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ALSO BY LIN CARTER
The Man Who Loved Mars
The City Outside the World
Tower at the Edge of Time
The Quest of Kadji
Beyond the Gates of Dream
The Black Star
TERRA MAGICA
Kesrick
Dragonrouge
Mandricardo
Callipygia
WORLD’S END
The Warrior of World’s End
The Enchantress of World’s End
The Immortal of World’s End
The Barbarian of World’s End
The Pirate of World’s End
ZARKON, LORD OF THE UNKNOWN
The Nemesis of Evil
Invisible Death
The Volcano Ogre
THONGOR
The Wizard of Lemuria (Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria)
Thongor of Lemuria (Thongor and the Dragon City)
Thongor Against the Gods
Thongor at the End of Time
Thongor in the City of Magicians
Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus
YOUNG THONGOR
LIN CARTER
WITH ADDITIONAL MATERIAL BY ROBERT M. PRICE
EDITED AND WITH A FOREWORD BY ADRIAN COLE
DEDICATION
I am indebted to
Robert Price and Morgan Holmes
for their invaluable advice and assistance
in aiding me to compile this collection.
—Adrian Cole
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2012 by Wildside Press, LLC.
Published by special arrangement with Robert M. Price,
John Gregory Betancourt, and Lin Carter Properties.
For more information, contact wildsidebooks.com
“Diombar’s Song of the Last Battle” first appeared in Dreams from R’lyeh, 1975 (Arkham House). “Black Hawk of Valkarth” first appeared in Fantastic Stories, September 1974; © Ultimate Publishing Company Inc. “The City in the Jewel” first appeared in Fantastic Stories, December 1975; © Ultimate Publishing Company Inc. “Demon of the Snows” first appeared in The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, Volume 6, 1980, edited by Lin Carter (DAW Books Inc.) “The Creature in the Crypt,” based on a title by Lin Carter, is published in this form for the first time. “Silver Shadows” by Robert M. Price first appeared in Crypt of Cthulhu, no. 99—Lammas 1998. “Mind Lords of Lemuria” by Robert M. Price is an original tale, published here for the first time. “Keeper of the Emerald Flame” first appeared in The Mighty Swordsmen, 1970, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson (Lancer Books Inc.) “Black Moonlight” first appeared in Fantastic Stories, November 1976; © Ultimate Publishing Company Inc. “Thieves of Zangabal” first appeared in The Mighty Barbarians, 1969, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson (Lancer Books Inc.)
FOREWORD
It would be difficult to identify the first Barbarian ever to wield a sword and tangle with sorcerers, monsters and other burly ruffians of similar ilk. His fantastic adventures would not necessarily have been recorded anywhere, but would almost certainly have been part of a rich tradition of oral story telling, around campfires, long before cities were conceived and the birth of what we, rather arrogantly, call civilization. The heroic tradition did eventually pass to the written word, creating immortal warriors whose names yet conjure up visions of splendid deeds and valor beyond the call of duty: Gilgamesh, Ulysses, Hercules, Beowulf, Sinbad, Cuchulainn, Viracocha, to name but a few.
Thongor, Lin Carter’s most notable heroic Barbarian, first saw print in 1965 in The Wizard of Lemuria1 and at once it could be seen that he undoubtedly had his ancestral roots in many of these ageless champions. Lin Carter, who was himself a champion of the heroic fantasy genre and an avid, omnivorous reader of its numerous branches, was more than a little familiar with the archetypal Barbarian. Thongor, however, has two very distinct roots, both of which Carter himself would have been the first to acknowledge.
These are Conan the Cimmerian, Robert E. Howard’s nonpareil muscle-bound superman of an imaginary history set around 10,000 B.C. and John Carter, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s superlative swordsman of Barsoom, or Mars. They are two entirely different characters, adventuring in very dissimilar worlds, though sharing certain common traits, not least of which is their appetite for action, their fearlessness in the face of impossible odds and the kind of determination to succeed that once built spectacular, world-spanning empires. Lin Carter drew heavily and unashamedly on these two robust fictional heavyweights when he put his own Barbarian together. The result is an unusual fusion, an affectionate tribute to two of the lasting champions of fantastic fiction.
Thongor himself is “…cast very much in the mold of Conan…”2 apart from the occasional show of somewhat rough-hewn gallantry (as with Conan himself) he could hardly be mistaken for the gentlemanly John Carter, although he behaves and speaks very much like Burroughs’ greatest creation, Tarzan, on occasion. In the tales that comprise Young Thongor, the Cimmerian’s influence is particularly strong, while in the novels that follow on from this collection, John Carter and the characters of his world come more into focus as inspirations for the ensemble of Lemuria.
This prediluvian continent, while evidently prehistoric and pulsing with appropriate monsters, conjures up regular comparisons with Barsoom, which seems to be even more its blueprint than the Hyborian world of Conan. It is a compliment to Carter’s energy and enthusiasm for his creation that the confusion of two such worlds and potential for anachronism and resulting dissonant clashes never actually materialize. In a bizarre kind of way, Thongor’s saga works and works well.
As for the Barbarian’s name, Lin Carter chose it quite deliberately and has said, “…‘Thongor’ has grim weight to it, solidity, and the ring of clashing steel. The character is obviously a fighting-man; you can sense that from the sound of his name alone…”3
And what of Lost Lemuria itself? In some ways it has been the poor relative of Atlantis, down through the ages. Initially it appears to have been a quasi-scientific explanation for there being lemurs in Africa and India, in the form of a geological bridge that spanned
