On August 12, 1939, de Camp married Catherine Crook, with whom he collaborated on science fiction and nonfiction beginning in the 1960s. His first book Inventions and Their Management resulted and was published in July 1937. He was Principal of the School of Inventing and Patenting when he resigned in 1937. De Camp transferred to the Scranton, PA division. in Hoboken, N.J., which was taken over by The International Correspondence Schools. His first job was with the Inventors Foundation, Inc. De Camp was also a surveyor and an expert in patents. He earned his Master of Science degree in Engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1933.

Īn aeronautical engineer by profession, De Camp conducted his undergraduate studies at the California Institute of Technology (where his roommate was at one point noted rocket fuel scientist John Drury Clark), and earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Caltech in Aeronautical Engineering 1930. He would later recall these challenging childhood experiences in the semi-autobiographical story, Judgment Day (1955). His experiences at the school taught him to develop a detached, analytical style considered cold by all but his closest friends, though he could, like his father, be disarming and funny in social situations. He was awkward and thin, an ineffective fighter, and suffered from bullying by his classmates. His stay at the Snyder School was an attempt by his parents, who were heavy-handed disciplinarians, to cure him of intellectual arrogance and lack of discipline. De Camp once noted that he rarely used pen-names, 'partly because my own true name sounds more like a pseudonym than most pseudonyms do.' ĭe Camp began his education at the Trinity School in New York, then spent ten years attending the Snyder School in North Carolina, a military-style institution.

His maternal grandfather was the accountant, banker, pioneering Volapükist and Civil War veteran Charles Ezra Sprague. 2 Role in coining the terms 'extraterrestrial' and 'E.T.'ĭe Camp was born in New York City, one of three sons of Lyon de Camp, a businessman in real estate and lumber, and Emma Beatrice Sprague.

Land of Unreason by L. Sprague de Camp