- The Compleat Enchanter
Infobox Book |
name = The Compleat Enchanter
title_orig =
translator =
image_caption = first edition of " The Compleat Enchanter"
author =L. Sprague de Camp andFletcher Pratt
illustrator =
cover_artist = D.K. Stone
country =United States
language = English
series = Harold Shea
genre =Fantasy novel
publisher = Doubleday
release_date = 1975
english_release_date =
media_type = Print (Hardback)
pages = 341 pp
isbn = NA
preceded_by =
followed_by =Wall of Serpents "The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea" is an omnibus collection of three classic
fantasy stories byscience fiction andfantasy authorsL. Sprague de Camp andFletcher Pratt , gathering material previously published in two volumes as "The Incomplete Enchanter " (1941) and "The Castle of Iron " (1950), the first two books in their Harold Shea series, with the essay "Fletcher and I," de Camp's paean to his deceased collaborator. The collection was first published in hardcover byNelson Doubleday in1975 as an offering for itsScience Fiction Book Club , and was reissued in paperback byDel Rey Books in1976 . Minus the essay, it has more recently been combined with "Wall of Serpents " (1960), the third book of the series in the omnibus edition "The Complete Compleat Enchanter " (1989). This book had been left out of "The Compleat Enchanter" due to "considerations of space and ... contractual considerations." (Afterword, p. 338) The stories in the collection were originally published in the magazine "Unknown" in the issues for May and August, 1940 and April, 1941.The Harold Shea stories are parallel world tales in which universes where magic works coexist with our own, and in which those based on the mythologies, legends, and literary fantasies of our world and can be reached by aligning one's mind to them by a system of symbolic logic. Psychologist Harold Shea and his colleagues Reed Chalmers, Walter Bayard, and Vaclav Polacek (Votsy), travel to several such worlds, joined in the course of their adventures by Belphebe and Florimel of Faerie, who become the wives of Shea and Chalmers, and Pete Brodsky, a policeman who is accidentally swept up into the chaos. The three stories collected in "The Compleat Enchanter" explore the worlds of
Norse mythology in "The Roaring Trumpet,"Edmund Spenser 's "The Faerie Queene " in "The Mathematics of Magic," andLudovico Ariosto 's "Orlando Furioso " (with a brief stop inSamuel Taylor Coleridge 's "Kubla Khan ") in "The Castle of Iron."Contents
*"
The Roaring Trumpet "
*"The Mathematics of Magic "
*"The Castle of Iron "
*"Afterword: Fletcher and I"References
*cite book | last=Laughlin | first=Charlotte | coauthors=Daniel J. H. Levack | title=De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography | location=San Francisco | publisher=Underwood/Miller | pages=33 | date=1983
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