The Fallible Fiend (Signet/New American Library, February 1973). Cover uncredited

This is another in my series of looks at fairly obscure SF from the ’70s and ’80s. In this case, I rescued a book that I had bought used decades ago from the chaos of my bookshelves. Most of the other writers I’ve discussed so far have been somewhat forgotten (or were never really known at all) but L. Sprague de Camp is an SFWA Grand Master, and a writer I and many others remember with great affection.

De Camp (1907-2000) began publishing SF in 1937 with “The Isolingual,” and was from the beginning a popular and prolific writer. He wrote both Fantasy and Science Fiction, though by the end of his long career the bulk of his work was Fantasy. His preferred mode was lightly cynical humor — this imbued his SF such as the Viagens Interplanetarias series, and his Fantasy beginning with his Incomplete Enchanter stories written with Fletcher Pratt.

[Click the images for public service versions.]

The first three novels in Viagens Interplanetarias, called the Krishna Series
in this edition: The Queen of Zamba, The Hand of Zei, and The Hostage of Zir
(Ace Books, May, August & November 1982). Covers by Paul Alexander

Mentioning his collaborator Pratt hints at another notable feature of his oeuvre — he was one of the most enthusiastic collaborators in SF history. He collaborated extensively with Pratt, and with Lin Carter, and with his wife Catherine Crook de Camp. (His collaborations with Carter were mostly Conan stories, often billed as posthumous collaborations with Robert E. Howard.) His first novel was a collaboration with H. L. Gold, and another early novel was a collaboration with P. Schuyler Miller.

De Camp also wrote a great deal of nonfiction. Lands Beyond, a collaboration with Willy Ley, won the 1954 International Fantasy Award for nonfiction. The Science Fiction Handbook (written with his wife) was an important early “How To” book about writing and marketing SF. He wrote biographies of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, as well as a lot of popular science, and an autobiography, Time and Chance.

All that is wonderful, and a portrait of a worthy Grand Master. But what about the book at hand?

The Fallible Fiend (Del Rey Books, May 1981). Cover by Bill Schmidt

The Fallible Fiend (1973) is one of five novels sharing a setting: the isthmus or peninsula of Novaria, which joins the two major continents in what seems a parallel world to ours, in which magic works. Novaria has multiple different polities, and there are other such nations on the two continents — all of which seem to bear some relationship to historical regions or states in our history. The primary purpose of all this is satirical commentary. The Fallible Fiend, though the fourth novel to be published, is the earliest in interior chronology (though there is an earlier short story.)

It’s also different in that the title character comes from a separate plane, the Twelfth Plane, and is a literal man-eating demon. He also serves as an outsider narrator who can (and does) comment satirically on the doings of people in the so-called Prime Plane. His name is Zdim, and he is doing a sort of public service for his demonic state — allowing himself to be summoned for a period of one year (in exchange for iron, which is rare on the Twelfth Plane.)

Inside cover of The Fallible Fiend (1973 Signet edition)

The novel, then, tells of Zdim’s experiences over that period of service. He begins working for Doctor Maldivius, who had summoned him. After an unfortunate event (eating the Doctor’s apprentice) he ends up being sold to Bagardo, who runs a circus. This doesn’t end well, though he befriends an ape-man who is a slave.

He is transferred to a rich widow, Madame Roska. And before long he finds himself traveling again, to the mountains to recruit help in the defense against a group of cannibals, the Paaluans, who are invading. Much of the rest of the novel involves the progress of that war, which is recounted in the same cynical but amusing manner as what went before.

It’s a light novel, and often enough enjoyable, but it never really rises beyond that. I didn’t mind reading it, but I was never enthralled. And so I was surprised to learn that it won the 1973 British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (which meant anything shorter than a novel.)

Fantastic, December 1972 and February 1973, containing
The Fallible Fiend. Covers by Douglas Chaffee and Michael Kaluta

My surprise was based partly on quality — surely there were better Fantasy short stories that year! — and partly on length — The Fallible Fiend is definitely a novel, albeit a fairly short one.

Some suggested that the award was to the original serialization, in Fantastic for December 1972 and February 1973, but as far as I can tell that version is pretty much the same as the book version — definitely novel length, at least by the Hugo and Nebula definitions. (Over 40,000 words.)

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Rich Horton’s last article for us was a review of Vinyl Wonderland by Mark Rigney. His website is Strange at Ecbatan. Rich has written over 200 articles for Black Gate, see them all here.