L. Sprague de Camp (1907–2000)

This is supposed to be a book of science fiction, but maybe it should be filed as historical fiction instead.

By that I mean that the book presents itself as offering an overview of how science fiction reached its current (well, current as of 1972) state, along with some interesting stories along the way. The problem is, the history really isn't accurate.

I'll only bore you with one example. The de Camps correctly connect medieval romances with modern SF and (especially) fantasy -- and then, show more on page 15, come up with this: Miguel de Cervantes "wrote a long novel... which so hilariously burlesqued medieval romance that nobody thereafter dared write one."

I'm sure William Shakespeare would be interested to know that "The Tempest" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen" do not exist -- because "The Two Noble Kinsmen" is Shakespeare's rewrite of Chaucer's romance "The Knight's Tale," and "The Tempest" (which is Shakespeare's pure invention) is a classic medieval romance, with magical elements and a plot that revolves around fixing an old wrong. It doesn't get more romance-y than that.

What Cervantes killed off was not the medieval romance (which happens to be the most popular genre in existence today: J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was a deliberate recreation of a medieval romance, and the main Harry Potter sequence is also a romance, as is Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series, and Frank Herbert's Dune, and Joan D. Vinge's The Snow Queen, and on and on). What Cervantes killed was the chivalric romance -- and even that, I contend, only died because chivalry had been killed by projectile weapons -- mortally wounded by the English longbow and polished off by gunpowder weapons. When a nitwit with a month's training and a matchlock musket could kill a knight who needed fifteen years of training and a lot of expensive equipment, chivalry was doomed without needing Cervantes to lampoon it. And, without chivalry, who needs chivalric romances?

There are a number of other examples of this sort of thing, which anyone with a good background in this sort of literature could point out. The overall accuracy I think improves as we get into the twentieth century, but I still can't bring myself to trust it on points I don't know.

To be sure, the de Camps also give an anthology of stories to illustrate the continuity of SF. This is a mixed bag. The Odyssey is certainly a good example of an early romance (yes, another one of those), and they picked a decent excerpt, but why did they pick Richmond Lattimore's translation -- generally agreed to be accurate but pedestrian? They print Plato's discussion of Atlantis -- but Plato is making a philosophical point, not engaging in speculative fiction. As for H. P. Lovecraft -- I guess there is a definitional disagreement here. Lovecraft is first and foremost occult horror, and neither of those are science fiction in my book.

Once they reach the period of genre science fiction (that is, post-1930 and published in science fiction magazines), the results are better. Stanley G. Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" is one of the first tales of friendly but inexplicable aliens -- a milestone in the field. Lester del Rey' "Helen O'Loy" gave a valuable new twist on robot stories. Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" is a classic example of the dangers of space, though I wonder how feminist critics view it today. These are all good stories -- but you can get them, and many others, in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. As for Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," it was Asimov's favorite among his own stories, and the final plot twist is fascinating -- but the progress to that ending is a little repetitious, and it's a story that will irritate many with strong religious feelings.

Summary: The history in this volume doesn't work. The stories are good but are available elsewhere. Maybe the combination is supposed to add value -- but, to me, it subtracted instead. show less

I just finished one of the most entertaining books of the year. A dethroned king, epic sword battles, dark magic, man-eating apes, pirates, pagans, giant free-roaming snakes, vampires, mummies and women! Did I mention the barbarian? Yes, it's a Conan tale.
It's my husband's fault, really. He took into account my recent predilection for pulp novels and my current attempt at penning a sword-and-sorcery tale for NaNoWriMo and gently suggested that I might try a Conan tale. I had a hard time show more getting past my remembrances of the '80s films but it just so happened that our library carried an audiobook version that I could listen to in the car. Since it was his idea, I made my husband listen to it with me. What a time we had!
Todd McLaren, the reader, has made a fan out of me. I was astonished at the cast of voices he can do. He really made it come alive with his excitement, inflection and tone. Is that what gathering around the radio for Zorro and The Shadow was like? I never understood the nostalgia before, but now I do.
The material itself was fantastic pulp writing. The character of Conan is so interesting, at times regal and eloquent and then suddenly socially awkward. My interest in the story only weakened in one spot towards the end, when he shifted away from Conan's point-of-view and labored on ad infinum about the geography for the last battle. All-in-all, I am impressed with Howard and I am duly chastised for judging his works by their Schwarzenegger-knockoff-in-a-loincloth covers. show less

This book is regarded as a classic of science fiction, though it can read rather datedly nowadays. An archaeologist on assignment in Italy is hit by a thunderbolt, and hey presto! he's been flung back in time to the Roman Empire. With his foreknowledge of the course of human history, he sets about accelerating the progress of Roman society, with the aim of preventing the fall of "darkness".

Ostensibly, the 'darkness' Sprague de Camp writes of is the Dark Ages. He makes his character introduce show more printing so as to allow the free dissemination of ideas and advance Roman society and technology so that the Dark Ages would not happen. And he succeeds in putting his "inventions" in place. But are we sure that Sprague de Camp meant the Dark Ages?

The contemporary Italy that we see at the beginning of the book is Mussolini's Italy. Is it possible that, through the medium of a pulp science fiction novel (albeit one with a bit more intelligence about itself), Sprague de Camp was suggesting that America should awake, encourage the free flow of ideas, and prevent the fall of a different kind of darkness across Europe and the world? Or indeed, that by putting free thought and discussion into place a thousand years before the Renaissance, his hero would not only prevent the medieval Dark Ages, but the Dark Age of 20th century fascism?

I believe that no work of art, no matter how trivial or slight, can avoid referring to the time and place it was created in. If we accept that view, then 'Lest darkness fall' is an anti-fascist tract, disguised as a time-travel story. And perhaps it changed just enough minds to help prevent the fall of darkness in our own time. show less

So Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee started it, sort of. Send a contemporary guy or gal with moxie into the past to see what they can do to change the world with their educational head start. Twain cheated, since his past was more myth than history. But you can play it straight, as L. Sprague de Camp does in Lest Darkness Fall (1941).

A one-way time machine sends an archaeologist to fifth-century Italy. What can he do to survive and prevent the Dark Ages? He uses his knowledge of Italian and show more classical Latin to pick up enough of the vulgar Latin of the time to get by. Then he introduces brandy-making, Arabic numerals, and double-entry bookkeeping. Presto. He has a viable business. He helps a doddering old King with his astronomy hobby and gets a reputation as a fellow who can sometimes know which leader to back in a fight.

He also has to avoid the charms of a princess who knows about poisons.

The story was more fun than I thought it would be, but I should have known that a book that inspired Harry Turtledove to study Byzantine history had something going for it. show less