Sprague de Camp's New Anthology

Introduction

The main difficulty in editing an anthology like this one is that it is never long enough. All the time there is the necessity to select, to reject, to differentiate between stories according to some standard of value. With the work of Sprague de Camp there is so much material from which to choose that I feel I must give reasons for this particular selection. But there is no difficulty about that. I chose these stories because I think that they entertain.

Some stories make you think. They make you think so much that you begin to forget they are stories and start to believe their messages. Which may be a good thing. Or a bad thing.

And there have been so very many collections of "serious" stories—I edited one myself—that 1 feel something in a lighter vein will be welcome. It is so easy for people to think that science fiction deals only with death and destruction and doom. It does not.

This book proves it. For here we have some of the cream of science fiction humour. Sprague de Camp can, when he wishes, exhibit the pertness of Parker, the whimsy of Wodehouse, the baloney of Benchley and the nuttiness of Nash; and when it comes to jabberwocky he can stand without shame beside Lewis Carroll. Yet through it all runs a warm murmur of human kindness reminding us of the stories of O. Henry—a criterion of true humour.

And this is fitting, for our author's Christian name, Sprague, is an old English name from Upwey, Dorset, meaning "lively"; while his surname, de Camp, is Norman-French—a spritely lot. Perhaps there is, after all, something in a name!

Jabberwocky will be found in Calories, one of Sprague's famous Krishna stories. Nuttiness, of a quiet kind, appears in The Saxon Pretender, where the British throne is threatened by an American descendant of the king who got an arrow in his eye. Baloney, wild and wonderful, sweeps through the pages of Space Clause, and gives us a small hint at our pomposity. Whimsy is the keynote of Colourful Character—so colourful, such a character! Pertness peeps out in every line of Juice, one of the most probable impossible stories of our age. And in Proposal the basic kindness wells up at the end into something like a tear—and then you laugh!

Science fiction is an adult form of literature, and the humour in these stories is adult, too. It does not take you back to the eggs-in-the-bed days of childhood, or make you split your sides—which, after all, would be uncomely. But it stirs up a sort of rumble in the nether regions of the thorax; it brings a gleam to the eye, a twitch to the lips and seems to make life a little more worth while.

In a word, these stories—entertain.

I hope you like them.

H. J. Campbell,

London, 1953.