Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Twenty One: Fletcher Pratt

This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information. 

 

Fletcher Pratt 

We’ve met Pratt before, of course, in his collaboration with L Sprague DeCamp on the Harold Shea Compleat Enchanter series. He’s a New Yorker through and through, with a brief stint studying at the Sorbonne using insurance money from an apartment fire. He worked as a military analyst for the New York Post during WWII, and devised a set of wargaming rules for naval combat. 

The Pratt family inherited a mansion in New Jersey (nicknamed the Ipsy-Wipsy Institute) where Pratt would host weekend long parties for his writer friends (very Great Gatsby), some of whom lived there for a time. He is one of the founders of the Trap-Door Spiders writing group and a Civil War enthusiast. 

 

Only one title is suggested in the appendices for Pratt writing solo: Blue Star. 

 

Blue Star 

From the title, and the unimpressive “cover” for the e-book version, I thought that the titular Blue Star was going to be an actual star, either orbited by a fantasy world, or the basis for some SF. But actually, it’s not, and I will come back to what it is. 

 

There’s a framing device where a group of intellectuals are discussing alternative worlds, which made me think that this was going to be like the Harold Shea series where one or more of them devises a way to access these alternative worlds. But in fact, until we return to them at the end for the plenary, these people have nothing else to do with the main story, which switches to events in the otherworld location of Netznegon City in an otherwise un-named setting. 

 

There are two protagonists to the story – Lalette Asterhax, a young woman from an aristocratic family fallen on hard times, and Rodvard Bergelin, a clerk who is also a member of the revolutionary group the New Day. Lalette is one of a small number of women who possess the ability of “witchery”, and the Blue Star is a jewel that she owns. In a reverse of Andre Norton’s setting, witchery is only awoken by sexual experience, and Rodvard is tasked by his superiors in the revolutionary group to seduce Lalette and in so doing acquire the use of the Blue Star. For reasons not adequately explained, this allows the partner of the witch to read minds (not the witch herself), if they can see into another person’s eyes. Modern reading can’t but help to consider the heteronormative nature of all of this, and it might be interesting to re-examine one of these sex-based magic systems from an alternative viewpoint. It’s entirely possible that Sheri S Teper has done this already. But I digress. 

 

Lalette and Rodvard end up ensnared in the schemes of others, to their detriment, and both end up fleeing Netznegon City, but independently of each other. What follows are a series of picaresque adventures, with each of them fighting off sexual assault onboard a ship in individual episodes, Rodvard getting entangled in more court drama in the country of Sedard Vix, while Lalette gets tricked into what is essentially a religious brothel, before they reunite and return to where they started. There are various scheming nobles, religious minorities, distrusted foreigners, and various rogues en-route. 

 

Except that now the revolution has happened, and the story lingers in a setting that evokes The Terror, with petty bureaucrats very politely, but very coldly, eradicating the old guard. Eventually Lalette and Rodvard effect their escape from the entanglements in which they find themselves; Rodvard deciding that the cause he has espoused is not as noble as he thought, Lalette no longer wishing to be used as a pawn. The epilogue returns to our group of scholars who provide some amusing meta-text on the preceding – that the ending seems unlikely to bring our protagonists any lasting happiness (as they ride off into the sunset with very little money), and that there’s a heavy pre-occupation with sex. 

 

I liked the way Pratt writes with parentheses to describe the thought processes of our protagonists, and when Rodvard uses the Blue Star to read minds. The story itself is fairly slight, and little more than a series of incidents (not the first on this list to do so), and Pratt doesn’t do a very solid job of laying out the world-building in such a fashion that it’s clear where everything lies. It gets better as we go on, but sometimes it feels like so many things are laid out at the beginning without context that it can get a bit confusing – not as good as how Andre Norton so clearly lets the reader know where a certain nation lies, how it relates to the other nations, and why a particular site is strategically important. I was reading this with an eye to where the Pratt influences in the Harold Shea stories lie – they felt more in the tone of L Sprague de Camp’s writing style, so my guess would be that de Camp did the lion’s share of the writing, while Pratt was more of an ideas man. 

 

Inspirations and Influences 

I’m not seeing anything that was directly lifted from this book into the D&D game; there’s not even a magic item that sounds a bit like the Blue Star, although perhaps I should check the description of objects that grant ESP, maybe one of them is described with a blue gem [Edit from later Me: there are two items in the 1st Edition DMG that grant ESP. One is a potion, the other is the Medallion of ESP that is described as a simple disc. So, no. Side note, I’d now like to come up with an item known as the Medallion of Pawkh, for the cheesiness of it]. The only other “magic” thing in the setting is the “witchcraft” which is used just once, like a geas or a dominate person spell, the rest is politics and religion. Perhaps one could trace some elements of it in the Greyhawk setting – maybe the Great Kingdom? It’s not a setting I’m especially familiar with except through the bits that featured in the original Dungeon Masters Guide and some classic adventures.