The Glory That Was

INTRODUCTION by Robert A. Heinlein

In the fields of science fiction and of fantasy there are very few humorists. That is not to say that there are not many, many writers in these fields who try to be funny; of the number who try, entirely too many manage to peddle their weary efforts to desperate editors and the depressing results may be found on any newsstand. Most of these attempts are burlesque — and burlesque is an art hard to apply in a field in which there is literally no limit to the imagination; the practitioner is often tempted to use too wide a scoop when a teaspoon would have been more than adequate.

An approach almost as common as burlesque is that of satire, but satire is an even more difficult steed to ride. To induce a smile, satire must be subtle; but it has long since been proved that no satire can be sufficiently broad to be recognized as such by all readers. There always remains a large, very vocal, and angry minority who will have taken the attempted satire with utter seriousness at its face value and who will thereupon accuse the author of defaming motherhood, attempting to cast a smirch on the reader's church and, no doubt, being opposed to good roads and good weather.

L. Sprague de Camp is, I believe, the only living writer in the fields of science fiction and of fantasy whose stories are all (without any exception that I can remember) consistently humorous. Other writers in these fields have written truly funny stories — Henry Kuttner, Theodore Sturgeon, and Fredric Brown, to give a sample of the very few who have managed this difficult trick — but no writer other than de Camp, so far as I know, has made humor his regular product in science fiction and fantasy ... and gotten away with it.

Like standing on one finger, this trick is more difficult than it looks. Is it possible to analyze how he does it? Too much literary criticism is dry stuff at best and too often consists of someone who can't do the thing he is criticizing nevertheless explaining to others how the natural artist achieves his results — and how he should have done better. The reader is justified in skipping over the next page or so of this discussion, or, better yet, skip it entirely and get on to de Camp's story.

True humor is not cruel, or at least the cruelty is held down to a single dash of bitters. Time was when a rotten egg splashing in the face of the prisoner in the stocks, or a swift kick in the stomach, or even sudden and unexpected death was considered frightfully witty, but our culture has changed and such violence is no longer likely to win a laugh — from most of us. De Camp's humor is never cruel; the pain is bearable, the embarrassment never too sharp. His civilized restraint may lose a few belly laughs (there are few in his stories) but he does not lose his readers through disgusting or dismaying them; instead he takes them along through a long series of warm smiles, contented chuckles, and broad grins. The reader is left with a pleasant glow, a feeling that life is not so bad after all and that the foibles of our monkey race are bearable and even entertaining if one does not take them too seriously.

This, I maintain, is, in an age of hydrogen bombs and iron curtains, a very desirable trick.

The reader is often able to recognize himself in the bumblings and misadventures of de Camp's unheroic heroes and unvillainous villains, and to get there from a rueful but unbitter smile and a feeling of comradeship — and here, I think, lies the principal key to the de Camp brand of humor; he can laugh at himself; he sees himself as just one more of the occasionally noble but always embarrassed race of simian bumpkins, and possibly the most comical of them all. This is the source of the kindness and gentleness of his humor; seeing a man with his foot stuck in a bucket and unable at the moment to shake it off, de Camp will laugh, that, of satire, but satire is an even more difficult steed to ride. To induce a smile, satire must be subtle; but it has long since been proved that no satire can be sufficiently broad to be recognized as such by all readers. There always remains a large, very vocal, and angry minority who will have taken the attempted satire with utter seriousness at its face value and who will thereupon accuse the author of defaming motherhood, attempting to cast a smirch on the reader's church and, no doubt, being opposed to good roads and good weather.

L. Sprague de Camp is, I believe, the only living writer in the fields of science fiction and of fantasy whose stories are all (without any exception that I can remember) consistently humorous. Other writers in these fields have written truly funny stories — Henry Kuttner, Theodore Sturgeon, and Fredric Brown, to give a sample of the very few who have managed this difficult trick — but no writer other than de Camp, so far as I know, has made humor his regular product in science fiction and fantasy ... and gotten away with it.

Like standing on one finger, this trick is more difficult than it looks. Is it possible to analyze how he does it? Too much literary criticism is dry stuff at best and too often consists of someone who can't do the thing he is criticizing nevertheless explaining to others how the natural artist achieves his results — and how he should have done better. The reader is justified in skipping over the next page or so of this discussion, or, better yet, skip it entirely and get on to de Camp's story.

True humor is not cruel, or at least the cruelty is held down to a single dash of bitters. Time was when a rotten egg splashing in the face of the prisoner in the stocks, or a swift kick in the stomach, or even sudden and unexpected death was considered frightfully witty, but our culture has changed and such violence is no longer likely to win a laugh — from most of us. De Camp's humor is never cruel; the pain is bearable, the embarrassment never too sharp. His civilized restraint may lose a few belly laughs (there are few in his stories) but he does not lose his readers through disgusting or dismaying them; instead he takes them along through a long series of warm smiles, contented chuckles, and broad grins. The reader is left with a pleasant glow, a feeling that life is not so bad after all and that the foibles of our monkey race are bearable and even entertaining if one does not take them too seriously.

This, I maintain, is, in an age of hydrogen bombs and iron curtains, a very desirable trick.

The reader is often able to recognize himself in the bumblings and misadventures of de Camp's unheroic heroes and unvillainous villains, and to get there from a rueful but unbitter smile and a feeling of comradeship) — and here, I think, lies the principal key to the de Camp brand of humor; he can laugh at himself; he sees himself as just one more of the occasionally noble but always embarrassed race of simian bumpkins, and possibly the most comical of them all. This is the source of the kindness and gentleness of his humor; seeing a man with his foot stuck in a bucket and unable at the moment to shake it off, de Camp will laugh, but with a rueful sympathetic quality which concedes that it may be his turn next to step unexpectedly into a bucket.

It would be easy to go on at length about why I find laughs in de Camp's stories but to do so would be neither entertaining nor instructive. Much of his humor appears to be based on the inappropriate, the out of place, the unexpected, like the classical Horse in the Bathroom. If this does not entertain you, you are not at fault; there are no fixed rules for humor and in the clown business there can be only one immutable law — that which states that the customer is never wrong.

De Camp's stories are always meaty. He brings to his art an astonishing range of knowledge. In addition to formal education and years of experience as an engineer, he knows an amazing amount about an amazingly wide range of subjects — alchemy, aerodynamics, anthropology, archery, ballistics, Barbarossa, Bacchanalia, bimetallism, blastogenesis, cults, cats, catapults, cephalopods, chitons, chlamy — finish the alphabet yourself; you will not be wrong. In fact this man knows almost too much; his erudition would be unbearable were it not so unobtrusive. As it is, he fills his stage with such authentic detail that empathy is built and never broken.

In still another way de Camp preserves empathy with his readers; there is nothing of "Gee-Whiz!" about his stories, no matter how remote or improbable the scene. Even in the Viagens series, although the stage is so large as to require light-speed transportation, the characters are no more than lifesize and the actions are the actions of men, not demigods. De Camp has never destroyed a galaxy and has only rarely and excusably rescued the human race.

This' restraint may reduce the flavor for some — but not for me. The best fantasy is usually no more than light wine, the worst mere soda pop, all bubbles and synthetic flavor. The best of the Galaxy Busters are strong Bourbon; the worst are rotgut. In this analogy I would class de Camp's fiction as a very dry Martini.

R.A.H.