Solomon's Stone
When our home burned down in the Camp Fire of 2018, amongst the countless possessions we lost were hundreds and hundreds of books. I still had my ancient paperback editions of everything by Isaac Asimov, Michael Moorcock, and the original Ballantine releases of Lord of the Rings. That doesn’t begin to touch upon the old hardcovers, art books, rare editions, and books personally signed to me.
One of the books I’d acquired was something I read as a kid that left a strong and lasting impression on me.
It was Solomon’s Stone by L. Sprague de Camp.
The story was first published in magazine form in 1942, and eventually published as a book in 1957. I was reading my way through every bit of science fiction I could find at the library, so I’m guessing I would have read it when I was somewhere between ten and twelve years old.
But that was a loooong time ago and I’d forgotten nearly everything about the story except that it had made a big impression. The only thing I remembered is that it introduced me to the concept of astral projection. That made me curious to revisit the book to find out why it had such an impact.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to reading the copy of Solomon’s Stone that I’d tracked down and purchased before the fire. A few weeks ago, I decided it was time to find it again. I managed to snag a 1957 first edition of the book version in nice condition.
Going back and rereading novels that I haven’t read since I was a kid doesn’t always work out. I devoured everything by Asimov back then, but when I recently reread one of those books, I was appalled by how bad it was. Bad writing, bad characterization (especially of women). Even taking into account how long ago it was written, it was bad. It put me off rereading anything else by Asimov.
Because of that experience, I was ready to be disappointed when I began reading Solomon’s Stone as an adult.
I was in luck. De Camp is a better writer than Asimov. Yes, the book is dated, but it was an entertaining read and I can see why it grabbed me the way it did. The writing is tongue-in-cheek, full of dry humor, and the story is a romp and a lark, not meant to be taken seriously. I’m pretty sure that much of the book’s humor and innuendo went right over my head as a kid.
The story is about Prosper Nash, an ordinary man, a CPA, whose friends decide to summon a demon, not really expecting it to work. To their dismay, it does work and the demon takes over Prosper’s body, sending his soul to the astral plane.
He finds himself in the body of a French cavalier, a dashing swordsman, because that was his favorite fantasy. Everyone he encounters is an astral projection of someone’s favorite fantasy self from the mundane world. He meets up with the manifestations of some of his friends. One of them is a cowboy, another is a magician a la Merlin, while another is a sultan. There are Roman legionnaires and Vikings and a wild variety of imagined personalities. De Sprague humorously has an army that consists entirely of generals and officers because no one on the mundane world fantasizes about being a private, so the one and only Private is the one in charge of the entire army.
There are warring factions and Prosper is continuously on the run from one situation to another. He does good deeds and helps others, which pays off for him in the end. All he wants to do is get back to the mundane plane, kick out the demon, and get his body back. He joins up with Alice, an adventurous socialite, the opposite of the Alice he knows in the mundane world. They rather instantly fall in love, which is one of the most contrived parts of the story, but typical of the time.
To get home, Prosper has to steal Solomon’s Stone from Tukiphat, a powerful, magical being. Eventually, after many adventures and reversals, Prosper gets the stone, but sacrifices his own chance to use it by having Alice use it to save herself from certain death. He then reaches an agreement with Tukiphat who sends Prosper back his body, but Alice has to return with the stone. At the end of the story, Prosper takes all his friend’s books on magic, so that he can find a way to be reunited with Alice.
All of this was, as I said, a silly lark, clever and inventive, and generally fun, but the ending drove the adult me crazy. The Alice he met on the astral plane was how the Alice he knows on the mundane plane secretly wished she was, so why doesn’t he help the Alice that is there to achieve that part of herself? I mean, it’s the same woman. She’s right there. I guess it never occurred to de Camp. The mundane Alice was just, y’know, mundane and not worth considering.
I can understand in retrospect why the book sunk its hooks into me. It was more fantasy than sf, which was new to me. It was pure escapism at time when I desperately wanted to escape my mundane life as a girl in a midwestern town in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when girls were restricted, constrained, and demanded to conform. I was already a freak by reading comics, sf, and fantasy. The fantasy of the astral plane would have appealed tremendously to me.
There was one unexpected shock that happened while I was rereading Solomon’s Stone. First, I need to provide some context.
In 1986, I created and wrote a comic book series called The Sisterhood of Steel. My goal was to write about more realistic warrior-women, how they would organize themselves, their culture and beliefs, seen through the eyes of a young cadet becoming a full Sister and going out into the world to serve the Sisterhood as a warrior.
The most dangerous enemies of the Sisterhood are seafaring slavers. I called them the Slavers of Giaour, or Giaourans. I have no idea where the word came from. I thought I simply made it up.
So you can imagine how astounded I was to be reading Solomon’s Stone and suddenly the sultan character uses the word “giaour”. From context, I would have gotten that it was an insult, though the actual meaning wasn’t clear.
I sat there stunned. Did I actually remember some random word from decades before, a word I didn’t even understand? Did my subconscious mind dredge that up from Solomon’s Stone?
I had something available to me that I didn’t have when I first read the book – the internet. According to the net, “The Giaour” is a poem by Lord Byron, and it’s an archaic, derogatory Turkish word for an infidel or non-believer, especially a Christian. I’m betting that’s where de Camp got the word from, but I’ve never read a word of Lord Byron. I can’t see another explanation. I must have pulled it from Solomon’s Stone. The brain works in mysterious ways
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