The Book of Ptath

In 1939, World War II had just begun and the Nazis were advancing on all fronts. Fantasy, as a literature, was a rare and not well understood form, mostly confined to short works of horror or drawn from mythology. In that year, the very successful science fiction editor of Astounding Stories magazine, John W. Campbell, launched a sister publication Unknown (later Unknown Worlds). He encouraged his top authors such as Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, L. Sprague de Camp, Jack WIlliamson, Theodore S…