Sprague de Camp and the Unabomber

by Gary Romeo

L. Sprague de Camp doesn’t mention it in his autobiography Time and Chance, Donald M. Grant, 1996, and there is no reason he should have. It isn’t a happy thing when a mass murderer quotes from your writings. Nevertheless, it has become something that has added to de Camp’s notoriety.

Ted Kacynski AKA The Unabomber died in prison this month. Starting in 1978 and ending with his capture by the FBI in 1996, Kaczynski murdered three people and injured 23 others in a mail bombing campaign that terrorized the nation. He wrote a manifesto called Industrial Society and Its Future, a 35,000-word critique opposing industrialization and advocating for a nature-centered way of life. The FBI used the acronym UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) in their investigation, resulting in Kacynski becoming known as the “Unabomber.”

Kacynski mailed a letter to the New York Times promising to end his acts of terrorism if the NYT or The Washington Post would publish his manifesto. The FBI felt publishing the manifesto could help lead to his capture. David Kaczynski recognized his brother’s voice in the writing and contacted the FBI which led to the Unabomber’s capture and his criminal sentence of multiple consecutive life terms. The manifesto used a quote from L. Sprague de Camp’s The Ancient Engineers. Here is how The Washington Post has footnoted the quote on their webpage reprinting the essay:

(The last sentence is actually misquoted, de Camp wrote “These resemblances are the result of a common technology….”. Per a U.S. News & World Report article dated April 15, 1996, Kacynski’s, most likely unintentional, substitution of words was a clue he was a mathematician.)

The FBI rightly decided to interview de Camp because of this quote. A 2017 TV series called Manhunt: Unabomber includes a somewhat fictionalized version of de Camp in one of the episodes. In the scene depicting this meeting, de Camp’s name appears on a placard stating, “L. Sprague de Camp, S.A.G.A. Author, The Ancient Engineers.”

In a 2005 op-ed piece about the Patriot Act, National Review editor, Deroy Murdock, suggested libraries should be added to locations where federal investigators may look for terrorists. (Ted Kaczynski is reported as having checked out de Camp’s book from the Lincoln Community Library in Lincoln, Montana.) Below is an excerpt from Mr. Murdock’s article.

Let’s move away from the Unabomber now and talk about The Ancient Engineers for a short bit. This was one of de Camp’s more popular non-fiction books. De Camp conceived of a television series based on this book to be called Man the Engineer:

After the rejection, de Camp later retooled the idea and created this promotional flyer for the series. The title was changed to Innovations…

Sadly, this second try was also a failure. De Camp’s The Ancient Engineers, in another universe, may have been as successful as Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. But in this universe, only the book’s title, in the Manhunt: Unabomber episode, was ever on television.