Our fabled shores none ever reach
No mariner has found our beach
Scarce our mirages now are seen
Amid neighborly waves of floating green.
Yet your oldest charts contain
Some dotted outlines of our main,

— “The Atlantides”, by Henry David Thoreau, as excerpted by Lin Carter

It began at a library, with a spinner rack, a yellow spine and a name I couldn’t ignore. I was thirteen, looking through the adult Science-Fiction/Fantasy section. Back in those days, the library sometimes added donated books to the main collection, meaning, that among the late ‘80s, early ‘90s science-fiction and fantasy books were also a number of older titles, including a number of DAW books with their distinctive yellow spines.

Of those, one title jumped out at me: Lost Worlds, by Carter. Intrigued, I pulled it out and examined it. The title made me think of dinosaurs, which, as children my age were obligated to be, I was wild about. I had discovered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs through a mention in a non-fiction book on dinosaurs and was eagerly searching out what our library had by him. I pulled it out and saw the cover.

Riding on the back of a centaur was a nearly-naked woman with silver hair, a bloodied sword in her right hand, the severed head of some bearded foeman/victim in her left. That cover was done by Enrich, who also went by “Enric”, a. k. a. Enrich Torres-Prat, a Spanish artist with a style reminicent of fellow Spaniard Sanjulian. There is also a frontispiece illustration, uncredited, of a bearded warrior standing before an Easter Island-style statue. Neither has anything to do with the contents, but they set the stage nicely.

I read this in 1990, exactly ten years after it was published. You could still find things like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Doc Savage reprints in bookstores and in drug stores, at least here in Canada. The era that produced the book was already a lost world in its own right.

DAW at the time was the last bastion of both Sword & Sorcery and Sword & Planet, the favoured genres of Lin Carter. Donald A. Wollheim had been Carter’s biggest booster over the years, and through the 1970s he ensured that Carter always had something new on the bookshelves.

But by 1980, the publishing industry was changing. Sword & Sorcery, which had dominated for over a decade, was falling out of favour with publishers. Carter’s Flashing Swords! anthology series would publish its last volume a year later. A few stragglers, like David C. Smith’s Attluma novels, the Red Sonja novels he co-wrote with Richard L. Tierney, and the Death Dealer novels of James Silke, came and went without much impact. Marvel’s Conan. Sword & Planet was in even worse shape, represented almost entirely by a pair of series: the Dray Prescot series by Kenneth Bulmer and the infamous Gor Saga by John Norman. Both were published by DAW, but not for much longer.

As I said back in my first post about Lin Carter way back in 2019, Lin Carter doesn’t have the most sterling of reputations. Sometimes he even deserves it. Still, his best works can be fun in a pulpy way and that can make up for his flaws. So how does the book that introduced me to Sword & Sorcery, as well as the works of Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard, stand up? Let’s find out.

First in the tour is Hyperborea with a pair of posthumous collaborations with Clark Ashton Smith, marking the first time I encountered his name and works. This was probably the first time I had ever encountered a mention of Hyperborea, too.

“The Scroll of Morloc” concerns a shaman of the inhuman Voormis, Yhemog, and his quest to learn the arcane secrets of the equally-inhuman Gnophkehs, which ends in a bitterly-ironic twist. “The Stairs in the Crypt” is about necromancy, with long, detailed descriptions of decaying flesh. This one feels more like a detailed summary of a story than an actual story. Again, it’s not bad, but there’s not much meat. I found that in revisiting these stories as an adult that I had no clear recollection of either one of the Smith collaborations, whereas the other stories I all remembered at least parts of. Whatever I thought back then, they didn’t deter me, and I forged onwards.

Next is oft-neglected Mu, of which I wrote last year, with Lin Carter writing a very short piece in the vein of Clark Ashton Smith, “The Thing in the Pit”, which he notes has never been published before. Like the Hyperborea collaborations, this is a very short story, allegedly translated from the “Zanthu Tablets”, written by Zanthu, “wizard and last priest of Ythogtha the Abomination in the Abyss”, who summons up his god with cataclysmic results.

The apocalyptic ending stuck with me all these years, though now I wonder if the narrator could have really survived witnessing it to write it all down. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this was also my introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos.

Third is Lemuria, for which Lin Carter reprints two of his Thongor stories which had previously appeared in the anthologies The Mighty Barbarians and The Mighty Swordsmen, respectively. Carter admits that Thongor was “cast pretty much in the mold of Conan.” Conan was a name vaguely familiar to me at that point, some shirtless guy with long hair who kind of looked like Tarzan who appeared in comic books and a movie I was too young to see. I would be formally acquainted with Conan and the rest of Robert E. Howard’s creations a year or so later via another anthology checked out from the library . . . but that’s a whole other story.

First is “Thieves of Zangabal”, which takes place just prior to the events of the first Thongor novel, Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. It’s a classic wizard-hires-barbarian-to-steal plot, breathlessly paced, packed with incident, like when the ravishing maiden Thongor stops to rescue turns into a ravening demon:

“She began to . . . change.
Her limbs blurred, then grew transparent as smoke, then remoulded themselves. A ghastly parrot beak thrust from the warm oval of the girl’s face. Blazing orbs of yellow fire seethed with hellish mockery beneath her arched brows. Her hands became scaly bird claws, armed with ferocious talons.”

“Keeper of the Emerald Flame” is set earlier in Thongor’s career, back when he was a bandit chieftain at the ripe old age of nineteen. Me, I thought getting into college was an achievement. This time around, Thongor must save his band of brigands from a murderous mummy who’s picking them off one-by-one. Again, a classic S&S setup, one that Carter would use frequently in his Conan pastiches.

One thing that has always puzzled me: Carter repeatedly mentions “the great golden moon of Elder Lemuria” throughout the Thongor stories, including this one. I assume he means that the Moon’s appearance has changed over the millennia. Fair enough. But later in the same chapter, he refers to “the moon-silvered gloom”. Oops. And even without looking, I’m willing to bet money that Carter makes that same mistake elsewhere in the series.

My young brain was reeling from these stories. A protagonist who was a thief and a bandit? Dinosaurs and evil wizards and undead mummies? Hotstuff jungle babes? This was as far from the marvelous Land of Oz as you could get and I ate it up. Carter wasn’t the first to tread these roads as I was to learn, but at that age it didn’t matter. This was what I craved, and by Gorm, Carter gave it to me in spades.

Both may be pure S&S 101, but I can’t help but admire the sheer pulpish energy of the works. I sometimes think that Lin Carter missed his vocation as a comic writer. He did write episodes of the 1960s Spider-Man cartoon. Pair him with some strong artists and he could have been one of the greats. “Thieves” was in fact adapted to comics, when Marvel tried out Thongor in the pages of Creatures on the Loose in 1973.

At thirteen, they were an energetic revelation. At forty-six, they remain a thrilling diversion.

Next came a trip to Valusia. Valusia? That was also a new one to me. Carter explains how it was the sole creation of that Howard guy I kept hearing about throughout the book. It would still be another year or so before I got to read pure unadulterated Howard. In the intro, Carter mentions offhand that the Lancer King Kull which it first appeared in was now out of print and that the more recent collection of Kull stories went back to the original text. Around this time, a push was on to reprint Robert E. Howard’s stories minus the DeCamp/Carter pastiches and posthumous collaborations. This was good for the literary reputation of Howard. It was not so good for Lin Carter, who had been adding to the Howard canon regularly since the ‘60s and I imagine the sales of those books had been a steady source of income.

The story, titled “Riders Beyond the Sunrise” (Carter’s title, not Howard’s), tells of how King Kull, Atlantean usurper to the Valusian throne, rides to avenge an insult by a fleeing nobleman, pursuing him to the very edge of the world and beyond.

It’s amazing and epic and astonishing . . . until Kull crosses the river, immediately runs into his old enemy, the admittedly-awesomely named Thulsa Doom, and rushes through a fight and defeats him, the end. Still, I remember really liking this one back in the day, but a reread made it clear that it was purely because of the first three-quarters, written by Howard, rather than Carter’s contribution. One day, I would really love it if some other pastiche writer would take up the challenge of providing a suitably epic finish for the most intriguing of Robert E. Howard’s unfinished tales.

Now we come to Antillia, which is a lost land greatly underrepresented in Fantasy fiction, with “The Twelve Wizards of Ong”. By Carter’s own admission, this was in the vein of Vance, Smith and Cabell, set in the seven isles of Antillia which had their heyday in the millennia before Atlantis rose to civilization.

Much like the Hyperborean and Muvian stories, this is more sorcery than swords, albeit with Chan, the protagonist, wielding a cool “Live Blade”. And wasn’t there a “Shan Chan Thuu” back in “Keeper of the Emerald Flame”? The plot concerns three of the titular wizards setting out on a mini-quest to obtain an occult text and maybe a new member of their coven. It’s a neat twist to have the wizards be the thieves for once. Carter says in the intro that this was meant as the first of a new series, but as far as I can tell, there were no others. Antillia remains very much terra incognita.

Last of all is Atlantis, which Carter admits has been pretty well-covered by other authors, including himself. Carter mentions his own Atlantean novel, The Black Star, stating that: “It was supposed to be the first of a trilogy but the publisher felt disinclined to take the other books”. The Black Star is interesting in that a S&S novel with a Frazetta cover failed to generate at least one sequel at the height of the “in the tradition of Conan” craze.

His contribution, set in the same version of Atlantis is “The Seal of Zaon Sathla”, a story which appeared previously in the 1970 anthology The Magic of Atlantis. The piece is brief, involving Tirion the Glad Magician and his ill-fated desire to possess a sorcerous artifact. In passing the story mentions the wizard Sharajsha, who plays a major role in the Thongor series, but also Ommum-Vog, from Smith’s Hyperborean story “The Ice Demon”. My recollection of the Thongor novels is that Carter’s Hyperborea was strictly prehuman, home to a saurian race known as the Dragon Kings. Was he trying to incorporate Smith’s Hyperborea into his “Carterverse”? Was it merely an Easter egg? Or was he simply being careless? All three are equally possible.

As a postscript, in 1985, Carter rewrote the story for the second volume of the shared-world anthology Magic in Ithkar, pretty much beat-for-beat, as “Geydelle’s Protective”.

In his afterword, Carter teases the possibility of another Lost Worlds collection, but also adds, “Understand: I make no promises!” He speaks of Ultima Thule, Prester John’s kingdom, and Shamballah as possible subjects.

It was not to be.

In the ‘80s, Carter struggled with throat cancer and alcoholism. I suspect he also struggled with the changing tastes of the publishing industry. In 1988, DAW ditched the last of the old guard, dropping Sword & Sorcery and Sword & Planet completely. Carter’s death that same year likely spared him the indignity of being dropped by the company who had kept his career alive in the lean years.

But as bad as the late ‘80s were for Carter’s favourite genre, the ‘90s were so much worse. By the end of the decade, Marvel’s Conan comics would be cancelled and the only Sword & Sorcery on the market were Tor’s Conan pastiches. The originals were out of print. Only Baen Books, by reprinting the non-Conan works of REH as well as the Kane novels by Karl Edward Wagner, kept the embers from going out completely.

Otherwise the subgenre was extinct. Worse, it was a punchline, an unwanted relic of a past the industry seemed intent on burying under an avalanche of wizards, elves and quests. No barbarians need apply.

I was only aware of some of this at the time. Other things became apparent in hindsight. As an adult I can look back and it all becomes clearer. Just as I can look back on a book that shaped me and see what doesn’t hold up and what still does. Whatever his flaws as a writer, Carter’s enthusiasm comes through clearly in Lost Worlds, and in reading it, some of it was imparted to me. In doing so, he kindled a lifelong interest in Sword & Sorcery. I hope that I might pass some of that on to others. And for that, I must raise my mead-horn in a toast to Linwood Vrooman Carter, wherever you are.

Happy magic!