L. Sprague de Camp: Erudite Writer on Archaeology, Ancient Engineering, and Pseudoscience - and Science Fiction Too

L. Sprague de Camp, author of more than 100 science fiction and fantasy novels plus nonfiction works on archaeology, ancient engineering, and fringe-science and pseudoscience, died November 11, 2000, in Piano, Texas, where he lived. He was 92. His wife, Catherine, his constant companion and frequent co-author, had died in April 2000.

De Camp was a founding CSICOP Fellow. In fact, accompanied by Catherine, he participated in the conference at which CSICOP was formally founded, "The New Irrationalisms: Antiscience and Pseudoscience," April 30--May 1, 1976, at the State University of New York at Buffalo. One of his comments there pungently countered the litany from credulous believers that you must always keep an open mind. "Many people have developed minds that are not only open, but gaping," he said.

He also spoke at the conference of the circular logic often used by pseudoscientists, such as UFO enthusiasts who start by assuming what they wish to prove--that flying saucers exist. He outlined five criteria for judging UFO contact reports. And he spoke of the tendency for pseudoscientific ideas--such as astrology, which by the beginning of the 1900s had been thoroughly discredited--to keep popping up in new guise: "In the history of cultism, one is always experiencing a feeling of deja vu."

He also lambasted the then-highly popular ancient-astronaut works of Erich von Daniken. "Von Daniken's books are solid masses of misstatements, errors, and wild guesses presented as facts, unsupported by anything remotely resembling scientific data." He said a thorough analysis would require a book several times larger than the original. "It would take years of my time; and, if I were mad enough to write it, who then would read it?"

De Camp, a native of New York City, was one of the leading early figures in science fiction, getting his start in the 1930s and 1940s at the same time as colleagues such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Lester del Rey, and Frederik Pohl. John W. Campbell, the influential editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine, pointed to de Camp's stories as an example of the kind of science fiction he was looking for.

They were based on imaginative but careful and reasonable extrapolation from contemporary science. De Camp was known for his erudition (especially about history), scientific accuracy; polished writing, and "swashbuckling" style.

Although best known as a fiction writer, de Camp was a meticulous researcher who brought his interests in science, history, and archaeology and his background as an engineer (B.S. in aeronautical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 1930; masters from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933) to his nonfiction works. During World War II, de Camp, Heinlein, and Asimov independently worked on research projects at the Materials Laboratory of the Naval Air Experimental Station at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. "For three-and-a-half years, Heinlein, Asimov, and I navigated desks and fought the war with flashing slide rules," de Camp later wrote.

(In a letter to me in June 1981, de Camp addressed claims in a newly published crank book, The Philadelphia Experiment, that during World War II scientists at the Philadelphia Navy Yard had developed a way to make a ship invisible. He pointed to how he, Asimov, and Heinlein were all there. "If any experiment remotely resembling that described by Messrs. Berlitz and Moore had taken place. I am sure we should have heard about it. I need hardly say that we heard not a word, nor was any of our own work along such lines.")

De Camp's book Ancient Engineers, published in several editions, chronicles the ingenuous methods engineers throughout history (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Hellenistic, early and late Roman, Oriental, and European engineers) used in constructing great works and monuments. According to a current list on Barnes & Noble's Web site, Ancient Engineers is his best-selling in-print book.

For Great Cities of the Ancient World (1972) he traveled thousands of miles over several years to study thirteen ancient sites. Citadels of Mystery (1964, with Catherine) explored twelve wonders of the ancient world; the back cover of the 1989 Ballantine edition described him as "a man with the mind of an archaeologist, the heart of an adventurer, and the soul of Indiana Jones."

Several of his books were about fringe-science and pseudoscience. Among them are Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature, described as "the most derailed study ever compiled of lost continent mythology"; Spirits, Stars, and Spells (1966, with Catherine), about magic and occultism; The Ragged Edges of Science (Owlswick Press, 1980), a collection of articles on the borderland between "the bright-lit land of science on one side, and the dark domain of magic, occultism, and pseudoscience on the other"; and The Fringe of the Unknown (Prometheus 1983), another collection of articles on borderline or controversial matters in science and technology. It included chapters on Mad Men of Science, Orthodoxy in Science, Hoaxes in Science, and Little Green Men from Afar.