L. Sprague de Camp
| L. Sprague de Camp | |
|---|---|
L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp at Nolacon II in 1988
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| Born | Lyon Sprague de Camp November 27, 1907 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | November 6, 2000 (aged 92) Plano, Texas, U.S. |
| Pen name | Lyman R. Lyon (one story), J. Wellington Wells |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story author, essayist, historian |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1937–1996 |
| Genre | Science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, historical fiction, history |
Lyon Sprague de Camp (/ˌspreɪɡdəˈkæmp/; 27 November 1907 – 6 November 2000), better known as L. Sprague de Camp, was an American writer of science fiction, fantasy, non-fiction and biography. In a career spanning 60 years, he wrote over 100 books, including novels and works of non-fiction, including biographies of other fantasy authors. He was a major figure in science fiction during the genre's heyday in the 1930s and 1940s.
De Camp was born in New York City, one of three sons of Lyon de Camp, a businessman in real estate and lumber, and Emma Beatrice Sprague. His maternal grandfather was the accountant, banker, pioneering Volapükist and Civil War veteran Charles Ezra Sprague. De Camp once noted that he rarely used pen-names, "partly because my own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do."
De Camp began his education at the Trinity School in New York, then spent ten years attending the Snyder School in North Carolina, a military-style institution. His stay at the Snyder School was an attempt by his parents, who were heavy-handed disciplinarians, to cure him of intellectual arrogance and lack of discipline. He was awkward and thin, an ineffective fighter, and suffered from bullying by his classmates. His experiences at the school taught him to develop a detached, analytical style considered cold by all but his closest friends, though he could, like his father, be disarming and funny in social situations. He would later recall these challenging childhood experiences in the semi-autobiographical story, Judgment Day (1955).
An aeronautical engineer by profession, De Camp conducted his undergraduate studies at the California Institute of Technology (where his roommate was at one point noted rocket fuel scientist John Drury Clark), and earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in Aeronautical Engineering 1930. He earned his Master of Science degree in Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933. De Camp was also a surveyor and an expert in patents.
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