The Incomplete Enchanter

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The Incomplete Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Pyramid Books, 1960
The Incomplete Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Pyramid Books, 1960

The Incomplete Enchanter is a collection of two classic fantasy short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, the first volume in their Harold Shea series. It was first published in hardcover by Henry Holt and Company in 1941, and in paperback by Pyramid Books in 1960. It has been reprinted by a number of other publishers since its first appearance, and has more recently been combined with later books in the series in the omnibus editions The Compleat Enchanter (1975) and The Complete Compleat Enchanter (1989). It has also been published in Dutch. The pieces were originally published in the magazine Unknown in the issues for May and August, 1940.

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. In the stories collected as The Incomplete Enchanter, the authors' protagonist Harold Shea visits two such worlds, that of Norse mythology and that of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene.

Contents:

  • "The Roaring Trumpet"
  • "The Mathematics of Magic"
Preceded by:
none
Harold Shea Series
The Incomplete Enchanter
Succeeded by:
The Castle of Iron