ABOUT THE AUTHORS
L. Sprague de Camp, author or coauthor of over 80 books, has written fantasy (The Tritonian Ring), science fiction (The Hostage of Zir and The Great Fetish), popularizations of science (The Ancient Engineers and Citadels of Mystery) and the biography of H. P. Lovecraft. He is now at work on the life of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, to whose saga he has contributed many tales. Educated at the California Institute of Technology, he has been a patent expert and served as a lieutenant-commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve before settling down to a career as a free-lance writer. He now makes his home with his wife Catherine in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Fletcher Pratt (1897–1956) was a connoisseur of heroic fantasy before that term was invented. He read Norse sagas in the original and greatly admired Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros. His own efforts in this genre produced The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star. Born on an Indian reservation, he became a prizefighter in the flyweight class before entering Hobart College in Geneva, N.Y. Early in his career he worked for Hugo Gernsback translating European science fiction novels; later, as a writer living in New York City, he collaborated with de Camp on fantasy stories and made his reputation with a popular history of the Civil War, Ordeal by Fire.