Disposable Lit Reviews

Baen Books, 1973/1992
201 pp.
ISBN 0-671-72128-3

Buy it from Amazon.com or
eBay or Half.com

Just about everything that L. Sprague de Camp has written falls very clearly into the definition on which this book review department is loosely based: It is disposable, i.e., not terribly memorable. (And some of it, like his interpolations and extensions of Robert E. Howard’s work, I dearly wish were already forgotten.) He was, if you want to phrase it in positive language, a master of escapism, and while his prose skills and historical knowledge allowed him to craft fiction which was clever, distracting, and entertaining, it rarely ended up being very engaging. It’s the speculative-fiction analogue to cavalier poetry or broadcast television.

The Fallible Fiend, originally published in a magazine in 1972 and 1973, is a goodly example of his craft. There is a diverting idea, a fair amount of colorful action, some good humor, and essentially no reason to remember it once the back cover is closed. But around here, we make a point of memorializing the unremarkable.

The viewpoint character is one Zdim, a demon from the Twelfth Plane from our own. He is, of course, of fearful aspect: larger than a man, scaly, with catfish-like tendrils and superhuman strength. And like most of his kind, he’s actually a very rational and calm creature. The demons would be happy on the whole to avoid all contact with the headstrong and emotionally-immature human race, except for the fact that their own plane of residence is very short on iron, so their society mandates a rotating lottery of temporary indentured servitude to earthly sorcerers in exchange for iron ingots for the good of all.

Zdim, reluctantly taking his place as a summoned servant, is a bookish scholar among his own people, given to unimaginative literalmindedness. And once in the service of the irritable wizard Maldivius in our world (or rather, in a high fantasy realm vaguely resembling our own southern Europe), he proves to have trouble interpreting the commands and desires of these flighty, passionate human Prime Planers.

Because of disasters caused by Zdim’s literal interpretation of instructions (after all, when Maldivius said, “Catch and eat ANYONE who enters my chambers before I return,” he made no exception for his hapless and undisciplined apprentice), Zdim finds his contract bounced from master to master, from the wizard Maldivius to the circus proprietor Bagardo, to the wealthy widow Roska in the city of entrepeneurial Syndics. He further travels their world to recruit a defending army to save the Syndics froma cannibal attack, chosen for the task because of his good-natured obedience to contract as much as for his nigh-invulnerability. It’s something less than a full-fledged quest to give us a travelogue of the fantasy world, but then, this particular fantasy world is something less than a fully realized milieu.

The humor over Zdim’s social gaffes and steadfast misinterpretations of instruction are hit-and-miss; the entire narrative is in first person, which makes it hard to maintain the conceit that this character doesn’t understand so many of the social unspokens around him. And de Camp overindulges in archaisms in dialogue; between “clept” and “chirurgeon” and “coynte” and “gaol”, there’s no other conclusion to reach but that he was consciously showing off.

It’s a book that falls solidly into the “time-passer” category, perfect for airplane trips and waiting rooms, or other settings in which you don’t feel the need to bring your full faculties to bear on what passes in front of your eyes.

Nathan Shumate