L. Sprague De Camp??

[Naphtali]

Many years ago I owned a science fiction book whose dust jacket art was amusing. Not only do I no longer have the book, I cannot remember sufficient detail to find another copy, more for its dust jacket than its text.

1. I think the author was L. Sprague De Camp.

2. The hard cover book pertained to time travel and how actions that changed the extreme distant past may or may not affect changes in the returned-to future by the time traveler.

3. Dust jacket art was a cartoon of a "great white hunter" in caricatured safari garb, holding a huge double-barreled long gun. The hunter was posed, I believe, standing with one foot atop a trophy triceratops (yup, a dinosaur).

4. I cannot remember whether book was composed of one story thread, or each chapter was capable of standing alone.

I would appreciate details of the book's identity. I would be ecstatic if someone who has the book could scan the front cover of its dust jacket at higher than standard resolution and color bit depth and furnish the graphic to me.

 

[djd]

There was a collection of short stories called A Gun for a Dinosaur - with a short story of that name. I've not seen the cover you describe but it fits the bill

 

[Benzadmiral]

Napthali, the story you're talking about is "A Gun for Dinosaur," written by Mr. De Camp in the Fifties, and reprinted plenty of times since then. The Wikipedia article says there was a De Camp collection called "A Gun for Dinosaur" in 1963, and that he wrote more stories about the short story's time-traveling safari guide, Rivers.

This will give you titles without giving away the plot, if you want to reread it: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?45891

I met Mr. De Camp and his wife Catherine at an SF convention in 1987 or '88. Charming people.

 

[Naphtali]

Found it.

The Best of L. Sprague De Camp

 

[Oldsarge]

Mr. De Camp was one of the greats along with Heinlein, Simak and Clarke.