Ghul wrote:

I could see how it could get lumped in with sci-fi. It's pretty much fantasy, but it has a lot of those "lost alien technology" elements that I enjoy. The Thongor book I have has a cover that features a sort of dragon chasing a spaceship, so it looks sci-fi. Actually, the ship on the cover doesn't look like the ship as described in the book, but it's still a decent concept. I read some of Carter's "Journey to the Center of the Earth" pastiche, and I enjoyed imore than Thongor, who seems to exemplify the big, dumb barbarian stereotype that Conan often gets lumped into, mostly due to Ahhh-nold. 

You have to realize that at the time the first few Thongor books appeared (late 1960s):
a) Fantasy as a genre hadn't really come into being fully -- it was always lumped in with science fiction, and
b) Because of the absolutely MASSIVE success of Tolkien, every publisher was scrambling to publish anything that could be considered "fantasy".

Thanks to that, we ended up with everything Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard ever wrote, a magnificent Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, a massive amount of Lovecraft and C. A. Smith, a BUNCH of great old stories from the pulps printed in anthologies that otherwise would have been lost, a BUNCH of new writers that we have now enjoyed for years, and two more things:

1.  The converting to "the cause" of fantasy ("sword & sorcery", "high fantasy", "sword & planet", whatever) many, many new young fans, and
2.  Unwittingly laying the groundwork for the entire Fantasy Role Playing Game genre.  No fantasy boom in publishing, no role playing games.

While Lin Carter's fiction is probably below average, it can be enjoyable and be a good source for ideas.  I have a lot and have never regretted buying it, reading it (some more than once), and collecting it.(Thongor, The Green Star, Jandar of Callisto, etc.).  There certainly was much worse being published at that time.

Give him a chance, just don't take his fiction t

Oh my God!  No updates for this fantastic dungeon in over a year and a half??  Seriously??

I'm no longer an active gamer (live in the country, no players available, maybe this will change when I retire).  I'm 62 and besides being very interested in megadungeons, I am also very interested in old pulp fiction.  A lot of these stories were collected in book form in the late '60s and early '70s, right when I was really getting into fiction (11 to 15 yrs old).  I've read all of Howard and Burroughs and most of Lovecraft, Smith, Merritt, Vance, Carter, Kuttner, Moore, Tolkien, etc., etc.  Appendix N held little surprises for me when the DMG came out my senior year in college.  By the time we were playing OD&D at the end of my sophomore year in college, my literary tastes had improved, but I never left my love of the pulps behind.

Jumping ahead 40-50 yrs, I now like to browse the net, reading blogs and buying some products that I find interesting.  Rappan Athuk, Barrowmaze, Stonehell, Dwimmermount, etc., etc.  I like to look for products for Swords & Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord because I'm still an OD&D, AD&D (both 1st & 2nd Ed.) kind of guy.  Never made the transition to 3rd edition or d20 or Pathfinder or 4th edition, etc.

So two days ago I once again put "megadungeon" into the slot on Google to see what would float to the top.  There were a few new finds where people were listing out their opinions on megadungeons and on one post Grodog posted quite a list of what he had played, what he had run and some that he wasn't sure of yet.  (I've read a lot of posts by Grodog and read a lot of his blog posts as well and I have a very high degree of respect for his opinions.)  So when he listed "Foolsgrave", which I had never heard mentioned before, I took notice.

A short Google search later and here I am.

This thread is a wonderful thread!   A love of maps led me to D&D in the first place way back when, so by the time I got thru the first page of posts on this