Catherine Crook 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

De Camp was a man of many talents (or a wearer of many hats, at any rate), but he was neither an archaeologist nor an anthropologist. Citadels of Mystery, therefore, reads like what it is: the scribblings of a hobbyist who had sufficient funds and leisure to travel the world taking snapshots of ancient ruins. He references many other authors, but De Camp's terse pronouncements are absurdly funny considering how little he knew about the subject himself. "If they sprang from a common civilized show more center, the Egyptians and the Mayas ought to have shared such things as maize and smallpox," concludes De Camp, blissfully unaware of what the two civilizations did share: an identical solar calendar with the basic length of 360 days, rounding off the year with a short month of five "bad" or "nameless" days. That's an unusually specific commonality between two cultures whose paths, according to the author, never crossed. "Present informed opinion does not take the Diffusionist claims seriously," he declares elsewhere. How chagrined De Camp would be to read the conclusion of a recent study published in Current Biology (October 2017): that, while researchers have found no evidence of genetic intermingling between South American natives and Easter Islanders, they concede that "some cultural exchange occurred between the Americas and Polynesia before the impact of European colonization." In other words, Sprague, the Diffusionist claims have withstood the rigors of science...while you are deader than the dodo. (Interestingly, De Camp's Wikipedia page notes that his parents sent him to a military-style school "to cure him of intellectual arrogance." I offer no further comment, except to say that perhaps the cure didn't take.)

Two stars for the inclusion of Great Zimbabwe and Nan Madol, fascinating archaeological sites about which relatively little has been written.

(Update: On September 11, 2024, the scientific journal Nature published a study entitled "Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience and pre-European contact with the Americas." Therein, J. Victor Moreno-Mayar and his fellow researchers detailed their reconstruction of the genomic history of the Easter Islanders, finding a Native American admixture of "about 10%" in the genetic makeup of the ancient and present-day inhabitants of the island. We now have conclusive evidence of contact between Easter Island and the Americas. Diffusionism, which was such a dirty word among orthodox historians and archaeologists, is scientifically valid.) show less

(original title Ancient Ruins and Archaeology)

Reading Ancient Engineers inspired me to dig out and reread my copy of Citadels of Mystery (and log it into LibraryThing as it wasn't already logged). A useful gaming reference especially for pulp era games; the book describes 12 sites, debunks various myths associated with them and speculates on their actual history and purpose. The sites covered are:

Atlantis and the City of Silver
Pyramid Hill and the Claustrophobic King
Stonehenge and the show more Giants' Dance
Troy and the Nine Cities
Ma'rib and the Queen of Sheba
Zimbabwe and King Solomon's Mines
Tintagel and the Table Round
Angkor and the Golden Window
Tikal and the Feathered Elephants
Machu Picchu and the Unwalled Fortress
Nan Matol and the Sacred Turtle
Rapa Nui and the Eyeless Watchers

Again, an old book (originally published in 1964), with a post script which probably dates from the 1972 reprint. This adds the Santorini connection to the Atlantis legend, and adds more on the Stonehenge calendar theory. I found the writing style to be more accessible than Ancient Engineers.

For what it does, fine, but as with Ancient Engineers don't expect any in-depth exposition. It reads rather like a Ken Hite column, especially from Suppressed Transmission although with more Theosophy etc than Antarctic Space Nazis. Also reminscent of the more recent Osprey titles along the same lines. show less

de Camp looks at twelve ancient sites around the world and talks about the myths (and some of the more "crackpot" theories) that have been built up around them; the history of their discoveries; the explorers, antiquarians and archaeologists involved; and tries too present as good an explanation for their existence as he can.

I'm sure that other people have written at greater length about all the places but as a brief overview this does work very well. I had heard of eleven of the twelve show more sites before (the only exception was Nan Matol, in the Caroline Islands) and I can't really quibble with what he has to say about them. The only issue is that this was published in the 1960's, originally, and archaeology and thoughts have moved on since then, but I still enjoyed it. My copy is from 1972 and includes a postscript about further thoughts on Atlantis and Stonehenge following some more archaeological discoveries. I'm sure that if there is a more up-to-date version it would be worth tracking down. show less