INTRODUCTION
Christopher Stasheff
I grew up reading a bit of everything, as most of us do—a few biographies, a few mysteries, the occasional Western, some historical novels, the usual run of juvenile books, and, now and then, a science fiction book. SF was only part of my literary diet then. You see, I would finish my current book, but I wouldn't be able to get to the library until Monday night, and there were science fiction books and magazines here and there around the house. My father had been a steady reader of SF since before Hugo Gernsback—the only reason he didn't qualify for First Fandom was because they hadn't invented fandom yet. Mind you, he never read SF exclusively—he insisted on taking time out to read James Joyce, or James Michener, or Henry James, or . . .
No, now, wait a minute. It is not true that Dad only read books by people whose names were "James" In fact, he and Mom had both been English teachers officially, and remained so unofficially all their lives—still are, in fact; he can't help himself, has to read my manuscripts with a red pencil—so there were great works of literature in the bookcase downstairs, in the bookcase upstairs, on the end table . . . I think my mother began her weekly trips to the library just to cut down on the clutter. Anyway, a bored boy could always find a book to read, but there was just as good a chance of finding a Heinlein as a Costain. So I read my merry way through childhood and adolescence. For a while there, I celebrated Christmas every year by rereading Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. But I was scarcely an avid science fiction fan.
Then, one bored and rainy Tuesday during Easter vacation, I ran out of books to read. As usual, I started looking through the shelves in the living room—and I found a modest-looking volume with the title, The Incompleat Enchanter. Well, that looked interesting—especially since someone had apparently made a spelling mistake on "incomplete"—so I took it off to my room, lay down, and opened the first page.
Well. This was interesting. An eccentric psychologist, and a boss who had an idea about traveling to parallel universes.
Parallel universes?
Universes besides ours, where magic might really work? Hey, that was fascinating! And the idea that magic might work according to rules? Hypnotizing!!
Then Harold Shea hit the world of the Norse myths, and I was lost in the Fimbulwinter. It seemed only a short while later that the sound of Heimdall's horn was filling my ears, Ragnarok had begun, and Shea was back in his own universe.
I was hooked. From that time on, I've been a diehard SF reader.
Oh, mind you, I do still read the occasional non SF book. I try to read a little bit of everything Louis L'Amour, Thomas Pynchon, some Regency romances, Umberto Eco, John D. MacDonald—but ninety percent of what I read is science fiction and fantasy. All because of The Incompleat Enchanter.
"Dad!" I said. "This is really great!"
"Like that, do you?" he said, and pulled another book off the shelf. With a proud smile, he opened it to the title page, displayed it before my eyes—and there, to my amazement and incredulity, was a signature that definitely spelled out "L. Sprague de Camp."
"Dad! You got it autographed!"
"That I did." And my father went on to explain, with great delight, that he had actually talked with L. Sprague de Camp. His pedestal instantly grew three inches higher.
Maybe that was part of the magic—finding out that my own parents had actually talked with the fabled greatness of the author of so splendid a story. In the terms de Camp explained in the book, maybe it was the Law of Contagion—or maybe it was just that it suddenly made the author real to me. Up until that time, of course, I had thought of authors as being remote and mythical, sort of like Arthur and his knights. That autograph, and my parents' telling me about their acquaintanceship (yes, it turned out Mom had known L. Sprague and Catherine Crook de Camp, too), were my first hints that authors were human beings, and lived not on Olympus, but in Pennsylvania.
So I became a devout reader of science fiction—and of course, I read everything by de Camp that I could get my hands on.
Of all my reading, I enjoy science fantasy most, even though some eminent authorities in the field assure me that mixing science fiction and fantasy is almost impossible to do well. One of these authorities has written several science fantasies himself (which have influenced me almost as much as The Incompleat Enchanter), so I suppose he knows what he is talking about. I agree that it's hard to do well, so I've built my own writing career trying to do just that.
Of course, any time I start having difficulty, I just remember The Incompleat Enchanter.
As Dorothy Parker has assured us, when you learn to read, you'll want to write, and so I did. Of course, I didn't try to write science fiction—to do that, you had to know something about science, and not being a chemistry major or a physics major, I was sure I didn't.
Then, a year out of college, bored and lonely in a new town, I saw an ad for a contest in a science fiction magazine, and decided, Why not? All I had to lose was time, and I had too much of that hanging heavy on my hands, anyway. So what if it didn't work? Nobody but me would ever know.
But it did work, because I'd learned more than I knew.
I'd learned from L. Sprague de Camp, and Lester del Rey, and Robert Heinlein. I had learned from Hal Clement and Theodore Sturgeon and Fritz Leiber. I had learned from Frederik Pohl and Poul Anderson and Isaac Asimov. I had never met any of these illustrious gentlemen, of course—but I had read their books.
And it was The Incompleat Enchanter that had set me on the road to this fabled kingdom, that had opened the door to the magical realm.
So my new novel turned into science fantasy very quickly.
That was what I had the most fun with, you see—coming up with scientific explanations for magic, or trying to make science seem magical (which, for me, has never needed much trying, frankly). So I wrote a novel about a secret agent for democracy, who landed on a planet in our own universe, but on which magic seemed to work. The locals assumed his high-tech gadgets were magical, and decided he was a warlock, which he adamantly denied.
Of course, looking back on The Warlock In Spite of Himself now, I can see the resemblances between Harold Shea and my own Rod Gallowglass very easily—the young man who doesn't fit in, has a lower self-image than he deserves, and goes looking for a world in which he does fit. Both of them are also emissaries from our mundane universe to magical worlds, and both of them have to learn about magic on the job, and fast. The Incompleat Enchanter blended adventure, humor, and romance. I tried to do the same.
The resemblances are even stronger in Her Majesty's Wizard, where my hero, Matt Mantrell, has to learn how to work magic under fire, and gets it wrong as often as he gets it right.
An English professor once told me (and the rest of the class) that, in one sense, all modern American authors have been trying to rewrite Moby Dick. I suppose I've spent my whole career trying to rewrite The Incompleat Enchanter.
But I'm not alone.
There are at least half a dozen authors who have written variations on the magician who has to try to learn magic on the job, and whose spells misfire. This self-taught magus almost always works in a world in which magic operates according to clear, consistent rules that can be learned by anyone who is willing to work at it.
Pratt and de Camp started something—not just an anomalous book, not just a rare hybrid, but a new idea that has grown into a whole sub-genre. New writers keep joining it, new variations keep shooting off. It's alive and very healthy, and produces some of the most delightful, most whimsical, stories of our time.
But the one thing that very few of us manage to do, is to teach as we amuse—at least, not as well as Pratt and de Camp did. Harold Shea goes where no SF hero has gone before, and few have gone since—into the myriad worlds of classical literature. It was from the Harold Shea stories that I first learned of Spenser's Faerie Queene; it was "The Roaring Trumpet" that first made the world of Norse myth come alive for me. "Castle of Iron" introduced me to the Orlando Furioso, and "The Green Magician" showed me the wondrous world of Irish mythology.
We have tried to do the same, in this book. Each of the stories takes place in the universe of a famous epic, each a part of our cultural heritage. I have read them with delight, learning as I was entertained all over again.
Because, you see, when I found out there was a new Harold Shea project in the works, I just had to be part of it. The opportunity of actually writing a story about Harold Shea, is the stuff of dreams.
The dream has come true, for me, and Mr. de Camp has been gracious enough to allow me to write a story within his universe. I have enjoyed it immensely. I hope you will, too.