Years in the Making: The Time-Travel Stories of L. Sprague de Camp

by L. Sprague de Camp, Harry Turtledove (Introduction)

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.

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Short Stories

377 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2005

About the author

Lyon Sprague de Camp was an American author of science fiction, fantasy and non-fiction literature. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, both novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction in the 1930s and 1940s.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

"A Gun for Dinosaur" and LEST DARKNESS FALL are the standouts, but generally all the stories are pretty good. There are intercalary poems which I skipped. Unfortunately my printing (or maybe the whole NESFA edition) is riddled with typographical errors, which was very distracting. Overall 3½ stars rounded down for that. But definitely definitely read "A Gun for Dinosaur," it's a classic. (Or listen to the radio play from DIMENSION X!)

[Ronald Spitzer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable time travel stories! de Camp makes his time travel stories realistic in that the main character has language difficulties, lack of sanitation concerns, the travelers are just ordinary people and are not specially trained heroes, etc. The poems were also enjoyable, especially "Reward of Virtue." These stories and poems may have been written years ago, but that is no reason to be prejudiced against them, after-all were are talking time travel here.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

A must read for time travel genre defining short stories, including "Gun for Dinosaur" and "The Wheels of If" which hold up against today's modern science fiction.
The novella Lest Darkness Fall, also genre-defining, was clever, byzantine, and surprisingly long.
Creative and well-written though light on description in places.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 for Lest Darkness Fall, 3 or so for most of the other stories. The only thing stopping me from giving Lest Darkness Fall five stars is the lack of decent female characters (surely Antonina, aka Mrs Belisarius, could have had more than half a page?), and the way the story lagged a bit once it stopped being 'Martin lands in Gothic Rome, invents things' and turned into alternate-historical wars, though I recognise the latter is probably a personal peculiarity. Linguistics! Latin! Nobody dies horribly! It is AWESOME. I also liked The Gnarly Man quite a lot.

[Karina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes me longer to read short stories than novels, but sometimes I enjoy them. I figured that I'll enjoy this collection of time-travel stories and I have. Particularly those that are the longer ones in here, though some shorter ones were great also.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

With half-baked characters and wholly unbaked science, most of these stories are pretty weak by modern standards, but I'm just a sucker for Connecticut Yankee stories, I suppose...

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the stories in this book. L. Sprague de Camp addressed interesting issues about time travel, some which are at times ignored by authors of other time travel stories.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only one i didnt really like was The Wheels of If. The rest are wonderful

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice collection of de Camp's time travel and alternate history tales.