Lin Carter

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Lin Carter
Carter c. 1975
Born	Linwood Vrooman Carter (1930-06-09)June 9, 1930 St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
Died	February 7, 1988(1988-02-07) (aged 57) Montclair, New Jersey, USA
Occupation	Writer editor critic
Nationality	American
Education	Imaginary Worlds
Spouse	Noël Vreeland

Linwood Vrooman Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was an American author of

Carter was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy in his youth, and became broadly knowledgeable in both fields. He was also active in fandom.

Carter served in the United States Army (infantry,

In the 1970s Carter published one issue of his own fantasy fanzine Kadath, named after H. P. Lovecraft's fictional setting (see The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath). About 3,000 copies were printed; however the printer was in a dispute with the binder, who held the copies. While Carter paid the printer, the printer decamped into California. When Carter went to see the binder, he was told that the copies had been kept for a while, but then most had been thrown out. Carter believed that only about 30 copies of the issue survived, thus the magazine was scarcely circulated.^[5] It contained Carter's Cthulhu Mythos story "The City of Pillars" (pp. 22–25).

Carter resided in

In the last year before his death, he had begun to reappear in print with a new book in his Terra Magica series, a long-promised Prince Zarkon pulp hero pastiche, Horror Wears Blue, and a regular column for the magazine Crypt of Cthulhu.^[6] Despite these successes, Carter increased his alcohol intake, becoming an alcoholic. His cancer resurfaced, spreading to his throat and leading to his death in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1988.

Robert M. Price, the editor of Crypt of Cthulhu, who had published a Lin Carter special issue (Vol. 5, No 2, whole number 36, Yuletide 1985), was preparing a second all-Carter issue when Carter died. It was turned into a memorial issue (Vol. 7, No 4, whole number 54, Eastertide 1988). Two further issues of the magazine were devoted to Carter alone (see References below). Price was also appointed Carter's literary executor.

Writing career

A longtime science-fiction and fantasy fan, Carter first appeared in print with entertaining letters to Startling Stories and other

Early in his efforts to establish himself as a writer, Carter gained a mentor in L. Sprague de Camp, who critiqued his novel The Wizard of Lemuria in manuscript. The seventh novel Carter wrote, it was the first to find a publisher, appearing from Ace Books in March 1965.^[9] Due in large part to their later collaborations, mutual promotion of each other in print, joint membership in both the Trap Door Spiders and SAGA, and complementary scholarly efforts to document the history of fantasy, de Camp is the person with whom Carter is most closely associated as a writer. A falling-out in the last decade of Carter's life did not become generally known until after his death.

Carter was a prolific writer, producing an average of six books a year from 1965 to 1969.^[a] He also wrote a nearly monthly column, "Our Man in Fandom", in If, edited by Frederik Pohl,^[7] and was a major writer on ABC's original Spider-Man animated TV show during its fantasy-oriented second season in 1968–69.

Carter frequently cited his own writings in his non-fiction and almost always included at least one of his own pieces in each of the anthologies he edited. The most extreme instance of his penchant for self-promotion is in the sixth novel in his Callisto sequence, Lankar of Callisto, which features Carter himself as the protagonist.

Carter was not reluctant to attack organized religion in his books, notably in his unfinished epic World's End, in "Amalric the Man-God" (also unfinished), and in The Wizard of Zao. He portrayed religions as cruel and repressive, and had his heroes escape from their inquisitions.

In most of his fiction, Carter was consciously imitative of the themes, subjects and styles of authors he admired. He usually identified his models in the introductions or afterwords of his novels, as well as in the introductory notes to self-anthologized or collected short stories. His best-known works are his

Carter wrote numerous stories in the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. Many have been collected in The Xothic Legend Cycle: The Complete Mythos Fiction of Lin Carter, edited by Robert M. Price. Despite the title, there are many uncollected Mythos stories by Carter. See also Xothic legend cycle. For further info see Robert M. Price "The Statement of Lin Carter", Crypt of Cthulhu 1, No 2 (Yuletide 1981), 11–19.

Carter wrote two cycles of stories set in "dreamlands," paying tribute to the fantasy of Lord Dunsany, Ikranos, from his fan days, and Simrana, after he became a professional writer.

Carter also wrote the introduction to the book, Over the Hills and Far Away.

Unfinished projects

Carter left a number of projects unfinished. He regularly announced plans for future works that never came to fruition, even including some among lists of other works printed in the fronts of his books. His 1976 anthologies

Several of his series were abandoned due to lack of publisher or reader interest or to his deteriorating health. Among these are his "Thongor" series, to which he intended to add two books dealing with the hero's youth; only a scattering of short stories intended for the volumes appeared. His "Gondwane" epic, which he began with the final book and afterwards added several more covering the beginning of the saga, lacks its middle volumes, his publisher having canceled the series before he managed to fill the gap between. Similarly, his projected Atlantis trilogy was canceled after the first book (The Black Star), and his five-volume "Chronicles of Kylix" ended with three volumes published and parts of another (Amalric).

Another unfinished project was Carter's self-proclaimed magnum opus, an epic literary fantasy entitled Khymyrium, or, to give it its full title, Khymyrium: The City of the Hundred Kings, from the Coming of Aviathar the Lion to the Passing of Spheridion the Doomed. It was intended to take the genre in a new direction by resurrecting the fantastic medieval chronicle history of the sort exemplified by

Carter also spoke about publishing a magazine titled Yoh-Vombis, which he intended to consist of stories he would have published in his paperback Weird Tales series had he been permitted to continue editing it. As well as new fantastic stories, he intended to publish stories and verse by Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith; unpublished letters from Smith, H. P. Lovecraft; and art by Smith, Roy Krenkel, Mahlon Blaine, etc.^[13] However, this mooted magazine never eventuated.

Career as editor and critic

Carter was influential as a critic of contemporary fantasy and a pioneering historian of the genre. His book reviews and surveys of the year's best fantasy fiction appeared regularly in

His greatest influence in the field may have been as an editor for Ballantine Books from 1969 to 1974, when Carter brought several then obscure yet important books of fantasy back into print under the "Adult Fantasy" line.^[1] Authors whose works he revived included Dunsany, Morris, Smith, James Branch Cabell, Hope Mirrlees, and Evangeline Walton. David G. Hartwell praised the series, saying it brought "into mass editions nearly all the adult fantasy stories and novels worth reading."^[15] He also helped new authors break into the field, such as Katherine Kurtz, Joy Chant, and Sanders Anne Laubenthal.

Carter was a fantasy anthologist of note, editing a number of new anthologies of classic and contemporary fantasy for Ballantine and other publishers. He also edited several anthology series, including the Flashing Swords! series from 1973 to 1981, the first six volumes of The Year's Best Fantasy Stories for DAW Books from 1975 to 1980, and an anthology format revival of the classic fantasy magazine Weird Tales from 1981 to 1983.

Together with SAGA he sponsored the

Wildside Press began an extensive program returning much of Carter's fiction to print in 1999. All remain in print, and one original book was issued in 2012, collecting the short stories about Thongor. See the bibliography for Wildside reissues.

Awards

• Nova Award, 1972.^{[clarification needed]}

Bibliography

See also

• Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
• Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America
• Trap Door Spiders
• Black Widowers
• Gandalf Award

Notes

References

Sources

• Carter, Lin (1973).
  Imaginary Worlds: the Art of Fantasy. Ballantine Books
  .
• Servello, Stephen J. (2005). Apostle of Letters: The Life and Works of Lin Carter. Wild Cat Books.
• Crypt of Cthulhu magazine. No less than five issues of this Lovecraftian fanzine edited by Robert M. Price, all published in Upper Montclair, N.J., were devoted to Lin Carter as special issues:
  • No. 36 (v. 5, no. 2), Yuletide 1985
  • No. 54 (v. 7, no. 4), Eastertide 1988 [Lin Carter memorial issue, titled The Fishers from Outside; Carter died on Feb. 7, 1988, just as this issue had been typeset and laid out. The back cover carries an unsigned obituary]
  • No. 69 (v. 9, no. 2), Yuletide 1989
  • No. 70 (v. 9, no. 3), Candlemas 1990 [titled The Necronomicon: Book One: The Episodes]
  • No 95 (v.16, no 2) Eastertide 1997. Contains "Cthulhu and Co" (essay on Lovecraft) and "The Light in the East" (essay on the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn) both by Carter.

Further reading

• Linwood Vrooman Carter
  ." Dead Reckonings 28 (Fall 2020) Eds. Alex Houstoun and Michael J. Abolafia.

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Lin Carter.

• Lin Carter at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• The Lin Carter Literary Archive The Ohio State University Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection
• In Memoriam Lin Carter 1930-1988, a tribute site by Ken St. Andre
• Barbarians of Lemuria, a free role-playing game set in the world of Carter's Thongor series.
• tribute site displaying many Lin Carter book covers
• "Why Lin Carter's Name keeps Coming Up"^{[permanent dead link]} by David Bruce Bozarthl
• "My Life with Lin Carter" by Noel Vreeland Carter
• Information on Thongor of Lemuria as a character in Marvel Comics adaptations
• "An Unnatural History of Thongor's Lemuria" by Den Valdron
• Stephen J. Servello, "Lin Carter and Clark Ashton Smith"
• Lin Carter Papers at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University