L. Sprague de Camp

Lyon Sprague de Camp (New York, 1907 – Plano, Texas, 2000) was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction. Over a career spanning six decades he wrote more than a hundred books, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction during the 1930s and 1940s, and he is best remembered today for his continuations and reworkings of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories.

He trained as an aeronautical engineer, earning a degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1930 and a master's from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933. Before writing full time he worked as a surveyor and patent specialist. During the Second World War he served at the Philadelphia Naval Yard alongside Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, and rose to lieutenant commander in the naval reserve. He was married to Catherine Crook for sixty years, and from the 1960s the two collaborated on a range of fiction and non-fiction.

His fiction is known for humour, dry wit and a strong interest in logic. He was often irritated by inconsistencies he found in other writers' work, and he frequently wrote stories that set them right. In Lest Darkness Fall, for instance, he reworked Mark Twain's time-travel premise with a rationalised method and a hero whose skills are limited by the technology of his age. His alternate-history stories, such as "The Wheels of If" and "Aristotle and the Gun", are regarded as pioneering works of the subgenre. In fantasy he was best known for the Harold Shea stories, written with Fletcher Pratt, in which magic follows its own internal rules.

His legacy lies in his influence on alternate history and in his work as a popular commentator, with biographies, essays and studies of the history of science and fantastic literature. He died in Plano, Texas, seven months after his wife.