Deka--sadly, no...Lin Carter could write an arguably good Doc Savage pastiche (though a little of his work in this mode goes a long way), but his Conan pastiches were turgid and clumsy at best, whether he was "finishing" a Conan scrap or writing his imitation Conan stories. In this case, in utter distinction from the case of Fritz Leiber's characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (who had a not-bad DC comic book adaptation in SWORD OF SORCERY), you're better off, if you must read Thongor, with the comics book adaptations from Marvel.
Aw, I object! Nobody will ever mistake Carter's Thongor books as fantasy classics, but the weak ones still deliver a dose of good old Edgar Rice Burroughs style chase-capture-escape action, and the better ones have a loopy cosmic aspect that I found quite entertaining. Kind of like Carter sprinkled a little Jack Kirby into his ERB and REH influenced brew. It helps to really, really love Sword & Sorcery, but Thongor can be fun, and doesn't deserve that kind of flat dismissal.
Thasnks for the answers! I'll give it a try. i think is the fair way. But from what all of you say, i believe is fun, and that's, in my opinion, harder than some people think.
Well, someone was buying them...they kept being published. But any Lin Carter story, certainly, was likely to be the weakest bit of any issue of fantasy-fiction magazine FANTASTIC published in the 1970s...at least by me.
John, I can only tell you that I love good S&S fiction, and absolutely none of Carter's that I've read has been remotely good, and most of it was written very clumsily indeed. Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Karl Edward Wagner, Janet Fox, Joanna Russ, C. L. Moore and others wrote brilliant sword and sorcery fiction, and such fellow travelers as Avram Davidson and Leigh Brackett wrote fiction akin to S&S more often than the pure quill per se, and Carter wasn't within shouting distance of these folks in what I've read, including in his collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp, who usually did much better on his own (and also did better on his own than when trying to finish Robert Howard scraps, too).
8 comments:
As the old saying says... "When i grown up, i want to be like Steranko".
Plus. I never read any of Thongor stories. Is good?
Deka--sadly, no...Lin Carter could write an arguably good Doc Savage pastiche (though a little of his work in this mode goes a long way), but his Conan pastiches were turgid and clumsy at best, whether he was "finishing" a Conan scrap or writing his imitation Conan stories. In this case, in utter distinction from the case of Fritz Leiber's characters Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (who had a not-bad DC comic book adaptation in SWORD OF SORCERY), you're better off, if you must read Thongor, with the comics book adaptations from Marvel.
Aw, I object!
Nobody will ever mistake Carter's Thongor books as fantasy classics, but the weak ones still deliver a dose of good old Edgar Rice Burroughs style chase-capture-escape action, and the better ones have a loopy cosmic aspect that I found quite entertaining. Kind of like Carter sprinkled a little Jack Kirby into his ERB and REH influenced brew.
It helps to really, really love Sword & Sorcery, but Thongor can be fun, and doesn't deserve that kind of flat dismissal.
John Hocking
I read a good share of Lin Carter's books and always found them fun. And a few of them were pretty damned good for lightweight sf/fantasy adventure.
Thasnks for the answers! I'll give it a try. i think is the fair way. But from what all of you say, i believe is fun, and that's, in my opinion, harder than some people think.
Well, someone was buying them...they kept being published. But any Lin Carter story, certainly, was likely to be the weakest bit of any issue of fantasy-fiction magazine FANTASTIC published in the 1970s...at least by me.
John, I can only tell you that I love good S&S fiction, and absolutely none of Carter's that I've read has been remotely good, and most of it was written very clumsily indeed. Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Karl Edward Wagner, Janet Fox, Joanna Russ, C. L. Moore and others wrote brilliant sword and sorcery fiction, and such fellow travelers as Avram Davidson and Leigh Brackett wrote fiction akin to S&S more often than the pure quill per se, and Carter wasn't within shouting distance of these folks in what I've read, including in his collaborations with L. Sprague de Camp, who usually did much better on his own (and also did better on his own than when trying to finish Robert Howard scraps, too).
For more Steranko sword & sorcery goodness go here:
http://www.thedrawingsofsteranko.com/tghp.html
Talon was a Steranko comic book that never got off the ground. Great art though.
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