Lyon Sprague de Camp (November 27, 1907 to November 6, 2000) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, popular nonfiction, biography, and writing-craft books across a sixty-year career and more than one hundred volumes. He was named the third SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master in 1979 and received the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society in 1976.
His science fiction includes the classic alternate-history novel Lest Darkness Fall (1939), in which a twentieth-century archaeologist falls back into sixth-century Rome and tries to prevent the Dark Ages, and the Viagens Interplanetarias future history including the Krishna planetary romance series. His fantasy work, much of it in collaboration with Fletcher Pratt, includes the Harold Shea stories collected as The Compleat Enchanter, in which a modern psychologist is transported into the worlds of Norse myth, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and other literary fantasies. With Pratt he also wrote the Gavagan's Bar tall-tale stories.
He is also a central, and controversial, figure in Robert E. Howard scholarship and the Conan the Barbarian franchise. After Howard's death he edited the Conan stories for Lancer and Ace Books, wrote completions of unfinished Howard fragments, and produced new Conan pastiches (often with Lin Carter) that introduced millions of readers to the character. He compiled and edited the Hyborian Age essay defining Conan's world. His biographies include Lovecraft: A Biography (1975), the first full-length life of H.P. Lovecraft, and Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard (1983), co-written with his wife Catherine Crook de Camp and Jane Whittington Griffin.
His nonfiction includes Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, The Ragged Edge of Science, The Ancient Engineers (a survey of ancient and classical engineering), and the writing-craft titles Science-Fiction Handbook and Science-Fiction Handbook, Revised. He was born in New York City, trained as an aeronautical engineer, and lived for many years in Plainfield, New Jersey, and later Plano, Texas, where he died at ninety-two.
Lyon Sprague De Camp
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