Aristotle and the Gun and Other Stories

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

Book by de Camp, L. Sprague

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

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

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent sampling of de Camp’s work. The original copyrights on these stories range from 1939 to 1993. There’s humorous fantasy about a knight with an entrepreneurial knight who’d much rather get ahead in the world by maximizing profits rather than slaying dragons, and a story of the havoc caused by entering a mermaid in a swim meet. There are also science fiction stories: a Neanderthal living in New York in 1946, a cautionary tale about going back in time to enlighten the ancient Greeks about the advantages of the scientific method, and – my favorites – three stories told by Reginald Rivers, de Camp’s time traveling Australian dinosaur hunting guide.

The only out of place thing in the whole package is the odd cover illustration, a flying charioteer with a lightning whip breaking through plate glass, which has no connection with any of the stories in the book.