were - sorry, gang - both men's insecurities and issues severely impacted their lives - in Howard's case, helped end his at a very young age) frustrating and odd, a fact he can't hide.

The Lovecraft book is quite decent but has been superseded by S.T. Joshi (who has plenty of biases and opinions of his own) publishing a two-volume bio in 2010.  The Howard book's main issue is DeCamp's own biases in trying to assess Howard's mental state - DeCamp is firmly stuck in a kind of 40's/50's Freudianism which was decades out of date by 1983.

In other words, there are better bios of Howard and Lovecraft out there, but neither of these books is the hatchet job detractors believe them to be.