Lin Carter

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Linwood Vrooman Carter (June 9, 1930 - February 7, 1988) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. After serving in Korea, he attended Columbia University. He was a copywriter for some years before writing full-time. He was married during part of his writing career, but the marriage eventually failed.

As an author, he was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers the Black Widowers. Carter himself was the model for the Mario Gonzalo character. He was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose work he anthologized in the Flashing Swords! series. Carter is most closely associated with fellow author L. Sprague de Camp, who served as a mentor and collaborator and was a fellow member of both the Trap Door Spiders and SAGA.

A chain smoker, Carter developed cancer in the mouth in later life and had to endure disfiguring surgery to have it removed. Never really eradicated, the disease subsequently spread to his throat, leading to his death in 1988.

Contents 1 Carter as author 2 Carter as editor and critic 3 Posthumous revival 4 Bibliography 4.1 Novels 4.1.1 Callisto 4.1.2 The Chronicles of Kylix 4.1.3 Gondwane 4.1.4 The Green Star 4.1.5 Hautley Quicksilver 4.1.6 The History of the Great Imperium 4.1.7 The Mysteries of Mars 4.1.8 Terra Magica 4.1.9 Thongor 4.1.10 Zanthodon 4.1.11 Zarkon-Lord of the Unknown 4.1.12 Other works 4.2 Collections 4.3 Collaborations 4.4 Non-fiction 4.5 Edited 5 External link

[edit] Carter as author

Carter is best known for planetary romances and heroic fantasy in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard. His earliest published novel, The Wizard of Lemuria, first of the sword and sorcery "Thongor the Barbarian" series, combines both influences. His best known series, the "Callisto" and "Zanthondon" books, are direct tributes to Burroughs' Barsoom series and Pellucidar novels, respectively. With L. Sprague de Camp, he compiled several books of Howard's Conan the Barbarian tales; finishing and extending many of them, and also writing pastiche novels and short stories.

Other works of Carter's pay homage to the styles of contemporary pulp magazine authors or their precursors, including Lord Dunsany and H. P. Lovecraft (in various short stories), Clark Ashton Smith (in his "Green Star" novels), Leigh Brackett (in his "Mysteries of Mars" series) and Kenneth Robeson (in his "Prince Zarkon" books). Later in his career he assimulated influences from mythology and fairy tales, and even branched out briefly into pornographic fantasy.

Carter claimed to be working on an epic literary fantasy entitled Khymyrium. At least three excerpts were published as separate stories ("Azlon" and "The Mantichore" in 1969 and "The Sword of Power" in 1971); additional information on the work appeared in Imaginary Worlds in 1973. The complete novel never appeared, although Carter continued to make claims for its excellence throughout his lifetime.

Khymyrium was just one of his unfinished projects, several of his ambitious series having been abandoned due to lack of publisher or reader interest or to his deteriorating health. He regularly announced plans for future works that never came to fruition.

For instance, he intended to add two books to his Thongor series dealing with his hero's youth, but only a scattering of short stories intended for the volumes appeared. He began his Gondwane epic with the final volume, afterwards adding several covering the beginning of the saga, but his publisher cancelled the series before he managed to fill the gap between. Similarly, his projected Atlantis trilogy was cancelled after the first book. His five-volume Chronicles of Kylix ended with three volumes published and parts of another. A number of his stand-alone books contained obvious hooks for sequels that were never written.

[edit] Carter as editor and critic

While his fiction was often derivative, Carter was influential as a pioneering historian of fantasy, whose early studies of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings) and H.P. Lovecraft (Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos) were followed up by the wide-ranging Imaginary Worlds, a study tracing the emergence and development of modern fantasy from the late nineteenth century novels of William Morris through the 1970s. A tendency toward self-promotion in his non-fiction does not detract from its importance.

Carter was also a fantasy anthologist of note (the Flashing Swords series), and, as an editor for Ballantine Books, brought several obscure yet important books of fantasy back into print under the "Adult Fantasy" line, including works by Dunsany, Morris, Smith, James Branch Cabell, Hope Mirrlees, and Evangeline Walton, as well as helping new authors break into the field, such as Katherine Kurtz and Joy Chant. He also edited a number of new anthologies of classic and contemporary fantasy. Later he went on to edit the first six volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy Stories for DAW Books.

His book reviews and surveys of the year's best fantasy fiction appeared regularly in Castle of Frankenstein, continuing after that magazine's 1975 demise in The Year's Best Fantasy Stories, an anthology series edited by Carter from 1975-1980. He also edited a revival of the classic fantasy magazine Weird Tales, also as an anthology series, from 1981-1983.

[edit] Posthumous revival

Wildside Press began an extensive program returning much of Carter's fiction to print in 1999.

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Novels

[edit] Callisto

In this series, U.S. soldier and helicopter pilot Jonathan Dark crashes in Cambodia near the ruins of an ancient city. Exploring the city at night, he discovers a well-like structure at the center that transports him to Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter. There, he has to contend with monstrous creatures, savage insect men, barbarian hordes, sky pirates in flying ships, and the dangerous Mind Wizards of Kuur while seeking to rescue the beautiful princess Darloona and win her heart.

1. Jandar of Callisto (1972)
2. Black Legion of Callisto (1972)
3. Sky Pirates of Callisto (1973)
4. Mad Empress of Callisto (1975)
5. Mind Wizards of Callisto (1975)
6. Lankar of Callisto (1975)
7. Ylana of Callisto (1977)
8. Renegade of Callisto (1978)

• Callisto Volume 1 (2000, reprints Jandar & Black Legion)

[edit] The Chronicles of Kylix

• The Quest of the Kadji (1971)
• "The Higher Heresies of Oolimar" (1973)
• "The Curious Custom of the Turjan Seraad" (1976)
• The Wizard of Zao (1978)
• Kellory the Warlock (1984)

[edit] Gondwane

• The Warrior of World's End (1974)
• The Enchantress of World's End (1975)
• The Immortal of World's End (1976)
• The Barbarian of World's End (1977)
• The Pirate of World's End (1978)
• Giant of World's End (1969)

[edit] The Green Star

• Under the Green Star (1972)
• When the Green Star Calls (1973)
• By the Light of the Green Star (1974)
• As the Green Star Rises (1975)
• In the Green Star's Glow (1976)

[edit] Hautley Quicksilver

• The Thief of Thoth (1968)
• The Purloined Planet (1969)

[edit] The History of the Great Imperium

• Outworlder (1971)
• The Man Without a Planet (1966)
• Star Rogue (1970)

[edit] The Mysteries of Mars

• The Valley Where Time Stood Still (1974)
• The City Outside the World (1977)
• Down to a Sunless Sea (1984)
• The Man Who Loved Mars (1973)

[edit] Terra Magica

• Kesrick (1982)
• Dragonrouge: An Adult Fantasy (1984)
• Mandrigardo (1987)
• Callipygia (1988)

[edit] Thongor

1. The Wizard of Lemuria (1965; expanded as Thongor and The Wizard of Lemuria (1969))
2. Thongor of Lemuria (1966; expanded as Thongor and the Dragon City (1970))
3. Thongor Against the Gods (1967)
4. Thongor in the City of Magicians (1968)
5. Thongor at the End of Time (1968)
6. Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus (1970)

[edit] Zanthodon

1. Journey to the Underground World (1979)
2. Zanthodon (1980)
3. Hurok of the Stone Age (1981)
4. Darya of the Bronze Age (1981)
5. Eric of Zanthodon (1982)

[edit] Zarkon-Lord of the Unknown

• The Nemesis of Evil (1975)
• Invisible Death (1975)
• The Volcano Ogre (1976)
• The Earth-Shaker (1982)
• Horror Wears Blue (1987)

[edit] Other works

• The Black Star (1973)
• The Flame of Iridar (1967)
• Found Wanting (1985)
• Lost World of Time (1969)
• The Star Magicians (1966)
• Tara of the Twilight (1979)
• Time War (1974)
• Tower at the Edge of Time (1968)
• Tower of the Medusa (1969)

[edit] Collections

• Beyond the Gates of Dream (1969)
• Dreams from R'lyeh (Arkham, 1975) [poetry]
• Lost Worlds (1980)
• Xothic: The Selected Fiction of Lin Carter (1997)

[edit] Collaborations

• Conan (1967) (with Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp)
• Destination Saturn (1967) (with Donald Wollheim writing as David Grinnell)
• King Kull (1967) (Robert E. Howard) [= Kull]
• Conan of the Isles (1968) (with L. Sprague de Camp)
• Conan the Wanderer (1968) (with Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp) [O/N+ Conan the Adventurer (Howard & de Camp) + Conan the Buccaneer (Carter & de Camp);= The Conan Chronicles 2 (1990)]
• Conan of Cimmeria (1969) (with Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp) [O/2N+ Conan the Freebooter (Howard & de Camp);= The Conan Chronicles (1989)]
• Conan the Buccaneer (1971) (with L. Sprague de Camp)
• Conan of Aquilonia (1977) (with L. Sprague de Camp)
• Conan the Swordsman (1978) (with L. Sprgue de Camp and Bjorn Nyberg)
• Conan the Liberator (1979) (with L. Sprague de Camp)
• Conan the Barbarian (1982) (with L. Sprague de Camp)
• Sagas of Conan (2004) (with L. Sprgue de Camp and Bjorn Nyberg)

[edit] Non-fiction

• Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings (1969) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (1972) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Imaginary Worlds: the Art of Fantasy (1973) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Middle-earth: The World of Tolkien Illustrated (text by Carter, paintings by Joan Wyatt, 1977)

[edit] Edited

• Discoveries in Fantasy (1972) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Dragons, Elves and Heroes (1969) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Flashing Swords! #1 (1973)
• Flashing Swords! #2 (1973)
• Flashing Swords! #3: Warriors and Wizards (1976)
• Flashing Swords! #4: Barbarians and Black Magicians (1977)
• Flashing Swords! #5: Demons and Daggers (1977)
• Golden Cities, Far (1970) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy I (1972) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy II (1973) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Kingdoms of Sorcery (1976)
• The Magic of Atlantis (1970)
• New Worlds for Old (1971) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Realms of Wizardry (1976)
• The Spawn of Cthulhu (1971) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• The Young Magicians (1969) (Ballantine Adult Fantasy)
• Weird Tales: 1 (1981)
• Weird Tales: 2 (1981)
• Weird Tales: 3 (1981)
• Weird Tales: 4 (1983)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories (1975)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 2 (1976)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 3 (1977)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 4 (1978)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 5 (1980)
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 6 (1980)

[edit] External link

• Lin Carter at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database