| Adopt-An-Author.com | |
|
 Lyon Sprague de Camp was a prolific American science fiction and fantasy author, writing over 100 books in a career that lasted over 60 years.
He was born in New York City on 27 November 1907, one of three sons to Lyon de Camp and Emma Beatrice Sprague.
After training as an aeronautical engineer, De Camp received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1930 from the California Institute of Technology and a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933.
During the 1930s and 40s De Camp became regarded as one of the most important figures of science fiction, writing numerous sf and fiction novels and short stories during these years.
In 1939 he married Catherine Crook, with whom he would go on to collaborate with from the 1960s onwards.
During World War II De Camp worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard with fellow authors Isaac Asimov and Robert A Heinlein, and was part of the “Trap Door Spiders”, an all-male literary banqueting club which also served as the basis of Asimov’s “Black Widowers”, a fictional group of mystery-solvers.
The character “Geoffrey Avalon” in the Black Widowers was based on De Camp.
De Camp was also a member of the group formed in the 1960s called the “Swordsmen and Sorcerers’ Guild of America” (SAGA), which was a group of Heroic Fantasy authors. Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords! anthologies contain some of these works.
During De Camp’s long career he wrote numerous short stories, novels, non-fiction and historical-fiction works and poems and also collaborated with many other authors.
One of the common themes in De Camp’s work stems from his educative mind, in which he tends to correct the works of similar authors.
Take Lest Darkness Fall, a time travel novel very similar to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, in which De Camp rationalises the method of time travel and sets the hero’s technical expertise at a believable level.
He did the same thing with space opera and planetary romance in his science fiction series Viagens Interplanetarias, which is also his most extended work.
But De Camp was best known for his light fantasy, most notably the Harold Shea series and also the Gavagan’s Bar series, both of which were written in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt, his longtime friend.
In 1953 De Camp and Willy Ley won the International Fantasy Award for non-fiction for their Lands Beyond on which they collaborated.
In 1966 he was guest of honour at the World Science Fiction Convention and in 1978 he won the Nebula Award as a Grandmaster and the Hugo Award in 1997 for his autobiography entitled Time and Chance.
He also won the World Science Fiction Society’s Gandalf Grand Master award in 1976 and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
De Camp died on 6 November 2000 on what would have been his wife’s (who passed away) birthday, just three weeks shy of his own 93rd birthday. [edit]
|
|
More Science Fiction Authors
Platt, Charles
If Worlds of Science Fiction Magazine
Laidlaw, Marc
Watson, Ian
Beukes, Lauren
View as Title Search
|
|
|
| Adopt-An-Author-->De Camp, L Sprague | |
| |
|
