1996 essay collection by L. Sprague de Camp
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]
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.
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]
