L. Sprague de Camp, one of the top writers of the Golden Age of Science Fiction (and still going strong!), was a great influence on me as an SF writer. Over the years I've encouraged Jim Baen to bring out new editions of some of Sprague's best work.
One of the pieces was "The Undesired Princess," a 1942 lead novel from John W. Campbell's legendary fantasy magazine Unknown Worlds. While some of the stories that appeared in Unknown/Unknown Worlds were pretty darned grim, the magazine's keynote was intensely logical fantasy with a lighter touch than, say, stories in Weird Tales. "The Undesired Princess" could stand as the paradigm for the "typical Unknown story."
The trouble with the piece is it's only 40,000 words long – too short for modern book publication. Jim said he'd republish the de Camp if I'd write a novelet in the same style to bind in with it.
I wrote "The Enchanted Bunny."