The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales
Cover of The Reluctant Shaman
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| Author | L. Sprague de Camp |
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| Cover artist | Ralph Brillhart |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy short stories |
| Publisher | Pyramid Books |
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Publication date
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1970 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 190 pp |
The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales is a collection of short stories by science fiction and fantasy author L. Sprague de Camp, first published in paperback by Pyramid Books in November 1970. An E-book edition was published by Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint on September 29, 2011 as part of a general release of de Camp's works in electronic form. The pieces were originally published between 1939 and 1958 in the magazines Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unknown, and Fantastic Universe. The collection has also been translated into French and German.
The book contains short fantasies by the author, most of them with contemporary settings, although the final piece is one of his "Pusadian" tales set in an antediluvian world patterned after Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age.
Everett F. Bleiler praised the collection for its "well-handled humor" and "particularly interesting" backgrounds, notably the Indian lore in the title story and "the workings of a lumber yard" in "The Hardwood Pile." He considered the best stories to be "The Hardwood Pile" and "Nothing in the Rules."
The characters of Virgil Hathaway and Henri Michod from "The Reluctant Shaman" and "The Hardwood Pile", set in the fictional town of Gahato in upstate New York, were much later reused by de Camp in two of his tales of W. Wilson Newbury, "The Huns" (1978) and "Darius" (1977).
The anthology placed eleventh in the 1971 Locus Poll Award for Best Anthology/Collection.
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