Thank you for the recomendations Aaron!

I've not read any of Lin Carters stuff, but i picked up one of his Thongor books some years back because the cover intrigued me (and it was dirt cheap).

Seems that he is sort of a divisive author though with some vocal fans, and others not liking his stuff very much. I know he has had a lot of influence as an editor aswell which may be the reason why some people seem to dislike him.

Like i mentioned i've not read him, and i would not want to step on anyone's toes, but i'm always curious about sword&socery writers and the history of the genre.

I may have said this in another thread, but I think that the best thing Lin Carter did was his curating the Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint. He kept some really good books in print--and commissioned some awesome covers. I haven't read any of his fiction that I like all that much. The Thongor books are fun enough, but I think Lin's real talent was as an editor, not a writer (or biographer!).

Hollis, Queens!

Carter and de Camp both wrote nasty, hatchet job books "psychoanalyzing" much better writers - men they spent their entire careers ripping off.  That's tough for some people to forgive.  At least Carter was a decent editor (unlike de Camp, who was a total loss in my opinion).

I like the concept behind the Thogor stories, but as for the execution... well, as a writer, Carter was a pretty good editor.  In addition, calling anyone besides Conan "the mightiest sword and sorcery hero of them all" is a pretty brazen falsehood.

Last edited by Blackadder23 (3/31/2014 12:35 pm)

I must admit I liked the Thongor series as well.  I'm sure this will take me out of the running for preisdent or something.

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 it more than Thongor, who seems to exemplify the big, dumb barbarian stereotype that Conan often gets lumped into, mostly due to Ahhh-nold. 

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 too seriously.  (And, yeah, his efforts on behalf of the Adult Fantasy series was outstanding!)

Bowser
 

Never read any of Carter's stories but I'm indebted to him for getting Clarke Ashton Smith into print. I have Ballantine's edition of "Zothique" which I love.

Doctor_Rob wrote:

I’m not quite sure why de Camp gets so much flack. I’m not a huge literary person, so may be missing something. I thought The Tritonian Ring was a great romp, with solid characters, and a well-developed milieu.  It can’t all be bad, surely?

The flack I believe he gets is for "fixing" and "correcting" the works of REH, and also his armchair psychology of REH. He was also dismissive of REH's work, and when interviewed he gave the impression that he was lowering himself by working on Conan. That being said, it was his Conan project (the ACE paperbacks) that got so many of us into that famous barbarian, but I believe it was those Frazetta covers that inspired many of us to engage the stories, not de Camp's editing, revising, and insertion of pastiche materials. Overall, it may be a case that de Camp is being judged not by the merits of his own works, but by his attitudes and opinions, which should have no bearing on his fiction, like The Tritonian Ring. I think Tom Cruise is an absolute nut, but I still enjoy his movies, if you can appreciate the analogy.
 

While on the subject of Lin Carter, I have three books available for free to a good home. They are:
Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus,
Thongor at the End of Time, and,
Thongor in the City of Magicians.

If ya want 'em shoot me your postal address.