by Brian Kunde
First installment of a long article I originally posted to the now defunct d for de Camp Yahoo group in 2012, newly updated. My previous piece on “Conan — The Last Battle” was an expansion of one entry from this article. (It’s also present here, but truncated.) These are (1) the writings L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp intended to write (or that it was thought they might) but never did, (2) the writings they did write but were never published, (3) the ones they might or might not have written that might or might not have been published, (4) the ones that appeared in different form or under different titles from the versions first written, and (5) the ones they wrote, and perhaps published, but which, for one reason or another, cannot be identified for certain. Each part of this survey will examine one of these classes, in turn. Here’s Part 1!
The title of this survey is borrowed from an article by L. Sprague de Camp himself. In it he explored the world of “pseudobiblia” – renowned or notorious works that do not in fact exist (the most prominent being The Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred, the fake book of occult lore invented by H. P. Lovecraft). But there is another kind of “unwritten classic” – a work projected by an author that for one reason or another never comes to fruition. Some works of this nature are indeed unwritten; others may have been written but never attain publication.
L. Sprague de Camp and his wife and collaborator Catherine Crook de Camp had their share of unwritten classics of this kind; indeed, Sprague’s very article was an extract from one – Round About the Cauldron, discussed hereinafter. In this article I attempt to chart a course through the de Camps’ unwritten classics; works that might have been, should have been, or almost were, but which we do not have, and at least in some instances are the poorer for not having. We will also encounter some familiar works under unfamiliar titles – not all working titles accompany the pieces they designate to publication – and identify these as best we may.
In what follows I am indebted to de Camp fan and scholar Gary Romeo for the listing he procured of the holdings of the L. Sprague & Catherine Crook de Camp Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. This listing is a 2004 “preliminary inventory” by Erin Baudo, constituting the collection description. Unless otherwise noted, all works listed below as being contained in these papers are categorized among the de Camps’ “Works, ca. 1940-1995.” The present article would doubtless have been richer and left fewer remaining puzzles had I been able to examine the papers personally – but alas, I have not been to Texas since well before the collection found its current home and became public – nor am I likely to have the opportunity in the foreseeable future. I have therefore proceeded as an armchair detective, undertaking to solve the mystery without the body on the basis of such evidence as I have been able to uncover.
1. Unwritten.These are the true unwritten classics, consisting of projects that were either stillborn or somehow never quite got off the ground.
The Bear Who Saved the World. A projected children’s book by Catherine Crook de Camp, to be expanded from her short story of the same title (itself adapted from Sprague’s early tale “The Command”), first published in Creatures of the Cosmos, an anthology she edited (Westminster Press, 1977). According to Loay Hall “In October, 1992, Catherine told me she was intending to novelize [the story], a project Sprague was dubious about due to the short length of the original tale. Catherine was quite enthusiastic about the project. I don’t know if Catherine ever started work on the novel, however. (… this was at SOONERCON 8, in Oklahoma City, Ok.)” (Loay Hall in a post to the d for de Camp Yahoo Group, October 30, 2013.) This plan echoes others previously expressed by her to similarly expand her stories “The Horse Show” and “The Million Dollar Pup” from the same anthology (see individual entries on each of these, below); evidently none of these plans ever came to fruition.
[A biography of Clark Ashton Smith.] This would seem a natural project for de Camp to undertake, given his bios of the other two of the “Three Musketeers of Weird Tales,” H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. When the second of these (Dark Valley Destiny, Bluejay Books, 1983) appeared, it undoubtedly whetted anticipation among fans for one more. And evidently de Camp himself seriously contemplated such a project in the late 1980s. According to Loay Hall “many of Sprague’s letters to me concentrated on his wish to write a biography of Clark Ashton Smith, which would have made his biographies of HPL and REH pablum in comparison.” (Loay Hall in a post to the d for de Camp Yahoo Group, October 29, 2013.) Gary Romeo has speculated that poor sales of the Howard bio may have caused de Camp to abandon plans for the book on Smith. So we are left with only the chapter-length biography in Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (Arkham, 1976) as a teaser of what might have been.
[Conan: The Final Battle.] De Camp and Carter’s pastiche Conan novel Conan of the Isles is chronologically the last Conan story written by anyone to date, and there is no hard evidence that any follow-up was ever seriously intended. The final sentences of the novel, in which Conan journeys onward from his triumph in Antillia, would seem definitive: “A few hours later, the great ship, which the folk of Mayapan were to call Quetzlcoatl – meaning ‘winged (or feathered) serpent’ in their uncouth tongue – lifted anchor. She sailed south and then, skirting the Antillian Isles, into the unknown West. But whither, the ancient chronicle, which endeth here, sayeth not.” (Conan of the Isles, Lancer Books, 1968, p. 189). Nonetheless, a handful of hints and clues exist that the “ancient chronicle” doth not necessarily endeth here. The earliest comes from the hand of Robert E. Howard himself, the original Conan chronicler: “As for Conan’s eventual fate—frankly, I can’t predict it. … There are many things concerning Conan’s life of which I am not certain myself. … He was, I think, king of Aquilonia for many years, in a turbulent and unquiet reign, when the Hyborian civilization had reached its most magnificent high-tide, and every king had imperial ambitions. At first he fought on the defensive, but I am of the opinion that at last he was forced into wars of aggression as a matter of self-preservation. Whether he succeeded in conquering a world-wide empire, or perished in the attempt, I do not know. He traveled widely, not only before his kingship, but after he was king. He travelled to Khitai and Hyrkania, and to the even less known regions north of the latter and south of the former. He even visited a nameless continent in the western hemisphere, and roamed among the islands adjacent to it. How much of this roaming will get into print, I can not foretell with any accuracy.” (Robert E. Howard, letter to P. Schuyler Miller, March 10, 1936, in The Coming of Conan, Gnome Press, 1953, pp. 9-12) Quite an itinerary! The answer to Howard’s self-posed question as to how much of his hero’s projected roaming would get into print was, alas, practically none, at least from Howard. Others took up his hints. Björn Nyberg takes King Conan to Khitai, Hyrkania and Vendhya (The Return of Conan (Gnome Press, 1957). Otherwise his travels in the east are relegated to adventures predating his kingship. The last of Conan’s defensive wars followed by the ultimate war of aggression are presented by Leonard Carpenter, who took up the theme of world conquest all other authors had ignored. His answer to whether Conan succeeded or perished in the attempt is a firm “neither;” a competitive bid for the mastery of the Hyborian nations between Conan and the rising threat of the ruthless Prince Almiro of Koth is halted short of the ultimate contest when the opponents learn Almiro is Conan’s own son by his former lover, Queen Yasmala of Khoraja. (Conan the Great, Tor Books, 1990) All rather anticlimactic compared to Howard’s vision. De Camp and Carter give us a couple later aggressive wars, albeit unlinked to world conquest (Conan of Aquilonia, Ace, 1977). Then in Conan of the Isles, Conan abdicates and sails west to deal with a threat in “the islands adjacent to” the nameless western continent. The chronicle “endeth” before he gets to the continent itself, but that’s where he’s headed at the conclusion. Is the rest, then, silence? Not quite. Someone must have taken the novel’s tale back to Aquilonia for it to have gotten into that very chronicle, and the only persons who could have are Conan or his companion Sigurd of Vanaheim. Of the two, Conan himself would seem the more likely candidate. As the passage quoted from Isles makes clear, it was known that Conan did reach the continent, since the name subsequently given his ship in Mayapan is recorded. Some later events in Aquilonia, set during the sixth year of the reign of Conan’s son Conn, are presented by Roland J. Green in the prologue and epilogue of Conan at the Demon’s Gate (Tor, 1994), which form a framing story to that novel’s main narrative. There is no indication in the framing sequence that Conan has been heard from during the period since his abdication, but it does show us that Conn managed to retain power in the absence of his powerful sire, and incidentally introduces us to another bastard son of Conan, Sarabos of the elite Aquilonian force the Black Dragons. Moreover, de Camp and Carter had themselves had second thoughts on just where the chronicle “endeth.” De Camp’s latest musings are offered in “Conan the Indestructible,” dated May, 1984, the final version of the 1938 Miller/Clark essay “A Probable Outline of Conan’s Career” that he had revised and extended over so many years. “In the end, Conan sailed off to explore the continents to the west (“Conan of the Isles“). Whether he died there, or whether there is truth in the tale that he strode out of the West to stand at his son’s side in a final battle against Aquilonia’s foes, will be revealed only to him who looks, as Kull of Valusia once did, into the mystic mirrors of Tuzun Thune.” (Conan the Victorious, Tor, 1984) And Carter had already provided us with the Cimmerian’s final utterances on this earth in his poem “Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian” (Dreams from R’lyeh, Arkham, 1975) – again, how could we have it without someone to report it? While these hints are hardly definitive, the conveyance of the tale of Isles back to Aquilonia and the existence of the Cimmerian’s death song both support his return for a “last stand.” But de Camp as much as tells us that story will not be “revealed.” By 1984 neither he nor Carter was still writing Conan, and Tor was not about to have its pastichers kill off its cash bull, even at the end of a long, full life that was growing fuller with each new volume. So if ever a classic was destined to remain unwritten, it was the last battle of Conan of Cimmeria.
[A Ganeshan story.] Ganesha is the most mysterious of the three inhabited planets de Camp postulated as revolving around Tau Ceti in his Viagens series. Of the other two, Krishna is explored in detail, and Vishnu in two short stories, but Ganesha is never seen, and rarely mentioned, and its native people never described. In “The Colorful Character” (Sprague de Camp’s New Anthology of Science Fiction, Hamilton, 1953), a complete biological survey of Ganesha is proposed to scientists of Earth’s Institute of Advanced Study by the Krishnan adventurer Chabarian bad-Seraz, impersonating terrant explorer Sir Erik Koskelainen, but this is simply a ruse to attempt to kidnap them to Krishna and break the Terran embargo on high technology to that world. This, alas, is as close as we ever get to learning anything more about Ganesha. Possibly if de Camp had ever filled in Koskelainen’s back story as an explorer of the Cetic planets, adventures on Ganesha might have formed part of it, but there is no indication the author ever had any concrete plan to do so.
[A Harold Shea story laid in the world of Hindu myth.] Sprague notes having mooted this joint project with Fletcher Pratt in his autobiography: “… we had discussed the possibility of sending Harold to other worlds of mythology, such as the Persian and the Hindu.” (Time and Chance: an Autobiography, Donald M. Grant, 1996, p. 241.) Their discussions may or may not have informed “Sir Harold and the Hindu King,” a tale penned much later by Christopher Stasheff for the de Camp/Stasheff edited anthology The Exotic Enchanter, (Baen Books, 1995).
[A Harold Shea story laid in the world of Persian myth.] Both in his memoir on Fletcher Pratt and his autobiography, Sprague mentioned an additional collaborative project he and Pratt discussed but did not write, “another Harold Shea story laid in the world of Persian myth.” (The Mathematics of Magic: The Enchanter Stories of de Camp and Pratt, NESFA Press, 2007, p. 412; similar statement in Time and Chance: an Autobiography, Donald M. Grant, 1996, p. 241.) One suspects it would likely have involved the famous tale of Rustam and Suhrab from the Shah Nama. De Camp did eventually carry on the Harold Shea series, but took their hero to Oz and Barsoom rather than the world of Persian myth; nor did the other authors to whom he opened up the series ever pursue the Persian angle.
The Horse Show. A projected children’s book by Catherine Crook de Camp, to be expanded from her short story of the same title first published in Creatures of the Cosmos, an anthology she edited (Westminster Press, 1977). She reported in her preamble to Footprints On Sand (Advent, 1981) that it and “The Million Dollar Pup,” another story of hers, “were so well liked by the publisher of Creatures of the Cosmos that I have been asked to expand both to book-length – and I shall, if ever I find time hanging heavy on my hands.” Evidently she never did.
[A Krishna novel detailing Alicia Dyckman’s adventures in Katai-Jhogorai.] A true unwritten classic. In a late revision of his essay “The Krishna Stories,” Sprague wrote: “The last of the series published so far is The Bones of Zora. At the opening, … [a]s we soon learn, Fergus and Alicia were married for a year or so. But … [t]hey had quarreled bitterly because Fergus refused to let her come on any more of his guided tours. He barred her because she always insisted on taking over. So she got a divorce and went off on her own, for a sociological investigation of Katai-Jhogorai. As opinionated as ever, she got into trouble and had to return, broke, to Novorecife. (I have not yet written up her adventures in Katai-Jhogorai, but I may some day.)” (“The Krishna Stories” in GURPS Planet Krishna, Steve Jackson Games, 1997, pp. 5-7). Alas, he never did. It would have made a wild and wooly tale, and tantalizes us with the prospect of an actual visit to the major Krishnan nation of Katai-Jhogorai, which is mentioned in the Viagens series but never seen. All we get are two expatriates from that country on Earth in The Continent Makers (Twayne Publishers, 1953) and Alicia’s summary account of her sojourn there in The Bones of Zora (Phantasia Press, 1983). The place comes onstage just once, briefly, as a stop along the itinerary of Reith’s tourists in The Hostage of Zir (Berkley/Putnam, 1977), but their experiences in Katai-Jhogorai are passed over within a single paragraph.
[A Krishna story detailing Sir Erik Koskelainen’s adventures in Balhib.] While there is no hard evidence de Camp intended to write this tale, it is difficult to escape the notion that he would have, had the Viagens series really taken off in the 1950s as he hoped. The story as we have it consists solely of Koskelainen’s brief reminiscences in the early Viagens short story “The Colorful Character” (Sprague de Camp’s New Anthology of Science Fiction, Hamilton, 1953), which give us our only real portrait of Krishna prior to “Finished” (The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens, Twayne Publishers, 1953). In the snippets provided, Koskelainen emerges as a renowned if publicity-shy early explorer of the Cetic planets, including Vishnu and Krishna; on the latter, his visit is recalled in Mikardand as late as “Perpetual Motion” (The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens, Twayne Publishers, 1953). His most harrowing experience is his sojourn in Balhib, where he falls afoul of the king’s lust to obtain Terran technology. Imprisoned, he matches wits with the charismatic Chabarian bad-Seraz, a Balhibian who has been promised the king’s daughter if he can secure the desired information. Koskelainen thwarts his captors and returns to Earth incognito to recuperate from his ordeal. “The Colorful Character” treats us to the aftermath of this grand adventure: Chabarian also comes to Earth, boldly impersonating Koskelainen himself, and cons a whole research institute into enlisting in a grand biological survey of Ganesha, actually a ruse to shanghai its scientists to Krishna. Aided by one of those scientists, together with a Vishnuvian and a tailed Krishnan resident at the institute, Koskelainen again foils Chabarian, who is captured. A nice little story, but it’s a dessert to a main course we never get, the lack of which is much missed. Incidentally, Chabarian later turns up again on Krishna as the king of Balhib’s son-in-law in The Tower of Zanid (Avalon Books, 1958), so he must have somehow obtained release and claimed his prize anyway, perhaps by initiating the secret gun-manufacturing project detailed in that novel. And I like to think that Koskelainen’s unnamed tailed Krishnan ally turns up later as well, as Yuruzh, hero of The Virgin of Zesh, (The Virgin & The Wheels, Popular Library, 1976) whose back-story includes having been taken to Earth in his youth as a research specimen!
[A Krishna story detailing Sir Shurgez’s bearding of the King of Balhib.] This fascinating tale was almost written; it appears in bits and pieces as background in a number of other Krishna tales, particularly “Perpetual Motion” (The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens, Twayne Publishers, 1953). There we learn that Shurgez, a Knight of Mikardand, has been dispatched on this quixotic quest by Mikardand’s Grand Master as punishment for a crime of passion – murdering a former lover. It’s basically a face-saving way of getting rid of him, as he is not expected to survive the quest, much less complete it. Thus it is something of a surprise when he afterward turns up alive to contest con-man Felix Borel’s appropriation of his current lover, Zerdai. Challenged to tourney, Borel escapes certain death at Shurgez’s lance by fleeing the lists and Mikardand both in an act of brazen cowardice. We learn more of how Shurgez accomplished his quest in The Hand of Zei (Owlswick Press, 1981), as it has become a subject of general gossip – he impersonated a member of an international courier service to get close enough to the king to slice off the beard. (Inspired, Dirk Barnevelt then imitates this ruse in order to penetrate the Sunqar.) And in The Tower of Zanid (Avalon Books, 1958), set many years later, we meet the king of Balhib himself, still unhinged by the incident and continuing to mourn his lost beard. So we can reconstruct the story in outline – but what a tale it would have been to have in full!
[A Krishna story detailing the back story of Yuruzh, chieftain of Zá.] In The Virgin of Zesh, (The Virgin & The Wheels, Popular Library, 1976; first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1953) we learn that the primitive tailed Krishnans of the Island of Zá have mysteriously become a power to be reckoned with. Eventually we find out why: their leader, Yuruzh, had been taken to Earth as a youth and given the experimental “Pannoëtic treatment,” which turns lower primates into geniuses while driving human beings mad. (This was an early spoof by de Camp on L. Ron Hubbard’s pseudo-science of dianetics.) Being a Krishnan and a hybrid between the advanced tailless and the primitive tailed races, Yuruzh might have gone either way, but in the event gained super-intelligence. Feigning that the treatment had worn off, he was permitted to return to Krishna, where he uplifted his tailed compatriots via the same treatment. His back story reads like the plot to Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, (Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966; first published as a short story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1959), only with the reversion to imbecility faked. De Camp wrote before Keyes; did Keyes borrow the notion behind Flowers? It is fun to speculate. It would have been wonderful to get a full version from de Camp of Yuruzh’s story, too, but the appearance and quick fame of Flowers no doubt precluded the possibility – such an expansion would have been too reminiscent of the perhaps derivative tale. But we are given a possible glimpse of Yuruzh’s youthful sojourn on Earth in “The Colorful Character,” (Sprague de Camp’s New Anthology of Science Fiction, Hamilton, 1953) in which we meet an unnamed but heroic tailed Krishnan resident at a Terran research institute. The chronology is right for this unsung Krishnan to have been Yuruzh.
Man and Weapons. Intended to be the fourth in a series of Golden Press books beginning with the published Man and Power (Golden Press, 1961), this book was projected but never written or published. De Camp had finished writing the second and third, and “[t]he publishers considered a fourth volume, Man and Weapons. Then in 1963 the company fell into a financial plight. … Jean le Corbeiller lost his job; and [the series] was shelved …” (Time and Chance, Donald M. Grant, 1996, pp. 265.)
The Million Dollar Pup. Projected children’s book by Catherine Crook de Camp, to be expanded from her short story of the same title first published in Creatures of the Cosmos, an anthology she edited (Westminster Press, 1977). She reported in her preamble to Footprints On Sand (Advent, 1981) that it and “The Horse Show,” another story of hers, “were so well liked by the publisher of Creatures of the Cosmos that I have been asked to expand both to book-length – and I shall, if ever I find time hanging heavy on my hands.” Evidently she never did.
The Moon and I. In his memoir on his colleague Fletcher Pratt, Sprague wrote “He and I had discussed possible future works of fiction, such as … a Gavagan’s Bar story about a vampire with a sweet tooth who attacked only diabetics. But they were never written. For, in 1956, … Pratt … died. I have not tried to carry on any of our series alone, because I think that the combination of Pratt and de Camp produced a result visibly different from either of us alone.” (The Mathematics of Magic: The Enchanter Stories of de Camp and Pratt, NESFA Press, 2007, p. 412.) More information is provided in his end note to the second edition of Tales From Gavagan’s Bar: “This unwritten story may be “The Moon and I,” for which there is an otherwise inexplicable entry in my opus-card file. It apparently never got to the rough-draft stage, for I have no carbon copy. This tale was to have drawn on Pratt’s knowledge of professional boxing …” (“By and About,” Tales From Gavagan’s Bar, Bantam Books, Jan. 1980, p. 277.) The title “The Moon and I” might seem better suited to a werewolf story than a vampire tale, until one realizes it is derived from the lines from Yum-Yum’s song in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, “Ah, pray make no mistake, / We are not shy; / We’re very wide awake, / The moon and I!” The reference, in other words, is to being wakeful in the night time, which a vampire certainly would be–and while not subject to the moon like a werewolf, the monster would necessarily be quite well acquainted with it.
[A Reginald Rivers story featuring a Utahraptor.] According to de Camp friend Phillip Sawyer, “I was telling Sprague and Catherine about a newly discovered very nasty raptor: UTAHRAPTOR: 20 feet long, 10 feet tall, two thousand pounds, with some of the nastiest choppers ever. I suggested that Sprague could get rid of a bad guy in his next Reggie Rivers story with this critter. Sprague loved the idea and jotted it down, but alas, the story was never written.” (Phillip Sawyer in a post to the d for de Camp Yahoo Group, June 23, 2015.) Just possibly, the idea was used, somewhat transformed, in de Camp’s last Rivers tale, “The Honeymoon Dragon,” in which the villain arranges for Rivers to be ambushed by a gigantic prehistoric precursor of the komodo dragon. Though it’s a different reptile, the wrong victim, and no one actually gets et; the bad guy receives his come-uppance in a more mundane and less definitive fashion. And if Sawyer’s suggestion prompted the tale it would have been a tight squeeze. While the Utahraptor discoveries were made in 1975 and 1991, the species was named only in June, 1993, and first publication of “The Honeymoon Dragon” came in November of that same year (in the de Camp collection Rivers of Time). Assuming Sawyer talked up the beast as soon as the news broke, I suppose de Camp might have dashed off the story and turned it in to his publisher in time to get it in the book, but only just.
Robbing the Blind: The Shade of Shaharazzad. A novel de Camp neither wrote nor likely ever had any idea of writing, though a review of it appeared in the efanzine Electronic OtherRealms #30 (“The Parody Issue”) for Spring, 1991 (http://files.chuqui.com/OtherRealms/30-02.txt). It was supposedly an expansion of an equally non-existent de Camp 1952 short story “Shaharazzad’s Closet.” Here’s the description: “Where in 1952 DeCamp was wild, here he is wildly outrageous. As the title suggests, the setting is middle eastern and takes place in the same mythos as the Arabian Nights. The blind in question is a magical artifact that will only operate when the correct window is found. Decor plays a large part in the plot here as DeCamp moves his hero from room to room in his sometimes dangerous, sometimes romantic and sometimes clashing search. There are djins, princesses in peril, evil emirs and a frantic interior decorator which only serve to add to the plot twists. The fact that the story is ultimately quite predictable does not detract in the least from its enjoyment.” Why am I bringing it up here? Because once upon a time de Camp did write a story based on a previously published spoof review; the Krishna story “Finished.” Had he seen this one and been so inclined, it is intriguing to speculate what he might have made of it.
[A second Novarian trilogy.] At Discon II in 1974, de Camp told Darrell Schweitzer in an interview, “I should like to write the third book of the Jorian series, because the second [The Clocks of Iraz, Pyramid, 1971] was obviously left wide open for a sequel, and I have an idea for another trilogy laid in that same world, which, if I could find a publisher I might very well do.” (Schweitzer, Darrell, SF Voices, T-K Graphics, 1976, p. 91.) In September 1975, in response to follow-up questions to that interview by Richard E. Geis, he provided the following “glimpse of what that story would involve” – “Travel, adventures, the intractability of humanity in the mass, the pains of learning better, good intentions gone agley.” (Ibid, p. 94.) Not much of a hint, as the themes listed could apply to almost any piece of fiction by de Camp. In any case, nothing more is heard of the follow-up trilogy. De Camp did in time write the third Jorian story (The Unbeheaded King, Del Rey, 1983), and there are three non-Jorian Novarian novels to his name, but they do not form the trilogy envisioned. Indeed, one of them (The Fallible Fiend, Signet, 1973) was already in print when he pitched the idea of a second trilogy. As for the others, The Honorable Barbarian (Del Rey, 1989) is a stand-alone sequel to the Jorian sequence, and The Sedulous Sprite remains unpublished, perhaps unpublishable. It is just possible these two books were planned as a connected sequence; the former does have a sprite as a prominant character and much of its action takes place on tropical isles of the Eastern Ocean, while the latter is said to have had a “quasi-Polynesian” setting and self-evidently involves a sprite as well. But as The Honorable Barbarian comes to a satisfying close, with no obvious hook for a sequel, it’s a stretch to see these books as volumes 1 and 2 of a second triliogy, at least without better knowledge of The Sedulous Sprite‘s content.
Shaharazzad’s. Closet. A non-existent short story attributed to de Camp by the “reviewer” of Robbing the Blind: The Shade of Shaharazzad (for which see above), described as “little known but greatly loved,” that supposedly appeared in the short-lived Fantasticly Weird Stories [sic] in 1952. Need I say the magazine is equally fictitious? Again, one can only wonder what might have resulted had de Camp taken up the challenge and written a story to match the description, as he did for “Finished.”
[Two more historical novels.] All fans of de Camp’s historical novels lament that he wrote no more of them after the fifth, though it’s no mystery why he stopped. As he told Darrell Schweitzer in a 1979 interview, “I got into that field just at the wrong time, when it had started down from its peak of popularity in the 1950s. As a result, … each one sold less well than the one before. So when the last one, The Golden Wind, appeared in 1969 and performed in that manner, I said ‘To hell with this. I won’t write any more of these unless market conditions change.'” (Schweitzer, Darrell, Science Fiction Voices #1, Borgo Press, 1979, p. 56.) As of that date, they evidently had not: “I have ideas for a couple more, but I don’t intend to put in the time on them unless the chances of profit are a good deal greater.” (Ibid.) It is tantalizing to learn that he had at least two more mapped out in his head, but they never came to fruition. Unless … the manuscript titled A Treaty With Hannibal in Box 140 of the L. Sprague & Catherine Crook de Camp Papers could be one of them (see under section 5, below). Be that as it may, the only additional piece of historical fiction de Camp actually published in his lifetime was “Captain Leopard” (Ashley, Mike, ed. Classical Stories, Past Times, 1996), a disappointing short story presenting a revisionist version of the life of Jesus.
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End of Part 1. More to come…
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