Before the Lord of the Rings trilogy (okay, it wasn’t really a trilogy…at least until legend became myth) there arose three tales that it could be argued (???) became precursors to later commonplace scifi and fantasy trilogies. How does this (arguably) trilogy hold up? We report, you decide.
Once upon a time in a galaxy (oh, make that a world) far, far away (1940s and ‘50s U.S.) there was Harold de Shea and the new science of paraphysics (dreamed up by Harold’s mentor and fellow psychologist Reed Chalmers). His (and later Chalmers) adventures exploring some of the infinity of possible worlds were chronicled by L. Spague De Camp and Fletcher Pratt in what Wikipdeia curiously says is two works but I have at least three:
1) 1940-1941s the incomplete enchanter
2) 1941s The Castle of Iron and
3) 1953s Wall Of Serpents.
How did this concept of paraphysics arise? Funny you should ask. Chalmers hypothesized that:
“…there is an infinity of possible worlds, and if the senses can be attuned to receive a different series of impressions, we should infallibly find ourselves living in a different world.”
His initial clues were abetted by the patients in the Garaden Hospital. He speculated that the “dements”, especially paranoiacs, experienced a partial and involuntary shift to these alternate worlds. Harold, being a rather impulsive guy, tries out the professor’s theories and finds himself in first the world of Norse Mythology and then, particularly hilariously, in the world of Spenser’s Faerie Queene- where Shea’s efforts at using magic in that world frequently misfire (he does foil the Blatant Beast by reciting The Ballad of Eskimo Nell and wins his lady love, the athletic Belphebe).
In The Castle of Iron happily married Harold and Belphebe of Faerie are living happily back in the U.S.A. [NOT back in the U.S.S.R.!) when she disappears. While being
Questioned by the police his colleagues at the Garaden Institute and a police officer are transported to Xanadu. Later Shea and a colleague are pulled into Ludovico Ariosto's epic, the Orlando Furioso. It turns out these turns are caused by Reed Chalmers (remember him) He had been attempting to retrieve Shea alone, but had erroneously pulled in Belphebe first, and then misplaced his three colleagues and the police officer before at last getting things sort of right. But, as Ariosto's epic was a source text for Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Belphebe's mind has become confused, reverting in accord with the setting to that of her Furioso prototype, Belphagor and no longer remembers Harold.
The third of this (trilogy?) is Wall Of Serpents. Harold needs to bring back Pete the Cop (remember he’s having a great time in Xanadu) to Ohio to avoid prosecution for kidnapping an officer of the law. But, oops, they end up in the Kaleval, there are lots of angry warriors, the titled Wall of Serpents, and then it gets complicated…with dozens of Harolds and bellhops coming and going…Don’t ask.
So is this a legitimate trilogy? LotR was really one story, broken into 3 books and 6 parts for reasons of selling copies at a more reasonable 1950s price. The three books above are fairly coherently connected but are also really a number of separate alternate worlds clearly more then three. Given the times they were written, I think they hold up rather well. There are some fairly strong female figures, granted with some elements of stereotypes (the female knight in the incomplete enchanter for example). Tellingly, his girlfriend in the first work is a nurse, not one of the psychologists.
It is also of some interest, and possibly telling, that these works were essentially written at the same time LotR was by J.R.R. Tolkien (the late 30s into the 1950s).