Search Results for: Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

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Table of Contents for Weird Tales 1, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980) For yesterday’s Vintage Treasures post, I finally had the chance to discuss Lin Carter’s early-80s attempt to resuscitate the Magazine that Never Dies, the long-running weird fiction pulp Weird Tales. Since I examined all four paperbacks, there wasn’t room in that article to look back at some of the fascinating discussions they’ve triggered over the last four decades, including lengthy commentary from Carter himself —…

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Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

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Weird Tales , Volumes 1 -4 (Zebra Books, December 1980 – August 1983). Covers by Tom Barber (#1-3) and Doug Beekman (#4) Lin Carter was one of the finest genre editors of the 20th Century, and Weird Tales magazine was the most important fantasy magazine of the last century, publishing the career-defining work of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and hundreds of other writers. In December 1980 Zebra Books published the equivalent of a genre superhero Team-Up,…

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Lin Carter’s Forgotten Anthologies: Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms of Wizardry

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Lin Carter’s anthologies of Adult Fantasy: Kingdoms of Sorcery and Realms of Wizardry (Doubleday, 1976). Covers by John Cayea and Robert Aulicino Lin Carter was an exceptional editor, and one of the most important figures in 20th Century American fantasy. As Managing Editor of the seminal Ballantine Adult Fantasy imprint, he was responsible for publishing virtually one new title every month — and he did exactly that, tirelessly producing 83 volumes between August 1965 and April 1974. In the late…

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Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

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Paperback editions of Flashing Swords! #1-5 (Dell Books, 1973-1981). Covers by Frank Frazetta (1 & 2), Don Maitz (3 & 4), and Richard Corben Lin Carter is best remembered these days as the editor in charge of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, which was by any measure a monumental achievement, bringing back into print a truly impressive array of important fantasy books, many in serious danger of being forgotten. But Carter’s career extended beyond that. He was a very prolific…

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Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

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Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy, Volume 1 (Ballantine Books, 1972). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo Over the decades we’ve spent a lot of pixels at Black Gate talking about Lin Carter’s groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. He was under contract to produce a book a month for editors Ian and Betty Ballantine, and that’s exactly what he did for five years and 65 titles, almost all reprints of out-of-print fantasy novels and original anthologies. For the most part my favorites…

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #3: Tricks of the Trade and Reflections

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Lin Carter is above all else good company. He’s looking back one generation to what is now our genre’s Heroic Age, a wild and woolly era of unbounded creativity separated from us by a gulf of a century — I am reminded of when, as a teenager, I bought a drink for an elderly jazz musician, who in turn told me about going out on the town with Fats Waller, and the perils of playing for Jelly Roll Morton.

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds #2 World Building and Naming

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Imaginary Worlds (Ballantine Books, June 1973). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo So I had great fun reading Carter’s snarky, anecdotal, history of the Fantasy genre, Imaginary Worlds (1973), but I had actually come to the book for his thoughts on writing the Fantasy, and in particular Sword and Sorcery. In hindsight, perhaps this was more of by way of exorcism. Carter was adamant that Sword and Sorcery should have no content whatsoever: “It is a tradition that aspires to do little more than…

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Time to Revise Your Lin Carter Bibliography

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Among the couple of boxes of fanzines I picked up a few weeks ago was this oddity. It’s the first (and I suspect only) issue of The Brythunian Prints, dated June 1967. I’ve not been able to find out any information at all on this title. It was a sword and sorcery fanzine, “published by the Brythunian Troop of the Hyborean Legion.” The editors (Ken Hulme, Jim Feerhmeyer and Greg Shank) dedicate the issue “to L. Sprague de Camp and George…

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Young Magicians edited by Lin Carter

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The Young Magicians Lin Carter, ed. Ballantine Books October 1969, 280p. $0.95 Cover art by Sheryl Slavitt I apologize for having taken so long to get this post done. I’ve been on the road for over half the weekends since the end of April, mostly family trips for graduations or dive meets my son was competing in. I thought I would have a little more time when the second summer session started since I would be teaching, but that hasn’t…

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