Lin Carter

• 1. The Army And The Typewriter

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  Linwood Vrooman Carter stood in the infantry during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953. He served as a soldier before he ever became a professional author. After his military service ended, he attended Columbia University and joined Leonie Adams's Poetry Workshop between 1953 and 1954. This period marked a shift from his early life in St. Petersburg, Florida, toward a career in writing. He worked as an advertising and publishers' copywriter from 1957 until 1969. During these years, he lived in Hollis, New York, while building a foundation for his future work. His transition from poetry to fiction began slowly but eventually led him to full-time writing.

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• 2. Six Books A Year

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  Carter produced an average of six books per year from 1965 to 1969. This pace defined his prolific output during those four years. His first published book appeared in March 1965 when Ace Books released The Wizard of Lemuria. That novel launched the Thongor the Barbarian series. He wrote only six novels featuring this character, yet Thongor later appeared in Marvel Comics's Creatures on the Loose for eight issues between 1973 and 1974. Other major series included Callisto and Zanthodon, which directly paid tribute to Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom and Pellucidar novels. Carter frequently cited his own writings within his non-fiction works. In Lankar of Callisto, the sixth novel in his sequence, he even made himself the protagonist.

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• 3. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

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  Carter served as editor for Ballantine Books from 1969 until 1974. During that time, he brought several obscure fantasy titles back into print under the Adult Fantasy line. Authors whose works he revived included Lord Dunsany, William Morris, Clark Ashton Smith, James Branch Cabell, Hope Mirrlees, and Evangeline Walton. David G. Hartwell praised the series for bringing nearly all adult fantasy stories worth reading into mass editions. He also helped new authors break into the field, such as Katherine Kurtz, Joy Chant, and Sanders Anne Laubenthal. The series played a key role in establishing fantasy as a popular genre. Carter edited numerous anthologies for Ballantine and other publishers during this period.

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• 4. Finishing Dead Men's Work

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  Carter wrote numerous stories set within the Cthulhu Mythos created by 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 still existing outside that volume. He also wrote two cycles of stories set in dreamlands paying tribute to Lord Dunsany fantasy. One cycle was named Ikranos from his fan days while the other was Simrana after he became a professional writer. His extensive body of Lovecraftian fiction remains a significant part of his legacy despite mixed critical reception regarding his originality.

  Carter resided in

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• 5. The Xothic Legend Cycle

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  East Orange, New Jersey, during his later years and drank heavily while smoking constantly. It was probably smoking that gave him oral cancer in 1985. Only his status as a Korean War veteran enabled him to receive extensive surgery. However, the treatment failed to cure the cancer and left him disfigured. The subsequent failure of an experimental prosthesis forced Carter to become a hermit. In 1987 he began to reappear in print with Horror Wears Blue and a regular column for Crypt of Cthulhu magazine. DAW published his latest fantasy Callipygia in February 1988. Despite these successes, Carter increased his alcohol intake until he became an

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• 6. Smoking And Silence

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  alcoholic.

  David Pringle's The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy remarked that Lin Carter specialized in derivative hackwork of no conspicuous merit. Yet it acknowledged he was enormously influential as an editor playing a key role in establishing fantasy as a popular genre. Peter Beagle faulted Carter's scholarship saying he got so many facts embarrassingly wrong that entire commentaries were essentially worthless. Carter held gatherings of writers under the name New Kalem Club attended by Robert M. Price, S.T. Joshi, Peter Cannon and others including occasionally Frank Belknap Long. His work remains controversial yet undeniably impactful on the genre he helped shape through editing and criticism.