Dr Simon Reads Appendix N Part Eight: Lin Carter

Dr. Simon Reads Appendix N Part Eight: Lin Carter

This is a new series that will feature sporadically, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. You will either know what I mean by “Appendix N”, or you will have no clue. If you don't, I suggest heading back to the first part of this series and reading on.

Lin Carter

Or, to give him his full name, Linwood Wrooman (sometimes spelled Vrooman) Carter. How great is that? So many of these SF/F writers have had great names.  Even better, Carter was a frequent collaborator with Lyon Sprague de Camp (in fact, I noticed that the two of them are responsible for quite a few Conan stories in my anthology. But that’s for later when we get to Robert E Howard).

Carter was born in Florida in 1930, served with distinction in the Korean War and spent his later life in New York, another member of the “Trap Door Spiders” literary group. His first venture into professional writing came in 1969 and, by the sounds of it, he had a fairly miserable tail end of his life, getting mouth cancer, suffering disfiguring facial surgery, becoming an alcoholic and then dying from a resurgence of the cancer in 1988.

The Worlds End Saga

I came up with my own term for these kinds of stories the other day – “delicious corn ‘n’ cheese”. I’m not sure what that would actually be like, perhaps nachos. Yes, served up with jalapenos, sour cream, salsa and guacamole. Corny, cheesy, totally lacking in any pretensions at finesse but oh so delicious once in a while.

Carter is definitely a Big Bowl O’ Nachos writer. There’s something reminiscent of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, and ERB’s Barsoom stories, with a dash of RE Howard, and it’s really not a surprise to learn after the fact that these authors were all inspirations for Carter. Clark Ashton Smith looms large as an inspiration as well.

The World’s End saga, also known as the Gondwane Epic, covers six books, all called the Something of World’s End; in order they are Warrior-, Enchantress-, Immortal-, Barbarian-, Pirate- and Giant of World’s End. Of these, Giant, the climactic story, was written first, while the first (story-wise) book Warrior of World’s End was published four years later. There are hints throughout the books that there were originally meant to be eight (and sometimes ten) books, but these never materialised. It does mean that there’s a narrative jump between Pirate and Giant, and also that there are some continuity issues. The protagonist in Giant, for examples, claims never to have seen the sea despite spending the previous book sailing a vast inland sea with pirates.

The Setting

The setting is Earth in the far future, in the Eon of the Falling Moon, where an ominously crack-riddled moon hangs low in the sky. Continental drift has formed a new super-continent, Gondwane, populated by humans and quasi-humans, anti-life and other assorted odd creatures. Much like Dying Earth, “magic” is simply different physics, and Carter has the handy concept of the laws of physics changing several times over the millions of years, so that things like elemental metal that has anti-gravity properties, or mountains that can wink in and out of existence, are possible.

The millions-of-years far future history means that there are plenty of ancient and legendary civilisations, not least the Technocracy of Vandalex, often mentioned throughout the books and finally visited in Giant. There are numerous artifacts from Vandalex scattered throughout the book, including a nuclear-powered ship with a criminal intelligence and the friendly robot Zork-Aargh.

There’s something Swiftian as well about the adventures on Gondwane, with many locations of Gondwane having strange, almost satirical, societies. Take the city of Chx, for example, from The Sorceress of World’s End (Book 2). By day it is a sober, puritanical place ruled by the Ethical Triumvirate. By night, however, the people are allowed to give vent to their urges in scenes reminiscent of The Purge. The protagonists, in fact, are arrested for *not* committing any theft, vandalism, or sexual licentiousness. (“We did do plenty of ogling”, protests one character, only to be told that this is a misdemeanour, not a crime).

The Characters

The main protagonist, the titular Warrior and the Giant of those stories, and perhaps also the Barbarian, is Ganelon Silvermane, a fairly typical swollen muscle-man favoured by heroic fantasy. Ganelon, however, is not a True Man, but a Construct, one of many created by a mysterious prophetic race known as the Time Gods, who are released from hidden vaults throughout history, each for a specific purpose foreseen by the Time Gods. Ganelon spends most of the books looking for his purpose. He’s otherwise presented as an amiable and rather naïve character (not long having been “born”), with as much tendency to seek diplomatic and peaceful solutions to problems as to wade in with his magical sword.

The other characters come and go. There are usually, with Ganelon, a wizardly advisor and a spunky girl sidekick. To begin with these are The Illusionist of Nerelon, an ancient magician (hinted at being millennia old) who masks his face with a veil of lilac mist, and has an inordinate fondness for good food and drink; and Xarda, a “Knightrix” from the land of Jemmerdy where men are bookish and stay at home, and the women conduct the wars (that Swiftian things again). Later on The Illusionist is replaced by Palensus Choy (the Immortal of that book) and finally Zelobion, but the character remains a fairly bookish, somewhat irascible source of information and last-minute help.

The female characters after Xarda include Darella and Arzeela, all feisty warrior women to whom the adjectives “pert”, “lissom” or “full” tend to be attached. These are all of a time and genre where the shape of the female character’s breasts are deemed an important character trait worth repeating. The women tend to initially fall for Ganelon (him being a prime slice of beefcake) but usually (with the exception of Arzeela) end up getting married and shunted offscreen.

Other characters picked up along the way include Grrf the Tigerman, probably the most entertaining sidekick, a felinoid warrior with third-person dialogue and a love of battle, Ishgadara “Ishy” the Gynosphinx, a cheerfully simple sphinx-girl who lives life to the full, and a variety of young protégés, best of all is the gypsy lad Kurdi, whose mangled grammar Ganelorn and Grrf keep absent-mindedly correcting.

For the first few books there’s also a flying machine in the shape of a giant bronze bird, coated with a special metal that allows it to defy gravity, and with a brain made from another new metal that has intelligence. The bird is named, I kid you not, the Bazonga, and is a humourous entity with the personality of a slightly batty aunt.

The Stories

The first three-four books deal with what the Illusionist deems to be the Three Major Threats to the nearby region of Gondwane – the Airmasters of Flying Island (who use a mobile zone of vacuum to terrorise the Tigermen of Karjixia); the Red Sorceress (the "Enchantress" of the second book, who, inevitably, wants Ganelorn’s super-seed to create super babies) and the Ximchak Horde, who are faced in Immortal and finally dealt with in Barbarian, where Ganelorn ends up becoming their chief and ultimately leading them to a new, peaceful life a long way away. In Pirate, the characters end up involved in the sea-going politics in a vast inland sea, and finally in Giant, Ganelon travels to Vandalex to fulfil his destiny against the Falling Moon.

There are some great ideas throughout. The Floating City of Kan Zar Kan was once a mobile mining colony but decided it wanted to be a real city once the ore had run out and the civilisation that built it had long gone. Its computer brain adds buildings to it, and it travels around hoovering up "citizens" to live there, but has no real understanding of what humans actually need.

Similarly, the Talking Ship Manannan MacLear takes on passengers, but is actually a crook, stopping far out at sea and trying to extort precious metals from its passengers.

The Talking Heads of Soorm are a cluster of mineral intelligences worshipped as gods by the local populace, overseeing a priesthood that preys on the locals. But, apart from some kind of sonic weapon, they are powerless; hilariously revealed as Ganelon and companions dislodge them and send them rolling downhill to crush their worshippers while the heads utter impotent threats.

There’s a lot of dark humour throughout, actually. Thousands of Ximchak barbarians are sucked through the air-cushion blades of Kan Zar Kan and turned into bloody chunks, and thousands more are squashed like so many ants by Palensus Choy’s flying castle, but this large-scale slaughter is treated as a joke, the screaming violence of the barbarians revealed as futile, petty and self-destructive.

Stealing Ideas

There are definitely ideas to nick, including any of the mineral intelligences throughout the book. The Mad Empire of Trancore is a decayed civilisation where the inhabitant’s delusions make them believe that they are living in luxury (see also Eyes of the Overworld, Jack Vance) and their half-sunken city would make a great setting, particularly if combined with the Voygych River Pirates and their fish-god Gugluck from elsewhere. The Last Technarch is an ancient and senile relic kept alive by his walking throne and his body parts regularly replaced with cloned organs by his robotic servitors, another great idea for an NPC.

There are a host of colourful pirates, barbarians, religious fanatics, weird humanoids and near-humans, bizarre locations and so on that are not massively original but would serve as the basis for adventure elements. I didn’t find much that seems to have directly inspired Gygax, unless one counts the Gyno-/Andro-sphinx concept, which I’m not convinced Carter devised himself.

All in all, a fun, if insubstantial, read. I’ll probably check out some of Carter’s other many works when I have leisure.