Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Wheels of If by L. Sprague de Camp The Wheels of If. All books subject to prior sale. Image of book or magazine available upon request. Please send check or money order (US dollars). Paypal also accepted. Add $4 for first book, $1 each additional book for shipping by U.S. Postal Service special book rate within continental US. Priority mail is $5 for first book and $1.50 for each additional title. Shipping at cost outside USA. Email to reserve. Returnable in 10 days if not as described. Shipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 LB, or 1 KG. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know extra shipping is required. L. Sprague de Camp. L. Sprague de Camp (1907 – 2000) was an American author. His notable works include the time-travel novel Lest Darkness Fall and the Harold Shea series. He was a major contributor to the Conan the Barbarian series after it Outlived Its Creator. He received lifetime achievement awards from the World Science Fiction Society (which runs the Hugo Award), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (which run the Nebula Award), and the organisers of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He was a friend of Isaac Asimov, and one of the characters in Asimov's Black Widowers series is modelled on him. Conan the Barbarian series Harold Shea series Lest Darkness Fall. : The educational book Energy and Power includes a discussion of the difference between the potential energy of a one-pound weight sitting on a three-foot-high table and the kinetic energy if the weight falls off the table, and adds, "You will understand this if the weight falls on your toe." : In the short story "Nothing in the Rules", one team at a girls' swimming competition contains a mermaid, who of course wins everything. In response to the opposition's outrage, the team coach points out that the rules only specify that all entrants must be female; nothing is said about species. The officials are reluctantly forced to admit that he's right. Whereupon the opposing coach visits the city zoo and borrows a female seal, who (properly incentivized with a bucket of fish) outswims the mermaid. To avoid disqualification for not using the proper swimming form, the mermaid only competes in the freestyle events. This is also a feature in the Boldly Coming entry below. There's no mention of Green-Skinned Space Babes in The Book of Leviticus. Jorian: These knaves were tyros after all, or they'd never have left aught sharp where we could come upon it. Karadur: Remember, my son, that they are accustomed to coping with foes, not by such crude devices as swords and cords, but by spirits, spells, and the transcendental wisdom of magic. Jorian: So much the worse for them. : Solomon's Stone takes place in a world populated by figures from daydreams. : Deconstructed in "Language for Time Travelers". : The Viagens Interplanetarias series features a race of humanoid monotremes from the planet Krishna that, while anatomically similar to (but not interfertile with) humans, take considerably less time to climax. For this reason female Krishnans tend to seek out male humans for liaisons, while female humans try to avoid male Krishnans. It's also worth noting that, while humans last longer, male Krishnans were capable of copulating much more often (15-20 times per night). : In the Reluctant King series, the kingdom of Xylar chooses its next king by throwing the head of the previous king into a crowd - - the catcher gets the throne. The downside is that in five years, the process is repeated. which is why Jorian, who had no idea about all this, is very much the titular Reluctant King, and spends the trilogy running away from Xylarians who want to drag him back so they can perform the ceremony. : In the Viagens Interplanetarias cycle one of the prominent planets, Krishna, is populated by a humanoid species that happens to be sexually compatible with humans (though matings won't result in offspring). Some of them wear nothing but jewelry and body paint. Needless to say, one of the human characters gets to seduce a local princess. (The Krishnans are actually depicted as green-skinned humanoids in the GURPS adaptation of the setting as a tabletop game.) De Camp knew exactly how unlikely this would be, but wanted to write swashbuckling, two-fisted adventure stories In Space, and worked very hard to come up with a setting that would let him get away with it. The biological difficulties are frequently lampshaded, and provide a fair amount of the comedy in the series. : The setting of Tales From Gavagan's Bar . : In the story "Judgment Day", a scientific genius has discovered a principle that will make weapons on the scale of A-bombs (which hadn't been fully invented yet when the story was written) possible. Most of the story is a flashback to his unhappy life of being unpopular and bullied and lonely. He decides to publish his discovery, expecting it to lead to humanity destroying itself. : Averted in the short story "The Gnarly Man". The title character is a 50,000 year-old Neanderthal who has managed to live a quiet, normal life over the millenia. The only famous person he ever encountered was Charlemagne, who he saw giving a speech in Paris. : In "The Wheels of If" Allister Park, a New York lawyer from our world, is transported into the body of his counterpart in an Alternate History world, a bishop named Ib Scoglund. He concocts a plan to get himself home and manipulates the political opposition by infiltrating them using an invented identity. under the name "Allister Park". : The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate has a scene in which the hero, realizing that he nearly jeopardized their mission (and his mother's life) by drunken, arrogant stupidity, asks his closest friend to give him a good swift kick in the arse. When the friend obliges, the hero sighs and says he feels better now. : The Great Fetish is set on the distant planet Kforri (K-40), a world in the Mesozoic stage of evolution colonized by humans generations before, their technology lost as the result of a mutiny before landing (or crashing). The established religions of the roughly Bronze Age-technology, Medieval European-culture nations that have developed all embrace the doctrine of Evolution, which states that mankind arose from lesser native forms, while the emergent scientists have brought forth the heretical concept of Descensionism, maintaining that the lack of creatures similar to humanity indicates their ancestors came from elsewhere. : In The Honorable Barbarian , princess Nogiri of Salimor comments that Kerin of Novaria, with whom she has just entered into a Citizenship Marriage, is an incredible man and husband and wonders why all Salimorese women don't go to Novaria to find such wonderful men. The primary reason she says this is that Kerin doesn't beat her when she argues with him. : The short story "The Hardwood Pile" features Aceria, the one of the Tree Nymphs of Norway Maples. After all the Norway Maples in the area are cut down she becomes the Nymph of Piles of Wooden Boards that Used to Be Norway Maples. At the end of the story she becomes the Nymph of Nightclub Dance Floors Made of Wood From Norway Maples. : Mermaids appear in several of de Camp's fantasy stories. In all of them (even ones in different continuities) the mermaids are part dolphin, rather than part fish. They are also streamlined for swimming, so the females breasts are generally smaller than those typically portrayed in mermaid art. : The Viagens Interplanetarias series is an attempt to do a semi-Hard SF version of the genre. At the end of one of the Viagens books, the main character wishes he could explain to the classic writers of Planetary Romances how much they got wrong. : His historical novels don't use modern dating in the main text. An afterword may mention that The Arrows of Hercules , for example, occurs in and around 399 B.C., but in the narrative the story begins "in the first year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, when Laches was Archon of Athens," with no explanation of when this equates to. Characters talking about current events help pin the dates down a bit more precisely — for readers familiar with the history. (How many people remember off-hand what year Socrates was executed? The execution is reported as news in the course of this book.) : In Solomon's Stone , the hero finds himself in a world populated by the figures people daydream of being. Everyone has a Sesquipedalian Smith name, indicating first the daydream and then the mundane reality. : "A Gun for Dinosaur" (about time-traveling big game hunters) features Tyrannosaurus trionyches , a fictional cousin of "the famous rex ." : Used in 399 B.C. in Historical Fiction novel The Arrows of Hercules to convince a Pointy-Haired Boss to not interfere with the inventors creating the ballista (termed "catapult" in the book). Unwilling to admit that what he heard made no sense to him, he says, "I see what you mean. Funny I never thought of that." and lets them get on with their work. Hilariously, the "jargon" consists mostly of words modern readers won't consider even remotely technical: The trouble with the pivoted model is that in the hootnanny position, the gadget interferes with the thingamajig, and that throws the doohickey out of line. The only way to prevent this is to parallax the gimmick, and that keeps the thingumbob from equalizing. So whichever way we approach the problem, the result is always the same: it doesn't work. You follow me, don't you, sir? The Wheels of If by L. Sprague de Camp. AKA Lyon Sprague de Camp. Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Author. Nationality: United States Executive summary: Lest Darkness Fall. Science fiction and fantasy author L. Sprague de Camp is remembered as one of the major authors of the Golden Age of science fiction literature. Responsible for continuing the Conan the Barbarian saga begun by friend Robert E. Howard, de Camp also produced a broad rage of other fiction and non-fiction works, including biographies of both Howard and H. P. Lovecraft as well as a variety of popular science works. Many of the latter were aimed at debunking non-scientific beliefs and included such titles as The Ancient Engineers (1974), The Great Monkey Trial (1968) and Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature (1970). Some of de Camp's most popular works of fiction include Lest Darkness Fall (1941), The Wheels of If (1940), The Glory That Was (1960), and The Dragon of Ishtar Gate (1961) as well as numerous novels created in collaboration with author Fletcher Pratt in the Harold Shea and Enchanter series. Born in New York City on November 27, 1907, de Camp received his early education both in New York and in the American South. He went on to earn his BS in Aeronautical Engineering from Cal Tech in 1930, and his MS from Stevens Institute in 1933. Afterwards, he went to work for a company that dealt with patenting, eventually making his authorial debut with a textbook on the same subject. His first book of fiction was Genus Homo , written with P Schuyler Miller, but the work could not find a receptive editor until 1950. However, in 1937, de Camp's first short fiction piece, "The Isolinguals", was accepted by Astounding Science Fiction . He made further contributions to Astounding (working especially well with it's later editor John W. Campbell), as well as to a variety of other pulps. His most notable works from this period include the Johnny Black stories (about an intelligent bear), as well as a number of others later gathered in his The Best of L. Sprague de Camp collection (1978). In 1939 de Camp married Catherine Crook who would also serve as his re-write editor and sometimes collaborator during the rest of their years together. In 1942 he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve, serving, as Lieutenant Commander, in the same Philadelphia Naval Yard as friends and fellow science fiction authors Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein. Like Heinlein and Asimov (as well as A. E. van Vogt, Frederik Pohl, Arthur C. Clarke, and others), de Camp would eventually become one of the principle authors of what is now referred to as the Golden Age of science fiction. De Camp's work was part of an explosion of titles and ideas that transformed the tiny emerging sci-fi genre (once defined almost entirely by H.G. Wells and Jules Verne) into a broad, rich and burgeoning body of literature. De Camp himself (both singly and in collaboration with others) produced nearly 100 titles, not to mention scores of short stories -- and a number of edited anthologies. But although his first forays into fiction were largely sci-fi (especially time travel tales), he began in the 1950s to produce more straightforward sword & sorcery/fantasy novels. The impetus for this may have been his massive involvement with Robert E. Howard's Conan tales. De Camp compiled and rewrote the unpolished and often unfinished material left by the self-murdered Howard. Adding his own fill where needed, he brought the tales into a publishable book format and before handing them off to Gnome Press. The end result of this Howard/de Camp post mortem collaboration was a highly successful series, later enhanced even further by fresh installments created by de Camp, often in collaboration with Lin Carter and others. New authors, including Robert Jordan, have continued the Conan series, and in 1982 Conan made his move to the big screen, embodied in the person of actor (and now California governor) Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian (1982). The film was successful enough, by Hollywood standards, to generate the 1984 sequel Conan the Destroyer. De Camp died on November 6, 2000. He was preceded, seven months earlier, by death his wife, Catherine Cook de Camp. His companion for some of sixty years, he passed away on the day that would have been her birthday. L. Sprague De Camp's accolades and distinctions include Guest of Honor at the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention, the Nebula Grand Master Award (1978), the World Science Fiction Society's Gandalf Grand Master award (1976), and the Hugo Award for Time and Chance (1997), his autobiography. De Camp was also awarded the first Sidewise Award for Alternate History Lifetime Achievement in 1995. Extremely active even into his ninth decade, one of de Camp's last adventures was an Easter sojourn with Catherine in 1994 to the South Pacific's remote Easter Island. He is remembered, not only as an author of considerable achievement, but also as a world traveler who spoke several languages and who participated in a number of scholarly, professional, literary, and social organizations. Wife: Catherine Adelaide Cook de Camp (m. 12-Aug-1931, d. 9-Apr-2000) Son: Lyman Sprague de Camp Son: Gerard Beekman de Camp Brother: Lyman Lyon de Camp. Author of books: Lest Darkness Fall ( 1941 ) Land of Unreason ( 1942 , with Fletcher Pratt) The Carnelian Cube ( 1948 , with Fletcher Pratt) Divide and Rule ( 1948 ) The Stolen Dormouse ( 1948 ) Genus Homo ( 1950 , with P Schuyler Miller) Rogue Queen ( 1951 ) The Undesired Princess ( 1951 ) The Great Monkey Trial ( 1968 , non-fiction) Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature ( 1970 , non-fiction) Al Azif: The Necronomicon ( 1973 , non-fiction, with Abdul Alhazred) The Ancient Engineers ( 1974 , non-fiction) Dark Valley Destiny: The Life of Robert E. Howard ( 1975 , biography) H. P. Lovecraft: A biography ( 1975 , biography) The Ape-man Within ( 1995 , non- fiction) Time and Chance: An Autobiography ( 1996 , memoir) Cosmic Manhunt ( 1954 ) Solomon's Stone ( 1957 ) An Elephant for Aristotle ( 1958 ) The Tower of Zanid ( 1958 ) The Bronze God of Rhodes ( 1960 ) The Glory That Was ( 1960 ) The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate ( 1961 ) The Search for Zei ( 1962 , The Floating Continent) The Hand of Zei ( 1963 ) The Arrows of Hercules ( 1965 ) The Golden Wind ( 1969 ) The Fallible Friend ( 1973 ) The Fallible Fiend ( 1974 ) The Virgin and the Wheels ( 1976 ) Conan of Aquilonia ( 1977 ) The Hostage of Zir ( 1977 ) The Queen of Zamba ( 1977 ) Conan the Swordsman ( 1978 , with Lin Carter and Bj�rn Nyberg) The Great Fetish ( 1978 ) Footprints on Sand ( 1981 ) Conan le Barbare ( 1982 ) The Prisoner of Zhamanak ( 1982 ) The Fringe of the Unknown ( 1983 ) The Bones of Zora ( 1983 , with Catherine Crook de Camp) The Stones of Nomuru ( 1988 , with Catherine Crook de Camp) The Undesired Princess and the Enchanted Bunny ( 1990 , with David Drake) The Swords of Zinjaban ( 1991 , with Catherine Crook de Camp) The Venom Trees of Sunga ( 1992 ) The Wheels of If ( 1948 ) The Tritonian Ring: And Other Pusadian Tales ( 1951 ) The Undesired Princess and Mr Arson ( 1951 ) Continent Makers: And Other Tales of the Viagens ( 1953 ) Sprague de Camp's New Anthology ( 1953 ) Tales from Gavagan's Bar ( 1953 , with Fletcher Pratt) Heroes and Hobgoblins ( 1962 ) Gun for Dinosaur: And Other Imaginative Tales ( 1963 ) The Best of L Sprague de Camp ( 1969 ) Demons and Dinosaurs ( 1970 ) The Reluctant Shaman: And Other Fantastic Tales ( 1970 ) Phantoms and Fancies ( 1972 ) Scribblings ( 1972 ) Tales Beyond Time: From Fantasy to Science Fiction ( 1973 , with Catherine Crook de Camp) The Compleat Enchanter ( 1975 , with Fletcher Pratt) The Purple Pterodactyls ( 1979 , with James Baen) The Virgin of Zesh and the Tower of Zanid ( 1982 ) Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages ( 1986 ) The Intrepid Enchanter ( 1988 , with Fletcher Pratt) The Complete Compleat Enchanter ( 1989 , with Fletcher Pratt) Rivers of Time ( 1993 ) Down in the Bottomlands: And Other Places ( 1999 , with Harry Turtledove) Aristotle and the Gun: and Other Stories ( 2002 ) Time-Travel Stories ( 2004 ) Tales of Conan ( 1955 , with Robert E. Howard) The Return of Conan ( 1957 ) Conan the Adventurer ( 1965 , with Robert E. Howard) Conan the Usurper ( 1967 , with Robert E. Howard) Conan the Warrior ( 1967author , with Robert E. Howard) Conan of the Isles ( 1968 , with Lin Carter) Conan the Freebooter ( 1968 , with Robert E. Howard) Conan the Buccaneer ( 1971 , with Lin Carter) Conan the Liberator ( 1979 , with Lin Carter) Conan and the Spider God ( 1980 ) The Treasure of Tranicos ( 1980 , with Robert E. Howard) Sagas of Conan ( 2004 , with Lin Carter and Bj�rn Nyberg) FORGOTTEN BOOKS #610: THE VIRGIN & THE WHEELS By L. Sprague de Camp. Here’s another book I’ve had on my shelves for decades. I bought The Virgin & The Wheels (1976) because of the cool wrap-around cover by Don Maitz. The Virgin & The Wheels consists of two novellas: “The Virgin of Zesh” and “The Wheels of If.” “ The Virgin of Zesh ” is the fourth book of de Camp’s Viagens Interplanetarias series and the third of its sub-series of stories set on the fictional planet of Krishna. Chronologically, it is the fifth Krishna novella. Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories , February 1953, “The Virgin of Zesh” tells the story of Earth missionary Althea Merrick, who is stranded on the planet Krishna and fleeing from an unconsummated marriage to a corrupt and cruel Viagens Interplanetarias official. Merrick joins a scientist and poet who travel to a utopian Terran colony on the island of Zesh. Of course, many things go wrong. Althea Merrick finds her faith shaken by events. GRADE: B+ “The Wheels of If” is an alternate history science fiction story first published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction for October, 1940. “The Wheels of If” first appeared in book form in de Camp’s collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (1948). Lawyer Alister Park finds himself in alternate histories and needs to solve the puzzle of how to get back to his own time-line. GRADE: B. The Virgin & The Wheels collects two entertaining novellas from de Camp’s early writing career. If you’re looking for fun and diversion, here it is. 18 thoughts on “ FORGOTTEN BOOKS #610: THE VIRGIN & THE WHEELS By L. Sprague de Camp ” Have to admit that I don’t remember these – but they are among the 36 (. ) “novels” from Lester (many of them written with Fletcher Pratt) that I’ve bought over the years. I found his stories always fun, easy to read when I was on business trips e g and needed something light to read before going to sleepin my hotel room. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 7:26 am. Wolf, you captured the essence of L. Spague de Camp’s fiction: fun, easy to read, and light! L. Sprague was Lyon, not Lester, Wolf…I think you might be thinking of “Lester Del Rey” (Leonard Knapp). I read a lot of de Camp back in the day but nothing recently. He was best known for his Harold Shea novels he wrote with Fletcher Pratt. He also wrote several historical novels. I think I read The Wheels of If but never heard of the other one. He wrote some pretty good short stories and I do have a best of lying around somewhere. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 7:30 am. Steve, I plan on rereading the Harold Shea novels in 2021. De Camp was very prolific. I’ve enjoyed most of his early stuff, especially his work in UNKNOWN. And, of course, he was instrumental (rightly or wrongly) in the Conan revival in the late Sixties/early Seventies. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 7:32 am. Jerry, I’m in the camp of the anti-Lancer faux-Conan novels. The one’s co-written with Lin Carter are dreadful! And De Camp was already “finishing” Conan scraps in the 1950s. Todd, a lot of purists took exception to de Camp “finishing” those Conan scraps. Definitely not for me. But glad so many seem to enjoy it. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 8:47 am. Patti, these type of stories were staples in pulp magazines back in the day. The cover might well put Patti and not a few others off…not necessarily usefully…De Camp was, at his best, a very urbane writer. Not really my thing. I’ve read a bunch of his short stories – GAVAGAN’S BAR, mainly, plus a collection of his shorter fantasy stories. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 8:48 am. Jeff, I have a copy of GAVAGAN’S BAR but haven’t gotten around to reading it. I own a lot of de Camp and have read some of it. I don’t have this book, but I think I have both stories in other editions. I read the Harold Shea books, and some fantasies, and some quite good historical novels. I liked the early Lancer Conans before Lin Carter joined. Interesting Don Maitz cover. He got better. I remember when nudity was acceptable on covers. Dean Koontz, when he was a high school teacher, got disciplined for assigning the de Camp/Pratt INCOMPLEAT ENCHANTER with a Jeff Jones nude cover. And I love the blurb, “two stunning new triumphs.” These weren’t exactly new. george Post author September 11, 2020 at 2:15 pm. Jeff, I dimly remember that story about Dean Koontz and the Jeff Jones cover. You’re right about Don Maitz getting better, but I like this wrap- around cover. I remember the cover, but not the book. Some of his stuff is fun. george Post author September 12, 2020 at 10:23 am. Rick, I’ve enjoyed all the L. Sprague de Camp books I’ve read. I own the Conan books de Camp worked on but I haven’t read them. the wheels of if. 7 short to very short science fictions stories written between 1938 and 1942. the first 2 are quite stunning for their time and involve alternative history. when reading the first few pages you might be shocked and check the date this was printed as the ideas are modern. if you had read the wheels of if in the 1940s how could you then have endured the sci fi movies, stuff on tv and books by other authors? reality would have sucked and the only escape would have been more brilliant classic sci fi writing. the 2nd story is ultra short but has a wonderful twist to it – the others after that may not be as good but are very different plot lines. lyon sprague de camp – who said he had no need of a pseudoname as his was naturally better than most – must have infected other science fiction authors with his style, plots and new territories he ventured into. keith laumers books like the awesome the monitors and others like the cold cash war could have been written by sprague de camp – and you get the feeling that philip k dicks plots might never have dared seen the light of day without him. quote below by l sprague de camp. people sometimes accuse me of writing satire. this – if not exactly a vile canard – is at an least inaccurate statement – because in the strict sense satire is ridiculing established conditions, conventions or institutions by exaggeration or burlesque in the hope of changing them. in other words – it has social significance – which is just the last thing i studiously avoid in my stories these yarns are meant purely to amuse and entertain – and neither to instruct nor to incite nor to improve. if you get instructed, incited or improved as a result of reading them then dont blame me for such was not my intention.