by Brian Kunde
Today’s de Camp highlight is Scribblings, by L. Sprague de Camp (New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) Press, Boston, 1972). Like the later and more successful Footprints on Sand (Advent: Publishers, Inc., 1981), this was a special publication, intended as a one-time thing rather than for later reissue; thus, there was just the one edition. It was prepared to honor de Camp on the occasion of his appearance as Guest of Honor at Boskone IX, held by the New England Regional Science Fiction Association April 14-16, 1972 at the Statler-Hilton in Boston. According to fancyclopedia.org, it has the distinction of being the very first ever Boskone Book, the convention series’ annual publication celebrating its Guest of Honor.
Book design and layout are attributed to a certain M. H. Keith, but according to Scribblings’ NESFA webpage (https://data.nesfa.org/press/Books/deCamp-0.html) this “Keith” is a composite person, the elements of whose name are derived from the middle names of the actual producers of the book; Donald Metcalfe Grant, William Henry Desmond, and Robert Keith Wiener. The jacket design was by Bill Desmond, and incorporated calligraphy by de Camp himself; Bob Wiener printed the dust jacket on the M.I.T. Lecture Series Committee offset press.
The book in its regular state is a slim, small hardcover bound in blue cloth with silver lettering (“L. Sprague de Camp SCRIBBLINGS”) running down the spine. It has a light blue-grey dust jacket. There were 500 numbered copies issued, many of them signed. “There was also a very limited Finebound state, available by advance order only, where a number of copies of the regular state were rebound in leather.” This state had “a special dust wrapper on gold-foil.” There were at least seven copies of this special edition, with one each for L. Sprague de Camp, Don Grant, Bill Desmond, Bob Wiener, the NESFA Library, Fred Isaacs, and Patrick Snead, and “maybe a few more.” (NESFA webpage) Laughlin and Levack seem to have seen de Camp’s copy, as they state “[a]t least one copy was issued with a heavy gold foil dust jacket.” (Laughlin/Levack, p. 90).
I haven’t seen any of these special copies, so I’ll just describe the standard book jacket. It’s fairly simple, with black print over the blue-grey field on the front cover, and over an off-white field on the back. The word “SCRIBBLINGS” in all caps adorns the top of the front cover, repeated running down the center of the spine, with “L. Sprague de Camp” in mixed case at the bottom of the front cover, repeated on the back cover under a large author photograph. (The photograph may look familiar. That’s because it’s also been employed elsewhere, for the same purpose. It’s on the back of the dust cover for the hardcover edition of The Hostage of Zir (1977), for example.) Bracketing the spine title, albeit in horizontal script, are “de Camp” and “NESFA Press” in small print.
Between the title and author on the front cover and spine is an odd sort of illustration consisting of three lines of ornamental script, the previously mentioned “calligraphy” by de Camp. To my mind, they have a Southeast Asian cum Arabic feel, though I suspect it may really be a fancied-up bit of Gregg shorthand, in which de Camp was accomplished. In any case, I find it indecipherable. Anyone know what it says?
The off-white front and back flaps briefly characterize the content and occasion of the book, and then more fully the author. The author blurb is more informative than most such; we even get one or two details not recorded in de Camp’s book-length autobiography, Time & Chance (1996). His education, publications, collaborations, and other distinctions are emphasized, along with his work habits, a fiction class he was then teaching, and the distinction of his then recent Scopes study, The Great Monkey Trial (1968).
My own copy of Scribblings (“copy number 360” of the 500 numbered copies) is a pride of my de Camp collection. I got it cheap, as the cover and dust jacket were water damaged, as you will see from the reproduction of the latter. In fact, it was not just water damaged but stuck to the cover, as I belatedly learned when I removed the jacket to scan. It required a careful operation, but it came off intact. On the plus side, though—signed by the author! I had no idea I was getting I signed copy when I ordered it from an out-of-print dealer; I just wanted a copy to read. My delight might have gone down a notch had I known most copies are autographed, but—nah! As I typically go after reading copies rather than rare or collectable ones, a signed edition is always a bonus.
My copy must not one of the original signed copies, though, because de Camp dated his signature “8/30/80”—eight years after publication. Why? Well, in his autobiography, de Camp notes “The committee sold copies of Scribblings and, when they had paid off their expenses, gave us the surplus copies. We sold or gave away many of these but stopped when we learned that copies were fetching ridiculous rare-book prices.” (Time & Chance, p. 374) Presumably, de Camp continued this practice for some years after the convention before discontinuing it, and on disposing of such copies would routinely sign them. My copy, then, is likely one of these late de Camp signed-and-distributed copies, the date representing that on which it was sent to whoever it was originally sold or gifted to.
Content. Again, like Footprints, Scribblings is a grab bag of de Campian goodies, a sampler including pieces from his full range of literary activity, whether fictional, poetic, nonfictional or aphorismal. (Is that even a word?) Unlike Footprints, it is a true collection, if a miscellaneous one, as it lacks tributes from other hands. Following “A Word of Explanation” by the author, the material is organized in four sections: “Probability Zero” (four short pieces of fiction), “Jingles” (nine poems), “It Might Interest You to Know” (six pieces of nonfiction), and “Aphorisms” (sixty aphorisms). All brought off in 95 pages.
From the “Word of Explanation” we learn that de Camp was asked to prepare the book, to contain “representative samples of my writings … limited to 20,000 words or the equivalent.” I am intrigued as to what might have been considered an “equivalent” to words. “The book, I thought, should have a sprinkling of fiction, non-fiction, and verse [and]. It should avoid materials easily obtained elsewhere.” He found the poems and articles “easy to choose,” but “[f]iction presented a problem,” in that most of what he considered his better pieces were then readily available in paperback collection and anthologies, while any one of his favorite stories would be long enough to fill most of the book. “Then I dug out my pieces for Probability Zero, a department of tall tales that Campbell ran in Astounding for a year and a half, 1942-44. I wrote four fictional anecdotes, of which three were published before the feature was terminated.” He includes all four. “The final section, Aphorisms, is self-indulgence in pontification.” Some had appeared “scattered through my published writings; others I have been waiting for a chance to get into print.” He notes that he has “edited some of the articles to bring them up to date: and “polished [the fiction] a little.”
What are we to make of this? As the preceding shows, de Camp was not just the author of this book, but his own editor for it. So how did he do? Well … mixed. Let us explore.
The Probability Zero tales were pretty obscure, and, alas, deservedly so. They are framed in a fictional “expedition of the Drinkwhiskey Institute … to the Siwalik Pleistocene in 1932,” in which the author supposedly participated, to obtain living specimens of “wugugs,” Vugugus jonesii, “a kind of mammalian tortoise known only from a few fragmentary specimens.” In that context they deal with paradoxes inherent in the notion of traveling through time, with results likely more amusing to the author than the readers.
Getting to the past proves problematic. In the first tale, “The Effects of Time Travel,” astral projection is attempted, then an Institute-invented, designed, and assembled “chronomobile,” which unfortunately de-ages, then re-ages in negative years, those employing it during the journey pastward. The expedition members employ various facile (and fallacious) dodges to offset the effects on themselves, but the wugugs die of old age on the return trip. To cancel the embarrassment of a failed expedition the travelers return to a time just prior to that from which they started, and then don’t go in the first place.
In the next tale, “The Negative Wugug,” the Drinkwhiskeyers follow up the undone expedition by attempting to produce their wugugs by backbreeding pangolins, a project that runs them afoul of their financiers, as the process is expected to take some 10,000 years. Presented with an estimated bill covering the entire span, they succeed in negating it in court on grounds of incomputability, given that it charges for services prospective rather than rendered.
Two anecdotes from the timewiped expedition are then recounted. In “Moveable Ears,” de Camp’s (true to life) ability to wiggle his ears helps preserve his gore from a chance-encountered elephant relative, Stegodon ganesa. His talent combines with other accumulated coincidences to convince the creature it is confronted by a giant mouse. Cue the proverbial elephantine mouse phobia. To my mind, the piling on of ridiculous elements makes this one the best of the lot.
The final entry, “The Lusts of Professor Adams,” makes de Camp’s expedition colleague Twerping Adams the inadvertent progenitor of the present human race through his prehistoric dalliances with several Java women, a status apparently persisting despite the whole expedition having been undone. The Drinkwhiskeyers’ belated recognition of a family resemblance shared with Adams by the whole of humanity ends the sequence on an oddly disquieting note.
These little tales, none over four pages, are far from top notch de Camp. Whimsical and seemingly dashed off, they leave small impression in the mind and contribute little to the reputation of the author. They are of note as instances of his early thought on time travel, and I’m glad he found a place to gather them. Still, I’d assess these as for completists only.
The “Jingles” fare better. These include “Preferences,” “Carnac,” “The Elephant,” “Leaves,” “The Trap,” “The Newt,” “African Night,” “A Night Club in Cairo,” and “Xeroxing the Necronomicon.” Almost all are new to this collection; only “Carnac,” from Yandro no. 188, June 1969, was previously published. The whole lot was reprinted almost immediately in de Camp’s verse collection Phantoms & Fancies (1972), issued the same year as Scribblings, and most made it into the subsequent Heroes and Hobgoblins (1981) as well, the sole exception being “African Night.”
In addition, three of the verses, “Carnac,” “The Trap,” and “Xeroxing the Necronomicon,” reappear in Footprints on Sand (also 1981). “Xeroxing the Necronomicon,” due to its Lovecraftian associations, has been anthologized elsewhere as well.
While none of these rank among de Camp’s absolute best poetic efforts, they are fun, bouncy, and worthy pieces in various meters, typical of his better light verse. Most come with ironic twists, either built in or at the end. “Carnac,” in particular, with its picture of dolmen placement directed by religion but actuated amid inebriation, merits its multiple appearances. But I’m fondest of “Leaves,” less light than the others but infused with true poetic imagery, as is, to a lesser degree, “African Night.”
We come next to the nonfiction. This section is the book’s most successful. To read through these pieces is to follow a road map through favorite de Camp topics. I consider them worth the price of admission all by themselves.
“How to Hunt Dinosaurs” is excerpted from Sprague and Catherine’s The Day of the Dinosaur (1968). Those interested in this subject can, of course, also see it enacted in “A Gun for Dinosaur” (Galaxy, Mar. 1956, and many other places). A different excerpt from Day would later figure in Footprints on Sand (1981); the de Camps were plainly pleased with their dinosaur book.
“Pfui on Psi,” from Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, April 1957, presents de Camp’s unfiltered opinion on the popular SF preoccupation with mental superpowers. In contrast to credulous Astounding editor John Campbell, who was entranced by such notions, de Camp never jumped on that particular bandwagon; to him, they were things of fantasy, delusion and chicanery. Unsurprisingly, this piece did not originate in a Campbell-edited magazine!
“Lost Cities,” from Travel Magazine, Dec. 1957, encapsulates another familiar de Camp topic. After briefly introducing the subject, he treats specifically the cases of “[t]hree of the most remote and enigmatic lost cities,” Tikal, Nan-matol, and Tartessos. This article reads almost like a précis for the de Camps’ full-length study Ancient Ruins and Archaeology (1964), which indeed revisits all three sites, amid others.
The pieces following were new to this collection. “Government Bug Hunter” is a brief retelling of a perilous frontier encounter between pioneer scientist C. Hart Merriam and touchy Mormon outlaw Lot Smith, deftly finessed by the former. De Camp, a distant relation of Merriam, got the story from the man himself about 1935. This anecdote later got an independent airing (as “Damned Government Bug Hunter”) in True West (May/June 1978).
“Three Thirds of a Hero” is a joint biographical assessment of the “Three Musketeers of Weird Tales,” H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard, whose personal and literary virtues are found so complementary de Camp deems none quite complete without the others. This brief sketch, which would reappear in the late de Camp collection Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants (1996), prefigures the more detailed biographical treatments in Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers (1976), Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), Miscast Barbarian (1975), and Dark Valley Destiny (1983). Interestingly, Laughlin & Levack’s comprehensive de Camp bibliography misidentifies this piece as “verse,” an odd and uncharacteristic error.
“Books That Never Were,” while presented as new, seems actually to be a reworking of de Camp’s earlier article “The Unwritten Classics” (Saturday Review of Literature, Mar. 29, 1947), itself an extract from his unpublished masterwork Round the Cauldron, afterwards cut and rewritten as Spirits, Stars, and Spells (1964). The piece would soon be reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 1972, and, like “Three Thirds of a Hero,” achieve a late resurfacing in Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants (1996). It explores the topic of lost or imaginary works cited in ancient and modern literature, such as The Book of Thoth, The Three Imposters, The Book of Dzyan, The King in Yellow, and The Necronomicon. De Camp himself frequently employed the same device to lend color and verisimilitude to his fiction, citing therein such invented works as the supposed Krishnan literary classics Abbeq and Danqi and Harian’s The Conspirators, or the Novarian operetta by “Galliben and Silfero,” The Good Ship Petticoat.
That brings us (sigh!) to the book’s final section, “Aphorisms.” What can I say? De Camp could be a dab hand with an aphorism, but here he was trying too hard, or at least overthinking. An aphorism, as he notes, is “a sweeping statement about man or life,” “expressed in a witty, pithy, pungent way” that if it “succeeds in being even half true, … is doing very well.” While he modestly disclaims his “are up to those of a Mark Twain or a La Rochefoucauld,” the shade cast by the comparison shows him not modest enough. He gives us one or two gems, but most of the aphorisms here are wordy, overly explained, or marred by noting exceptions, and so dissipating the wit, pith and pungency de Camp aims for. There are times when it just doesn’t pay to be your own editor. He should have run these by a different one before airing them.
As an instance, I give you Aphorism 1. “If a man cannot explain, in terms that any reasonably well-educated person can understand, what he is talking about, there is an excellent chance that he himself does not know.” Um, yeah. Needs to lose half the words. I’ve heard it said better by my father-in-law: “Tell me again in a way a six-year-old can understand.” Which makes the same point briefly, inoffensively, and with a sly dig at both parties to the discussion. A down note on which to end, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Bottom line: is this book worth getting? Yes, but just be ready for an uneven ride. And if you prefer the same sort of thing done really, really well, you might just want to go directly to Footprints on Sand.
De Camp does not dedicate the book.
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