Lin Carter (1930-1988) blazed a trail in fantasy literary criticism, and for that we owe him a debt. Today on what would have been his 90th birthday I celebrate his pioneering efforts as a historian and guide, thank him for treating fantastic material with respect and enthusiasm—and also offer some critique I think he might have welcomed.

Carter was one of the very first authors to develop a cohesive history of fantasy, and discuss its intended aims and effects. Prior to Carter very few were doing this type of work in any formal way, save in the pages of the fanzine Amra or the odd essay or introduction. Post-Carter, everything changed.

Carter’s efforts in fantastic literary analysis began with a pair of works on J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft: Tolkien: A Look Behind “The Lord of the Rings” (1969) and Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (1972). He also offered a number of helpful introductions to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, and columns and letters in the pages of Amra. But it was his Imaginary Worlds (1973), published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, that broke new ground and opened the floodgates to broader fantasy criticism. Imaginary Worlds covered authors as diverse as James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, C.S. Lewis, and Andre Norton, and did it well, with verve and a unifying cohesion, spurring a discussion that lasted decades and reached the halls of academia. As Brian Stableford states in his introduction to The A-Z of Fantasy Literature, following Imaginary Worlds “the territory thus claimed and staked out was swiftly colonized by academic writers.” In short order works like Colin Manlove’s Modern Fantasy (1975), L. Sprague de Camp’s Literary Swordsman and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (1976), Diane Waggoner’s The Hills of Faraway: A Guide to Fantasy (1978), and Fantasy Literature: A Core Collection and Reference Guide (Marshall Tymn, Kenneth Zahorski, Robert Boyer, 1979), followed Carter’s lead.

Included in Imaginary Worlds is the first real published analysis of sword-and-sorcery fiction. Here Carter provides a helpful roadmap for the subgenre: Its origins in the tales of Robert E. Howard, its subsequent flowering in the works of Henry Kuttner, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson and others, and the coining of the term sword-and-sorcery in the pages of Amra and Ancalagon. It also covers the subgenre’s revival spurred by the J.R.R. Tolkien and Edgar Rice Burroughs booms of the early 1960s, followed by the tremendous commercial success of the de Camp and Carter-edited Lancer Conan Saga in the mid-60s.

But Carter at the same time also introduced some rather limiting theories on sword-and-sorcery and heroic fantasy. Carter used the term “gnomon” to describe his fiction and that of his sword-and-sorcery contemporaries. A “gnomon” was, according to Carter “something added on to a pre-existing something which enlarges it without distorting or altering its essential proportions, shape or contour.” Carter drew very tight lines around sword-and-sorcery and saw nothing wrong with producing Howard and Burroughs pastiche; he was merely writing that which he loved, in a genre that pleased him greatly. “Sword & Sorcery is the smallest, tightest literary genre I can think of, and one that is completely derivative. We who write it all work within the narrow tradition whose parameters were set down by Howard in the 1930s.” (Imaginary Worlds, p. 145-147).

To be fair it’s no wonder Carter struggled to find his way in the considerable shadow of Howard and Burroughs and felt it hard to expand on what they did. Author Michael Drout in Rings, Swords, and Monsters described the plight of authors working after The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien as suffering from an “anxiety of influence.” Tolkien had created such an influential, popular piece of art that ignoring him was impossible. Authors had no choice but to react to Tolkien, Drout theorizes, which meant either writing in imitation of or deliberately breaking away from his fiction. Carter felt the same acute “anxiety of influence” with Howard and Burroughs. In Imaginary Worlds, he describes the problem of working in Howard’s considerable shadow as one of originality vs. fidelity, and chose imitation. Why change a formula that brings its readers so much pleasure, he reasoned?

But this type of pastiche writing, though often fun (I greatly enjoy much of it myself), can spell trouble for a genre. Too much of it hardens the lines, results in stifled creativity, repetition of stale formula, and ultimately, poor reputation and poor commercial sales.

Carter chafed at accusations of being a Conan imitator and defended his clone-ish barbarian Thongor as a worthy successor, but simultaneously professed his loyalty to the Howardian formula and felt no need to alter it or extend its boundaries. The result was a kind of stasis, a barbaric stereotype that came to be associated with the broader subgenre. Critics began to take notice. An essay published in Fantastic derided the subgenre as “a frozen form, a ritual dance … early Moore and Smith continue to have an influence on SF, but the sword and sorcery complex itself is a living fossil with no apparent ability to evolve.” Carter objected to the claim but did not dispute its accuracy, writing, “Well, perhaps. But what of it? The stuff is fun to read, and fun to write, and the fossilization of the genre is, I suspect, largely in the eye of the beholder.” (Imaginary Worlds, p. 145).

In short, I believe Carter was off-base with his tightly circumscribed views of sword-and-sorcery. He didn’t give subsequent authors like Anderson or Leiber or Moorcock their just due for expanding its boundaries in the 50s and 60s. I believe his depiction of the genre as solely a product of the 1930s, and a vehicle for lightweight escapism, hurt its commercial and artistic prospects.

But I’m also glad Carter got the ball rolling. Without something to begin the conversation, we have nothing to respond to, and iterate upon. Which is how we ultimately arrive at the truth. Art is not science, but literary analysis is not unlike the process of scientific method: We posit a hypothesis, and attempt to prove that hypothesis with presentation of evidence. Later findings may disprove pieces of the theory, or knock it down entirely. But it builds on what came before, and stands on the work of prior historians and critics, who serve as its foundation.

And so with Carter we read his pioneering efforts, and may find ourselves in disagreement, but we praise them for what they offer: Unbridled enthusiasm, important early history, ground rules struck, and fuel for disagreement. But more importantly, thoughtful engagement.

Thank you Lin Carter for getting the conversation started, and inviting us to explore imaginary worlds.

Brian Murphy is the author of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (Pulp Hero Press). Learn more about his life and work on his website, The Silver Key.

If you’ve never given Lin Carter’s fiction a fair chance, you might be surprised he was capable of penning some excellent tales when he put his mind to it. DMR Books included two of his very best stories in the anthology Renegade Swords (alongside classics by Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, A. Merritt, and more). We doubt you’ll be disappointed!