Lin Carter
Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft and Grail Undwin. In the 1970s he was editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which introduced readers to many overlooked classics of the fantasy genre.
Life
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, and then attended Columbia University and took part in Leonie Adams's Poetry Workshop. He was an advertising and publishers' copywriter from 1957 until 1969, when he took up writing full-time. He was also an editorial consultant. During much of his writing career he lived in Hollis, New York.
Carter was married twice, first to Judith Ellen Hershkovitz and second to Noel Vreeland.
Carter was a member of the Trap Door Spiders, an all-male literary banqueting club which served as the basis of Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery-solvers, the Black Widowers. Carter was the model for Asimov's character Mario Gonzalo. Carter was also a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose work he anthologized in the Flashing Swords! series.
In the 1970s Carter published one issue of his own fantasy fanzine Kadath, named after H. P. Lovecraft's fictional setting. 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 to 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. It contained Carter's Cthulhu Mythos story "The City of Pillars".
Carter resided in East Orange, New Jersey, in his later years, and drank and smoked heavily. 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, it failed to cure the cancer and left him disfigured.
Carter held gatherings of writers under the aegis of 'the New Kalem Club' - meetings which were attended by Robert M. Price, S. T. Joshi, Peter Cannon and others, including occasionally Frank Belknap Long.
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.
Writing career
A longtime science fiction and fantasy fan, Carter first appeared in print with letters to Startling Stories and other pulp magazines in 1943 and again in the late 1940s. He issued two volumes of fantasy verse, Sandalwood and Jade, technically his first book, and Galleon of Dream His first professional publication was the short story "Masters of the Metropolis", co-written with Randall Garrett, and published by Anthony Boucher in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1957. Another early collaborative story, "The Slitherer from the Slime", by Carter, as "H. P. Lowcraft", with Dave Foley, is a parody of H. P. Lovecraft. The story "Uncollected Works" was a finalist for the annual Nebula Award for Best Short Story, from the SF and fantasy writers, the only time Carter was a runner-up for a major award.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. 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. He also wrote a nearly monthly column, "Our Man in Fandom", in If, edited by Frederik Pohl, 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, including in his unfinished World's End, in "Amalric the Man-God", 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 sword and planet and sword and sorcery novels in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, and James Branch Cabell. His first published book, The Wizard of Lemuria, first of the "Thongor the Barbarian" series, combines both influences. Although he wrote only six Thongor novels, the character appeared in Marvel Comics's Creatures on the Loose for an eight-issue run in 1973–74 and was often optioned for films, although none has been produced. His other major series, the "Callisto" and "Zanthodon" books, are direct tributes to Burroughs' Barsoom series and Pellucidar novels, respectively. Because of his imitative tendencies, Carter is not always regarded with critical favour. David Pringle's The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy, for instance, remarks that "As a writer Lin Carter specialized in derivative hackwork of no conspicuous merit..." though acknowledging "he was enormously influential as an editor, playing a key role in the establishment of fantasy as a popular genre."
In other works Carter paid homage to the styles of contemporary pulp magazine authors or their precursors. Some of these, together with Carter's models, include his "Simrana" stories, his horror stories, his "Green Star" novels, his "Mysteries of Mars" series, and his "Prince Zarkon" books. Later in his career Carter assimilated influences from mythology and fairy tales, and even branched out briefly into pornographic fantasy.
Posthumous collaborations with Howard and Smith
Carter also produced what he referred to as "posthumous collaborations" with deceased authors, such as Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. He completed a number of Howard's unfinished tales of Kull and Conan the Barbarian, the latter often in collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp. He also collaborated with de Camp on a number of pastiche novels and short stories featuring Conan.The "posthumous collaborations" with Smith were of a different order, usually completely new stories built around title ideas or short fragments found among Smith's notes and jottings. A number of these tales feature Smith's invented book of forbidden lore, the Book of Eibon. Some of them also overlap as pastiches of H.P. Lovecraft's work by utilising elements of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. These stories are uncollected. For further information see Steve Behrends, "The Carter-Smith Collaborations" in Robert M. Price. The Horror of it All: Encrusted Gems from the Crypt of Cthulhu. See also Lin Carter deities.Pastiches of H. P. Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany
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, 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.
Later life and death
Carter was in declining health for several years in the 1980s. He suffered from cancer from a heavy smoking habit, which led to facial disfigurement. The subsequent failure of an experimental prosthesis forced Carter to become a hermit. But in 1987 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 Crypt of Cthulhu. DAW published his latest fantasy, Callipygia, in Feb 1988. 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. The cancer was not the cause of Carter's death, however. He had developed emphysema, and experienced severe breathing problems the day he died. Rushed to a hospital, he went into cardiac arrest, was revived by doctors, but subsequently had a second, fatal heart attack.
Robert M. Price, named in Carter's will as his literary executor and the editor of Crypt of Cthulhu, who had published a Lin Carter special issue, was about to send an all-Lin Carter issue of Crypt of Cthulhu to press when word of the writer's death came. It was immediately turned into a memorial issue. The memorial issue was Crypt of Cthulhu Vol. 7, No 4, whole number 54,. Two further issues of the magazine were devoted to Carter alone.