Harold Shea (fictional series)

The "Harold Shea" Stories is a name given to a series of five science fantasy stories by the collaborative team of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt and to its later continuation by de Camp alone, Christopher Stasheff, Holly Lisle, John Maddox Roberts, Roland J. Green, Frieda A. Murray, and Tom Wham. De Camp and Stasheff collectively oversaw the continuations. The series is also known as the "Enchanter" series, the "Incomplete Enchanter series" after the first collection of them, or the "Compleat Enchanter" series.

In the original stories psychologist Harold Shea and his colleagues Reed Chalmers, Walter Bayard, and Vaclav Polacek (Votsy), travel to various parallel worlds where ancient myths and legends are reality. In the course of their travels other characters are added to the main cast, notably Belphebe and Florimel, who become the wives of Shea and Chalmers, and Pete Brodsky, a policeman who is accidentally swept up into the chaos. In the later continuations the most notable addition to the cast is Voglinda, the young daughter of Shea and Belphebe.

The original series

The protagonists utilize a system of symbolic logic to project themselves into the worlds they visit, but it is an inexact science, and they miss their target realities as often as they hit them. For example, in the first story, "The Roaring Trumpet," Shea intends to visit the world of Irish Mythology, and instead ends up in Norse mythology. Most of the worlds visited have systems of physics different from ours, usually magical, which the heroes devote a considerable amount of effort to learning and applying. Much humor is drawn both from the culture shock of their encounters and from the reality that they usually don't understand the local systems well enough to be able to predict the actual effects of the spells they attempt.

Much of the series' attraction stems from the interaction of the psychologists' logical, rationalistic viewpoints with the wildly counterintuitive physics of the worlds they visit. Their attitudes provide something of a decontructionist look at the basic rationales of these worlds, hitherto unexamined either by their inhabitants or even their original creators. Essentially, they allow the reader to view these worlds from a fresh viewpoint. The "worlds" so examined include not only the Norse world of "The Roaring Trumpet," but those of Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene" in "The Mathematics of Magic," Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" (with a brief stop in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan") in "The Castle of Iron," the "Kalevala" in "The Wall of Serpents," and finally (at last), Irish mythology in "The Green Magician."

With "The Green Magician" the original collaboration ended, Pratt's early death precluding any additional entries. A final planned story set in the world of Persian mythology was never written, nor was a projected response to L. Ron Hubbard's misuse of their hero in his novella "The Case of the Friendly Corpse" (1941). (De Camp would finally address the latter issue in "Sir Harold and the Gnome King".)

The second series

De Camp was reluctant to continue the series on his own, feeling that the collaboration with Pratt had a flavor impossible for either of them to duplicate alone. When he finally did revive the series in company with younger authors nearly forty years later this impression was seemingly borne out; while not without interest, his own solo contributions to the second series exhibit a wryer, more cynical view of the worlds toured, and the protagonists' problematic use of magic is abandoned. His interest appears to have shifted to debunking the less credible aspects of the universes visited, rather than taking these as a given and extrapolating how the from them the fantasy worlds' physical laws, as in the previous sequence. On the other hand, some of the new authors made credible efforts to duplicate de Camp and Pratt's original achievement, exploring fresh venues where their heroes once again have to learn the world's fundamental magical rules from the ground up. These younger authors arguably do a better job of capturing the exuberance and verve of the first series. Holly Lisle ("Knight and the Enemy"), John Maddox Roberts ("Arms and the Enchanter") and Tom Wham ("Harold Shakespeare") are particularly adept at recreating the original formula.

The impulse for the continuation appears to have been de Camp's desire to tie up the main loose end from the original series, in which Walter Bayard had been left stranded in the world of Irish myth, and to resolve the unaddressed complication introduced by Hubbard. Both of these goals were accomplished in "Sir Harold and the Gnome King" (1990). When the decision was made to continue the series further the story was revised slightly to reconcile it with the other new stories, but the fit is somewhat awkward.

Once the loose ends are resolved, most of the action in the second sequence involves Shea and Chalmers' quest across several universes to rescue Florimel, who has been kidnapped by the malevolent enchanter Malambroso. After Florimel is finally recovered a similar effort must be made to recover Shea and Belphebe's daughter Voglinda, likewise seized by the unrepentant Malambroso. A final tale sends Shea and Belephebe on an unrelated adventure precipitated by the foolishness of Shea's colleague Polacek.

Milieus encountered in the second series include the worlds of Irish myth and the "Orlando Furioso" (again) in "Professor Harold and the Trustees," L. Ron Hubbard's setting from "The Case of the Friendly Corpse" and L. Frank Baum's land of Oz in "Sir Harold and the Gnome King," the classical Chinese epic novel "Journey to the West" in "Sir Harold and the Monkey King," the romantic fantasies of Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote" (with the unique twist of its being "Quixote's" version of reality rather than Cervantes') in "Knight and the Enemy," Virgil's Graeco-Roman epic the "Aeneid" in "Arms and the Enchanter," the old Russian "Tale of Igor's Campaign" in "Enchanter Kiev," Bhavabhuti's "Baital Pachisi" (or "Vikram and the Vampire"), a proto-"Arabian Nights" collection of Indian tales, in "Sir Harold and the Hindu King," Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" in "Sir Harold of Zodanga," and William Shakespeare's "The Tempest" in "Harold Shakespeare."

There exists one additional contribution to the series; "Return to Xanadu" by Lawrence Watt-Evans, which revisits the world of "Kubla Khan" and transfers a minor character appearing therein to that of "The Arabian Nights" by the agency of an unnamed magician who appears to be intended to represent L. Sprague de Camp himself. "Return to Xanadu" was first published in "" edited by Harry Turtledove and published by Baen Books in 2005.

Publication

The original publication of the first three Pratt and DeCamp collaborations ("Roaring Trumpet," "Mathematics of Magic," and "The Castle of Iron") was in "Unknown Magazine" during its brief run. The remaining two appeared in "Beyond Fantasy Magazine" and "Fantasy Magazine" a few years later. "Sir Harold and the Gnome King" first appeared in the World Fantasy Convention program book in 1990 and as a chapbook the following year. It was later revised and appeared with the remainder of the later continuations in regular trade books.

Bibliography

The original stories

#"The Roaring Trumpet" (May 1940) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt)
#"The Mathematics of Magic" (Aug. 1940) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt)
#"The Castle of Iron" (Apr. 1941, expanded to novel-length as "The Castle of Iron", 1950) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt)
#"The Wall of Serpents" (1953) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt)
#"The Green Magician" (1954) (L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt)

The later stories

#"Professor Harold and the Trustees" (1992) (Christopher Stasheff)
#"Sir Harold and the Gnome King" (1990) (L. Sprague de Camp)
#"Sir Harold and the Monkey King" (1992) (Christopher Stasheff)
#"Knight and the Enemy" (1992) (Holly Lisle, from an outline by L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff)
#"Arms and the Enchanter" (1992) (John Maddox Roberts, from an outline by L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff)
#"Enchanter Kiev" (1995) (Roland J. Green & Frieda A. Murray)
#"Sir Harold and the Hindu King" (1995) (Christopher Stasheff)
#"Sir Harold of Zodanga" (1995) (L. Sprague de Camp)
#"Harold Shakespeare" (1995) (Tom Wham)
#"Return to Xanadu" (2005) (Lawrence Watt-Evans)

Collected editions

#"The Incomplete Enchanter" (1941) (L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt), includes: "The Roaring Trumpet" and "The Mathematics of Magic"
#"The Castle of Iron" (1950) (L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt), a novel-length expansion of the original story
#"Wall of Serpents" (1960) (L. Sprague DeCamp and Fletcher Pratt), includes: "The Wall of Serpents" and "The Green Magician"
#"The Enchanter Reborn" (1992) (L. Sprague DeCamp and Christopher Stasheff), includes: "Professor Harold and the Trustees," "Sir Harold and the Gnome King," "Sir Harold and the Monkey King," "Knight and the Enemy," and "Arms and the Enchanter"
#"The Exotic Enchanter" (1995) (L. Sprague DeCamp and Christopher Stasheff), includes: "Enchanter Kiev," "Sir Harold and the Hindu King," "Sir Harold of Zodanga," and "Harold Shakespeare"

"The Incomplete Enchanter" and "The Castle of Iron" have also been issued together as "The Compleat Enchanter" (1975); "Wall of Serpents" has also been issued under the title "The Enchanter Completed" (1980); all three volumes of the original series have also been issued together as "The Complete Compleat Enchanter" (1989). The original tales and de Camp's additions from the 1990s were issued together as "" (2007).

External links

* " [http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/dani/022.htm Belated Reviews #22: De Camp, Pratt, and the Enchanter] " - review of the series by Dani Zweig