Adventures in Fiction: Fletcher Pratt By Jeff Goad The Appendix N is a list of prolific authors of science fiction and fantasy. But Fletcher Pratt is not one of them, at least not in comparison to most of the authors on the list. He primarily wrote historical nonfiction about the Civil War, Napoleon, naval history, rockets, and World War II. So why is Fletcher Pratt listed in the Appendix N and why does he have the coveted “et al” listed after The Blue Star? Well, digging a bit deeper into his writings and his career, it is no surprise that Gary Gygax was smitten with this fellow…. Fletcher Pratt was a bearded, bespectacled, pipe-smoking intellectual who raised marmosets in his spare time. And if you don’t know what a marmoset looks like then I highly encourage you to pause reading this to do a quick Google Image search of these adorable mini-monkeys. I promise that you won’t regret it. (left to right) Fletcher Pratt, Christopher Morely, and Rex Stout. Between his New York birth in 1897 and his New Jersey death in 1956, he lived a fascinating 59 years. He was a self-educated college drop-out who worked as a librarian, a translator, and an author. He married a fashion artist and together they created their own elite New York literary circles. They hosted meetings of the Hydra Club, a social group of science fiction writers that included Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey. He was a regular lecturer at the Middlebury College Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference where Isaac Asimov was one of his students. He co-founded the Trap Door Spiders, a males-only literary and arguing society that would invite a guest over for each meeting and the members would demand the guest to justify their existence and occasionally sent the guest home in tears. Regular members included Isaac Asimov, Lin Carter, L. Sprague de Camp, and Lester del Rey. L. Ron Hubbard was one of their more famous guests. He also acted as the president of the Civil War Round Table and has since been memorialized with the “Fletcher Pratt Award.” It is presented by the Civil War Round Table to the author or editor of the best Civil War-themed non-fiction book of the year. One very notable thing worth mentioning about Fletcher Pratt is that he is also...