Lin Carter is a very important figure in the history of fantasy, science fiction, and horror! But not as a writer. Instead as an editor.
As a writer, his many works in the mid and late 60s through 70s are incredibly derivative. He has characters such as Thongor the Barbarian, and books that are intending to evoke Edgar Rice Burroughs or Lord Dunsany or RE Howard or HP Lovecraft.
His works are not really inspired. They aren’t really his own. They are very, very derivative.
However…
He was a big, big big editor.
The small Mom and Pop publishing house of Ballantyne Books wanted to move into fantasy, science fiction, and horror publishing. Tolkien’s works were selling like mad cakes and they were looking at picking up that genre. After expressing his interest, they made the best choice conceivable. They hired Lin Carter as their editor.
Lin Carter loved context. He had gone back and found many great writers that had been forgotten. He used this heavily printed series that could be found in many a book shop to put many big name writers on the map. He reprinted Clark Ashton Smith and Lord Dunsany. Many of the best fantasy and early influences were published. He also publishes Lovecraft initially his Dunsany inspired Dream World stuff like the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. But then he’ll move into publishing Cthulhu Mythos stuff as well starting in 71.
The first book is Spawn of Cthulhu -
The Spawn of Cthulhu - Wikipedia
Here he has 12 tales, including one by Lovecraft, as well as Robert Howard, CAS, Ramsey Campbell, Derleth, Lord Dunsany, Robert Chambers, and many more. This style of book began in the early 60s with Arkham House a smaller publisher, but Carter brought it to the masses. This is the first Mythos collection in the series, although he did 5 other collections in the series before this one, including:
The Young Magicians - Wikipedia
Dragons, Elves, and Heroes - Wikipedia
Golden Cities, Far - Wikipedia
New Worlds for Old - Wikipedia
He also used his editorship to find a number of big name writers and to give them their break, such as Katherine Kurtz’s Deryini series. He pushed many women writers to the top shelf of fantasy in his series and is known as normalizing women writers in a big way. In fact, most fantasy writers today, are women.
Carter was a very important editor for these reasons. By the end of the Adult Fantasy line’s run, every major fantasy story and author was republished. everything from 1891’s Khaled by F. Marion Crawford to the Worm Ouroborus from the 20s was republished by Ballentyne.
Lin Carter was a big editor.
But, as you’ll soon see, he wasn’t as skilled as a writer.
The series wasn’t a big money maker for Ballentyne, but they wanted to bring forgotten works of old to a new generation. They remained committed to the series and label until they sold their publishing company in the mid70s to Random House, who shut it down as it wasn’t making money, and they moved all of their new stuff to the newly made Del Rey imprint. They only published new stuff from here on out.