The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea
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One of de Camp's recent books Rivers of Time tells about Reginald Rivers, a twenty-first century time-safari guide who takes his clients back to former geological periods to hunt dinosaurs. The settings are so deftly described that the reader feels he is walking among the inhabitants of untold eons past.
Among de Camp's important non-fiction works are: The Ancient Engineers, Great Cities of the Ancient World, The Day of the Dinosaur, Darwin and his Great Discovery, The Great Monkey Trial (The Scopes Evolution Trial), and comprehensive biographies of Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard titled HP Lovecraft and Dark Valley Destiny respectively.
Sprague de Camp speaks several languages and has traveled world-wide to get material for his books. He has been chased by a hippopotamus in Uganda and by sea lions in the Galapagos Islands, seen tiger and rhinoceros from elephant back in India, and been bitten by a lizard in the jungles of Guatemala. In 1994, de Camp spent Easter on Easter Island in the South Pacific, doing research for his non-fiction book The Ape-Man Within, published November, 1995. Sprague's long-awaited autobiography, Time and Chance, published by Donald M. Grant in 1996 won the 1997 Hugo Award for best non-fiction.
The de Camps' long-time friend Isaac Asimov often referred to Catherine Crook de Camp as "Sprague's lovely wife", although she considered herself "Sprague's rewrite gal" or "dragon at the gate." Her double major in English and economics from Barnard College has proved enormously valuable to the 60-year-old team of de Camp and de Camp. A former teacher, Catherine has written books on economics such as The Money Tree, and Teach Your Children to Manage Money. She has compiled three anthologies of science fiction stories for young readers: Creatures of the Cosmos, 3,000 Years of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Tales Beyond Time.
In the 1960's Catherine began collaborating with Sprague. Currently, her name often appears with her distinguished mate's on such novels as The Bones of Zora, The Pixilated Peeress, The Day of the Dinosaur, and Citadels of Mystery.
L. Sprague de Camp, left, and Fletcher Pratt, 1941.
Fletcher Pratt
According to L. Sprague de Camp, Pratt was born near Tonawanda (town), New York, and attended Hobart College for one year. During the 1920s he worked for the Buffalo Courier-Express and on a Staten Island newspaper. In 1926, he married Inga Stephens Pratt, an artist. In the late 1920s he began selling stories to pulp magazines. Again, according to de Camp's memoir, when a fire gutted his apartment in the 1930s he used the insurance money to study at the Sorbonne for a year. After that he began writing histories.
Wargamers know Pratt as the inventor of a set of rules for civilian naval wargaming before the Second World War. This was known as the "Naval War Game" and was based on a wargame developed by Fred T. Jane involving dozens of tiny wooden ships, built on a scale of one inch to 50 feet. These were spread over the floor of Pratt's apartment and their maneuvers were calculated via a complex mathematical formula. Noted author and artist Jack Coggins was a frequent participant in Pratt's Navy Game, and De Camp met him through his wargaming group.
Pratt established the literary dining club known as the Trap Door Spiders in 1944. The name is a reference to the exclusive habits of the trapdoor spider, which when it enters its burrow pulls the hatch shut behind it. The club was later fictionalized as the Black Widowers in a series of mystery stories by Isaac Asimov. Pratt himself was fictionalized in one story, "To the Barest", as the Widowers’ founder, Ralph Ottur.
He was also a charter member of The Civil War Round Table of New York, organized in 1951, and served as its president from 1953-1954. In 1956, after his death, the Round Table's board of directors established the Fletcher Pratt Award in his honor, which is presented every May to the author or editor of the best non-fiction book on the Civil War published during the preceding calendar year.
Aside from his historical writings, Pratt is best known for his fantasy collaborations with de Camp, the most famous of which is the humorous Harold Shea series, was eventually published in full as The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989, ISBN 0-671-69809-5). His solo fantasy novels The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star are also highly regarded.
Pratt wrote in a markedly identifiable prose style, reminiscent of the style of Bernard DeVoto. One of his books is dedicated "To Benny DeVoto, who taught me to write."
Several of Pratt's books were illustrated by Inga Stephens Pratt, his wife.
Table of Contents
The Compleat Enchanter The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea
FOREWORD: FLETCHER AND I
THE ROARING TRUMPET
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
THE MATHEMATICS OF MAGIC
One
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
THE CASTLE OF IRON
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
The Authors