L. Sprague de Camp

2 universes Last reviewed 2026-08-30

L. Sprague de Camp was born November 27, 1907, in New York City, one of three sons of a real estate and lumber businessman; his maternal grandfather was a Civil War veteran, accountant, and banker. He attended Trinity School in New York and spent a decade at Snyder School, a military institution in North Carolina, before earning a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from Caltech in 1930, where his roommate was rocket scientist John Drury Clark, and a Master of Science in engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933. He worked for the Inventors Foundation in Hoboken, New Jersey, eventually becoming principal of its School of Inventing and Patenting, and during World War II served as a researcher at the Philadelphia Naval Yard alongside Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, rising to lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve. Across a writing career spanning 1937 to 1996 and more than one hundred books, de Camp pioneered alternate history with Lest Darkness Fall (1939), wrote the Viagens Interplanetarias series, collaborated with Fletcher Pratt on the Harold Shea stories, continued Robert E. Howard's Conan tales, and wrote the Novarian fantasy series. He received the International Fantasy Award in 1953, the Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy title in 1976, SFWA Grand Master in 1979, and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1984. He married Catherine Crook in 1939 and died November 6, 2000, in Plano, Texas, at age ninety-two.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Incomplete Enchanter (1941) · The Harold Shea Series Core Canon
• The Castle of Iron (1950) · The Harold Shea Series Core Canon
• Wall of Serpents (1960) · The Harold Shea Series Core Canon
• The Goblin Tower (1968) · Novaria Core Canon
• The Clocks of Iraz (1971) · Novaria Core Canon
• The Fallible Fiend (1973) · Novaria Expanded Canon
• The Unbeheaded King (1983) · Novaria Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

These are separate, unrelated universes; the totals below are plain sums of already-published per-universe facts, never a blended or averaged score across them. See each universe's own figures above.

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 6 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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