Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants

Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants: Essays on Literature, Film, and History is a 1996 essay collection by L. Sprague de Camp, published in hardcover by Borgo Press as no. 26 in the series I.O. Evans Studies in the Philosophy & Criticism of Literature.[1] The title essay "Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants" (retitled in this collection) was originally published in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact, in the issue for mid-December 1987.[2]

Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants: Essays on Literature, Film, and History

Dust-jacket for Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants: Essays on Literature, Film, and History
Author	L. Sprague de Camp
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Essays
Publisher	Borgo Press
Publication date	1996
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	143 pp
ISBN	0-89370-354-0
OCLC	32203134
Dewey Decimal	809.3/8766 20
LC Class	PN3435 .D4 1996

Summary

The book consists of thirteen pieces on various subjects, including writers H. P. Lovecraft (two essays), Robert E. Howard (also two essays), and Edgar Rice Burroughs, actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., silent movies, pseudohistory, pseudobibliographica, barbarians real and fictional, the Scopes Trial, the ancient tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, and the author himself.

Contents

• "Silent Specters, Spiders, and Sauropods" (from Starlog, iss. 109, Aug. 1986)
• "The Con Man from Baghdad" (originally titled "Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants) (from Analog Science Fiction and Fact, mid-Dec. 1987)
• "Three Thirds of a Hero" (poem, from Scribblings (1972)
• "Lovecraft: Failed Aristocrat" (from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Jan. 1975)
• "Conan, Illusion, and Reality" (from Ares, no. 2, May 1980)
• "Thoats, Tharks, and Thews" (from Starlog, v. 10, iss. 117, Apr. 1987)
• "Pseudohistory" (from Amra, v. 2, no. 70, Sep. 1981)
• "Books That Never Were" (from Scribblings (1972) and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 1972)
• "The Man who Invented R. and D."
• "Brachiating in the Family Tree" (from The Humanist, v. 49, iss. 2, Mar./Apr. 1989)
• "Lovecraft and the Aryans" (from Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975)
• "Howard and the Celts " (from Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975)
• "The Heroic Barbarian" (from Blond Barbarians and Noble Savages (1975)
• "Notes"
• "Index"

Reception

Critical response was mixed. R. D. Mullen, writing in Science Fiction Studies, called the pieces in it "generally amusing, and young people with find them informative."[3] G. Warlock Vance in Extrapolation felt de Camp's book "seemed to read like a rehash of his Literary Swordsmen & Sorcerers," and found it "a rehash of old ideas--and many of them de Camp's alone." He noted, however, that "[t]his collection does manage to compile an extraordinary amount of critical data into a finely honed tome. If the reader is a fan of genre fiction, this book details many of the events that helped to shape the field and make interest in such writing possible. From Almuric to Zorro, de Camp covers it all."[4]

Notes

1. Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (collection entry)
2. Rubber Dinosaurs and Wooden Elephants title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (essay entry)
3. Mullen, R. D. "Recent Books from Borgo Press." In Science Fiction Studies, v. 24, pt. 2 (no. 27), July 1997.
4. Vance, G. Warlock. "Reviews of Books." In Extrapolation, v. 38, no. 3, fall 1997, pages 240-241.