{"product_id":"lest-darkness-fall-and-timeless-l-sprague-de-camp-9781649732040","title":"Lest Darkness Fall and Timeless Tales Told in Tribute","description":"\u003cp\u003eFew books have shaped a genre the way Lest Darkness Fall has shaped science fiction. L. Sprague de Camp's novel helped establish alternate history as a subgenre, and the masters of the field have named it a favorite ever since.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRome, 1938. The archaeologist Martin Padway is standing near the Pantheon when lightning cracks - and drops him into the Rome of 535, a city sliding toward the Dark Ages.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePadway decides to stop it. He starts small: a copper still, a loan from a Syrian banker whose clerks he wins over by teaching them Arabic numerals and double-entry bookkeeping. Then a printing press. A newspaper. A semaphore telegraph strung across Italy. Then a deposed Gothic king who makes him quaestor - and Belisarius, the finest general in Byzantium, marching to take Rome back.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThematically close to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, but built on real scholarship. De Camp was a serious student of history and the author of several popular works on the subject. He knew how sixth-century Rome actually worked, down to its banking, and he joined that knowledge to an extraordinary imagination to produce one of the finest time-travel novels ever written.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe book's influence shows in the writers who answered it. The original tribute volume reprinted three stories - by Frederik Pohl, David Drake, and S. M. Stirling - written over forty-three years. This edition adds two brand-new stories by Harry Turtledove and David Weber, plus an afterword by Alexei and Cory Panshin, adapted from their Hugo-winning The World Beyond the Hill.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e L. Sprague De Camp,Harry Turtledove,S. M. Stirling\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 164973204X\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781649732040\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Phoenix Pick\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/28\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 344\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.01lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.77d","brand":"L. Sprague De Camp","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49084356854015,"sku":"9781649732040","price":22.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/lest-darkness-fall-and-timeless-l-sprague-de-camp-9781649732040","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}