Lin Carter

Linwood Vrooman Carter (June 9, 1930 – February 7, 1988) was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor, poet and critic.

He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft (for an H. P. Lovecraft parody) and Grail Undwin.

A longtime science-fiction and fantasy fan, Carter first appeared in print with entertaining letters to Startling Stories and other pulp magazines in 1943 and again in the late 1940s.

Carter served in the United States Army (infantry, Korea, 1951–53), and then attended Columbia University and took part in Leonie Adams's Poetry Workshop (1953–54).

He issued two volumes of fantasy verse, Sandalwood and Jade (1951), technically his first book, and Galleon of Dream (1955) (see Poetry in Bibliography below) 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.

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.

Another early collaborative story, "The Slitherer from the Slime" (Inside SF, September 1958), by Carter, as "H. P. Lowcraft", with Dave Foley, is a parody of H. P. Lovecraft.

Carter was married twice, first to Judith Ellen Hershkovitz (married 1959, divorced 1960) and second to Noel Vreeland (married 1963, when they were both working for the publisher Prentice-Hall; divorced 1975).

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 (SAGA), a loose-knit group of Heroic fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose work he anthologized in the Flashing Swords! series.

The story "Uncollected Works" (Fantasy and SF, March 1965) 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.

He is best known for his work in the 1970s as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which introduced readers to many overlooked classics of the fantasy genre.

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.

In the 1970s Carter published one issue of his own fantasy fanzine Kadath, named after H. P. Lovecraft's fictional setting (see The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath).

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 into 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, thus the magazine was scarcely circulated.

It contained Carter's Cthulhu Mythos story "The City of Pillars" (pp. 22–25).

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' (in tribute to the original Kalem Club) - meetings which were attended by Frank Belknap Long, Robert M. Price and others.

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.

Despite these successes, Carter increased his alcohol intake, becoming an alcoholic.

Robert M. Price, the editor of Crypt of Cthulhu, who had published a Lin Carter special issue (Vol. 5, No 2, whole number 36, Yuletide 1985), was preparing a second all-Carter issue when Carter died.

His cancer resurfaced, spreading to his throat and leading to his death in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1988.

It was turned into a memorial issue (Vol. 7, No 4, whole number 54, Eastertide 1988).

Two further issues of the magazine were devoted to Carter alone (see References below).

Price was also appointed Carter's literary executor.