Lin Carter: Science Fiction Writer (Overview, and Review)

Lin Carter:
Science Fiction Writer
(Overview and Review)


Here was a man who lived to write, I mean, and I really mean, he lived to write, and did he write, yes indeed, he wrote about 115-books (plus three chapbooks), and his style was that of his hero writers such as Edger Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark A. Smith and L. Sprague de Camp. And he loved himself, so he put himself in his books, why not, if you don’t love yourself, who will? Not a bad group to have for his genre company.
In pure volume, he perhaps has out-written all of those writers combined, I just mentioned (I know ERB wrote about 80-books himself). Some folks would not agree to his quality of writings, but then if they liked the authors I just mentioned above, well, Carter can’t be too far off.
He died at 57-years old, had oral cancer for a while, got therapy, and got the cancer back, but now with alcoholism, yes he had the monkey on his back.
He attended one of the noble universities in the United States, Columbia, and was a war veteran of Korea, not a bad combination, rather good I’d say. He belonged to many a Science Fiction clubs, or groups, which seemed to keep him busy, and perhaps his wife. Born in 1930, died in 1988; actually, prior to his first book, in 1965, which was “The Wizard of Lemuria,” which he rewrote in 1969, a thicker book, with a longer title: In addition, he wrote three chapbooks prior, the third being in 1959, called “A Letter to Judith.”
Of his many books, he finished Howard’s tales on Conan, and in 1975, had a book of poetry released. I don’t want to judge this man on his writings, and there is a reason for that, and there has been many who have, negatively so, saying he was a copycat, and that he had dull plots, and so forth.
Pushing this all aside, I think the problem was, he didn’t care to be an original, he just wanted to jump into space and off he went, and if Burroughs or Howard or H.P. wanted to come along (in his mind) well, all the better.

Incidentally, to my understanding, he had 15,000 books in his library, that to me is a bookstore.