Years In The Making: The Time-Travel Stories Of L. Sprague De Camp (Hardcover)

~ L. Sprague De Camp (Author), Mark L. Olson (Editor), Bob Eggleton (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

L. Sprague de Camp was a master of the time travel and alternate history story. In many respects his novel Lest Darkness Fall founded alternate history, while "Aristotle and the Gun" is probably one of the best stories about tinkering with history ever written. In addition we include stories of time travel both backwards and forwards and de Camp's wonderful essay "Language for Time-Travelers". This is a collection of L. Sprague de Camp's SF best stories and essays dealing with time travel. It is the first volume of a projected series of stories and novels by L. Sprague de Camp.

About the Author

L. Sprague de Camp was born in New York in 1907 and died in 2000. He got a BS in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Tech in 1930 and later earned his MS. Before WWII he was one of the new writers recruited by John W. Campbell to launch the Golden Age of Astounding and became a distinguished writer of short SF. He was a Lieutenant Commander in the US Naval Reserve in WWII. After the war and for the next fifty years he was a full-time professional writer, mostly of SF and fantasy. He wrote over 100 SF&F books, several hundred stories, and many non-fiction works in history, science, and biography. De Camp is a winner of the Hugo and also a Grand Master Nebula. L. Sprague de Camp spoke several languages and traveled world-wide. 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, been bitten by a lizard in the jungles of Guatemala, and spent Easter on Easter Island in the South Pacific. His autobiography, Time and Chance, published by Donald M. Grant in 1996 won the 1997 Hugo Award for best non-fiction.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Nesfa Pr; 1st edition (February 28, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886778477
• ISBN-13: 978-1886778474
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #208,146 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Collection that is among the best!, November 11, 2005

By	David N. Reiss (Haymarket, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

L. Sprague de Camp is one of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction. He was the second person to be named to a Grand Master by SFWA. His writing is very much like that of a Big Three, and he started writing before Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, or Arthur C. Clarke. If you read the work of the Big Three, then de Camp is something right up your alley.

Although de Camp did not invent the idea of the Alternate History story, he was most probably the best writer of that sub-genre of SF. This book contains some of his best stories ever in "The Wheels of If", "Aristotle and the Gun", "A Gun for Dinosaur" and "Lest Darkness Fall". Each are among the classics of SF.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As good as an athology gets, September 26, 2005

By	Claude Bissonette (Dukenfield PA USA) - See all my reviews

De Camp pretty much founded the Alternate History literary genre. These stories were groundbreaking in their time, and their wit and originality has not been surpassed.
De Camp was a learned man and his research is exhaustive. I recommend "Balsamo's Mirror" to anyone who attends Renaissance festivals, and "The Wheels of If" to anyone who worships their Celtic roots.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful Edition for Posterity, January 28, 2009

By	David B. Wade (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

L. Sprague de Camp should need no introduciton, as one of the most influential Sci Fi/Fantasy authors of the 20th century. Most of the material here is available elsewhere, but usually in poor quality mass market editions. I particularly appreciate the inclusion of that alternate history classic of classics, "Lest Darkness Fall". This is a very high quality edition that could well grace any bookshelf, and is worth every penny.