Heroes and Hobgoblins

by L. Sprague de Camp, Tim Kirk (Illustrator)

Ogres and ghosts, birds, beasts and creeping things, and places near and far are the focus of this bright and personal volume of verses. Winner of many awards for his Science Fiction and Fantasy stories, Mr. deCamp has been writing since the late 1930's, and is equally well known as a "professional popularizer of science".This collection of 100 verses is divided into six sections, all of which call upon and point up the author's many interests and generate a particular pleasure for the reader.

158 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

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

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of a hundred poems by de Camp, many of which appeared in one of his two previous books of verse, Demons and Dinosaurs or Phantoms and Fancies. Most of them were first printed in small-press science fiction fan magazines (fanzines) in the 1960s and '70s. The book is very nicely illustrated by Tim Kirk, and is divided into a half-dozen thematic sections like "Places Near and Far" (based on his extensive travels), "Myths and Mythmakers" (concerning other writers and their characters), "Speaking Stones and Bricks" (archaeology), "Birds, Beasts and Creeping Things" (paleontology), etc. The poems are all rigidly adherent to classic, traditional formats of meter, rhyme, and rhythm, which tends to make them a little difficult to comprehend at times as he reverses the order of words and sometimes makes unusual choices of them in order to force the thought to fit the pattern. He allows himself a little whimsical leeway in the better ones. I enjoyed the ones in which he injects a bit of self-deprecating humor and the ones about Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard the most. For example, in The Jungle Vine he recounts the sad outcome of his attempt to swing through the trees like Tarzan. Some of his serious pieces are quite good when he doesn't become overly complex and circuitous, such as Tintagel and Ziggurat. De Camp was one of the Golden Age science fiction and fantasy authors (who did more to keep Howard's Conan alive in the literary sense than anyone else), and this is an interesting look into a different side of his life.