Scribblings is a special collection of tall tales, poetry, and short articles written and assembled by L. Sprague de Camp. This book was published in recognition of de Camp's status as Guest of Honor at Boskone IX.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: A Word of Explanation
- Probability Zero
- The Effects of Time Travel
- The Negative Wugug
- Moveable Ears
- The Lusts of Professor Adams
- Jingles
- Preferences
- Carnac
- The Elephant
- Leaves
- The Trap
- The Newt
- African Night
- A Night Club in Cairo
- Xeroxing the Necronomicon
- It Might Interest You to Know
- How to Hunt Dinosaurs
- Pfui on Psi
- Lost Cities
- Government Bug-Hunter
- Three Thirds of a hero
- Books That Never Were
- Aphorisms
![[L. Spreague de Camp photo]](images/DeCamp-LS-400.JPG)
L.
Sprague de Camp
From the book's blurb:
L. Sprague de Camp is a self-employed writer who lives in Villanova, PA. Born in New York City in 1907 and educated there, in the South, and in California, he received the degree of BS in Aeronautical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology in 1930 and that of MS in Engineering and Economics from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933.
He is the author or co-author of over 70 books, including popularizations of science and technology, textbooks, historical novels, science fiction, fantasy, juvenile non-fiction, and verse. He has edited several anthologies of heroic fantasy and symposia. His book The Great Monkey Trial is considered the definitive history of the Scopes evolution trial of 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee.
Several of his books have been written in collaboration with his wife, Catherine Crook de Camp. Other collaborators have included Fletcher Pratt and Willy Ley.
DeCamp belongs to many scholarly, professional, literary, and social organization, speaks several languages, and has traveled widely to get material for his books in North and Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Pacific.
De Camp lives with his wife and the younger of their two sons. He works sixty to seventy hours a week, reading one to three hundred source books for a typical non-fiction book of his own. He teaches a class in imaginative fiction for the local Main Line School Night Association. When not traveling or writing, he devotes himself to reading, gardening, and classical recordings, with a little occasional sailing, riding and archery.
Printing History
Cover calligraphy by L. Sprague de Camp, Jacket design by Bill Desmond (credited to M. H. Keith—Donald Metcalfe Grant, William Henry Desmond, Robert Keith Wiener). Dustjacket printed by Bob Wiener on the M.I.T. Lecture Series Committee offset press.
Hardcover, 5.25" x 7.25", no ISBN, LC 81-168469, March 1972, $5.00
500 numbered copies signed by the author
There was also a very limited Finebound state, available by advance order only, where a number of copies of the regular state were rebound in leather. The special edition was a special dust wrapper on gold-foil wrapper (1-L. Sprague de Camp, 2-Don Grant, 3-Bill Desmond, 4-Bob Wiener, 5-NESFA Library, 6-Fred Isaacs, 7-Patrick Snead, maybe a few more).