De Camp previously wrote about the actual struggle between science and creationism in The Great Monkey Trial (1968), a non-fiction account of the 1925 test case against Tennessee's Butler Act, which made the teaching of human evolution in that state illegal [REF].
His portrayal of the parental permissiveness and juvenile delinquency that disturb Marko in Lann echoes previous criticisms made in his 1957 short story "Let's Have Fun." .