{"id":1059,"date":"2007-01-25T08:23:23","date_gmt":"2007-01-25T08:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/01\/25\/l-sprague-de-camp-lest-darknes\/"},"modified":"2007-01-25T08:23:23","modified_gmt":"2007-01-25T08:23:23","slug":"l-sprague-de-camp-lest-darknes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/01\/25\/l-sprague-de-camp-lest-darknes\/","title":{"rendered":"L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall [Library of Babel]"},"content":{"rendered":"

I picked this out of the to-be-read pile because it’s specifically name-checked in the “SF and the History of Science”<\/a> panel description on my Boskone schedule. I figure it’s pretty likely to get brought up, and since we had a copy lying around, I might as well actually read it so as to be able to say something intelligent about it.<\/p>\n

Lest Darkness Fall<\/cite><\/strong> is the story of archeology student Martin Padway, who gets struck by lightning, and wakes up to find himself in sixth-century Rome. Armed with a slightly improbable level of knowledge regarding ancient history, society, and culture, he sets out to prevent the collapse of civilization by introducing modern ideas and technologies.<\/p>\n

I was a little surprised to learn just how old this is– the original copyright is 1939. It’s been around for a long time, and is much beloved and often referenced by SF fans.<\/p>\n

It’s also one of those “Golden Age” classics that really needs to be read at the age of twelve.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong– it’s a fun story in many ways, and has some clever bits. It’s really not much of a novel, though. There isn’t the slightest hint of an attempt at psychological depth or realism, the characters are all paper-thin (and many of the supporting characters struggle to reach two-dimensionality), and the plot is little more than a sequence of thinly-connected events and anecdotes.<\/p>\n

Of course, it’s not trying to be Literary, but it’s still a little hard for me to take seriously. It’s a gadget story at its core, and the only real point to it seems to be letting de Camp have some fun thinking about changing history in a really shallow way. The changes Padway makes are relatively minor, and all come off with a kind of Gernsback Continuum smoothness– there are no major negative side effects from the new technologies he invents, nothing sets in motion a chain of events leading to a really surprising result, and the token opposition provided by the locals always crumbles within a page or two.<\/p>\n

It’s sort of fun in the trashy way that really old SF tends to be, but I don’t really think it offers deep insight into much of anything. I’ll get a few more jokes by virtue of having read this, but other than that, it’s not that spectacular. But then, I’m coming to it twnety-three years too late…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I picked this out of the to-be-read pile because it’s specifically name-checked in the “SF and the History of Science” panel description on my Boskone schedule. I figure it’s pretty likely to get brought up, and since we had a copy lying around, I might as well actually read it so as to be able… Continue reading L. Sprague de Camp, Lest Darkness Fall [Library of Babel]<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-booklog","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}