Imaginary Worlds

by Lin Carter

First printing. Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo.

Genres: Fantasy, Writing, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Reference, Literary Criticism

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Lin Carter was an American author, editor, and critic best known for his influential role in fantasy literature during the mid-20th century. Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, he developed an early passion for myth, adventure stories, and imaginative fiction, drawing inspiration from authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, and J. R. R. Tolkien. After serving in the U.S. Army, Carter attended Columbia University, where he honed his literary skills and deepened his knowledge of classical and medieval literature, myth, and folklore — elements that would become central to his work.
Carter authored numerous novels, short stories, and critical studies, often working within the sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy traditions. His own creations, such as the “Thongor of Lemuria” series, paid homage to pulp-era adventure fiction while adding his distinctive voice and world-building style. His nonfiction book Tolkien: A Look Behind The Lord of the Rings was one of the first major studies of Tolkien’s work and its mythological roots, and it helped establish Carter as a knowledgeable commentator on fantasy literature.
Beyond his own writing, Carter was a central figure in bringing classic and forgotten works of fantasy back into print. As editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969 to 1974, he curated and introduced dozens of volumes, reintroducing readers to authors such as William Morris, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, and James Branch Cabell. His introductions not only contextualized these works historically and literarily but also encouraged a new generation to explore the breadth of the fantasy tradition.
Carter was also active in the shared literary universe of the “Cthulhu Mythos,” expanding upon the creations of H. P. Lovecraft and other members of the “Lovecraft Circle.” His collaborations and solo contributions in this genre further cemented his reputation as both a creative writer and a literary preservationist.
In addition to fiction and criticism, Carter was an active member of several science fiction and fantasy organizations, including the Science Fiction Writers of America. He frequently appeared at conventions, where he was known for his enthusiasm, deep knowledge of the genre, and willingness to mentor aspiring writers.
Though sometimes critiqued for the derivative nature of some of his work, Carter’s influence on the fantasy revival of the late 20th century remains significant. His combination of creative output, editorial vision, and scholarly enthusiasm helped bridge the gap between the pulp traditions of the early 1900s and the expansive fantasy publishing boom that followed.
Lin Carter’s legacy endures through his own imaginative tales, his critical studies, and the many classic works he rescued from obscurity, ensuring their place in the canon of fantasy literature for generations to come.

Reviews

[Mehdi STR · Rating 4 out of 5]

دنیاهای خیالی اثر لین کارتر یک کتاب پژوهشی خوب در زمینه ادبیات فانتزیه ولی خالی از ایرادات هم نیست.
اول اینکه عنوانش چندان مناسب کتاب نیست، درواقع دو سوم کتاب درمورد زندگی نویسنده‌های گمانه زن هستش که بیشتر عنوانی مثل "تاریخچه" ادبیات فانتزی رو می طلبه تا دنیاهای خیالی، اما خب هرچی جلوتر می‌رفتم در طول مطالعه، محتوا هم بیشتر مناسب عنوانش یعنی دنیاهای خیالی می‌شد و خصوصا سه فصل آخر از بقیه ی فصل ها بهتر بود.

درمورد اینکه چه کسایی باید این کتاب رو بخونن همینجا بگم که به جز نویسنده‌هایی که می‌خوان توی زمینه فانتزی فعالیت کنن واقعا لازم نیست بقیه‌ی نویسنده‌ها بخونن چون محتوا فقط روی نویسنده ها و آثار ادبیات فانتزی تمرکز داره و حتی برای خود فانتزی نویس‌ها تخصصیه.
پس فقط دو گروه از خواننده‌ها بخونن:
۱- نویسنده‌های ادبیات فانتزی
۲- خواننده‌های درجه‌ ۱ این ژانر که دوست دارن اطلاعات بیشتر و تخصصی تری رو یاد بگیرن توی این زمینه

از مشکلات کتاب اگر بخوام بگم، شاید بزرگترین مشکلش مربوط به بحث ترجمه باشه. قطعا از ترجمه ایراد می‌گیرم چون واقعا خوب نبود و این اولین کتاب از نشر پریان نبوده که این مشکل رو داخلش دیدم، کتاب تاریخچه ادبیات فانتزی هم همین مشکل رو داشت و حیفه که نشر پریان حرکت خوبی در راستای ترجمه کتاب های پژوهشی ادبیات فانتزی زده اما روی ترجمه ها با کیفیت کار نشه.

در پایان اینکه نویسنده‌های ادبیات ژانری سعی کنن هر از گاهی از این قبیل مطالعات هم داشته باشن تا درک بهتری از ژانر فانتزی داشته باشن و با خلق آثار با کیفیت، وجه‌ی ادبیات فانتزی تالیفی رو بالا ببرن.
هرچی تعداد آثار ضعیف توی این ژانر بیشتر بشه به ضرر و هرچی آثار قوی بیشتری بیرون بیاد به نفع نویسنده‌های فانتزی تالیفیه.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carter is a man of strong opinions and bold statements, effusive with praise and cranky with criticism. This is not a cold and scholarly work, but directly addresses the reader in a conversational style whose enthusiasm is often contagious and bursts its levees: he can't resist gushing over works of especial value--The Sword in the Stone, in particular--even if they don't abide by his self-imposed constraints. At its warmest and best, my to-read list grew by at least a dozen items.

His opinions can be quite polarizing and often intriguing. He declares The Prisoner of Zenda to be "hack-work", and now I'm intensely curious about what sort of writing that Lin Carter, of all people would decide is not up to snuff. In his mind, Tolkien has problems in prose style, and he follows this with fightin' words: "Part of the trouble with Tolkien's book may lie in what seems to me its essential shallowness. The lack of real philosophical or psychological depth in The Lord of the Rings shows up most seriously, I think, in Tolkien's failure to explore the nature of evil." (p. 117)

His points may or may not have validity, but there's a weird irony in Lin Carter--Lin Carter!!--criticizing prose style or shallowness of theme, especially when he spends so much time in his own criticism-proof Sword and Sorcery bunker, yelling "This is all just entertainment! Fun to write and fun to read!"

After long discourse reiterating the William Morris - Lord Dunsany - Robert E Howard - And So Forth progression, with eventual dive into the pulp era and Sword and Sorcery, the rest of the book is a weirdly bolted-on How To Make Your World. And this is where it gets strange.

His advice has points in the "On Thud and Blunder" sense of building verisimilitude into the writing, but the discussion turns harsh as he calls various authors to task for errors in name choices or lapses in world building. Some of this reveals a basic misunderstanding of the criticized author's goals and framework.

He reserves his worst bludgeoning for less established authors ( Karl Edward Wagner's Darkness Weaves is "inept and amateurish", and I doubt that Jane Gaskell had much to say to Carter after this book hit the stands, especially since C. S. Lewis had already addressed her and was probably much nicer about it.) The admonitions, especially regarding naming, are remarkably petty, and given Carter's body of work, the whole reeks of "do as I say, not as I do." He is quick to use his own work as example of a thing done right, and equally quick to call out others by name.

It got really weird as Carter spiraled completely out of control, proposing an entire soup-to-nuts invented world with nothing Terrestrial or recognizable about it. He had it in progress: it was called Khymyrium, he had published bits of it elsewhere, and it was completely unworkable in concept and execution.

[Williwaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was published in 1973, so it's certainly not an up-to-date survey of fantasy literature. I'm not up-to-date, either (and I'm not sure that I want to be), so that doesn't bother me in the least.

Carter writes in an informal, fanboy style that I find quite infectious. He is definitely an apologist for the "sword & sorcery" genre which he claims was jump-started by Robert E. Howard in the pages of Weird Tales, circa 1929, with the first-published Conan stories. I'm not big on S&S, but I'm willing to indulge those who are. I have enjoyed, from time to time, some E.R. Burroughs, R.E. Howard, and Fritz Leiber, but I can't take a steady diet of S&S.

Carter does a good job of differentiating the two main wellsprings of American fantasy writing in the 20th century: the legendary pulp magazines, Weird Tales (1923-54) and Unknown (1939-43). Weird Tales tended toward S&S and purple prose; while Unknown tended toward speculative "what if?" tales, often featuring bumbling, contemporary anti-heroes, who were described in plain language.

Carter rightly points out that ancient epics like Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, and Beowulf are full of magic and imaginary beasts. Which enables him to raise the question of why "literary" folks tend to look down their noses upon people who read fantasy books. There is certainly nothing intrinsically inferior about fantasy as a genre. "Sturgeon's law" applies just as well to fantasy as it does to sf: at least 90% of all writing is crap, so it's simply unfair to stigmatize an entire genre. Gems often hide in the garbage heap. Books like Carter's help one cast aside the garbage and pluck out the gems.

Carter begins by providing valuable information about important early British and Irish fantasy writers: e.g., William Beckford (18th c. author of the Orientalist fiction, "Vathek"), William Morris (a 19th c. polymath, famous for Morris chairs, neo-arabesque floral designs and the novel, "The Well at the World's End), George MacDonald ("Phantastes," "Lilith," etc.), and E.R. Eddison ("The Worm Ouruboros").

One of the biggest surprises here is Carter's assessment of Tolkien. While he acknowledges Tolkien as the greatest of the "world builders," he faults him for the cardboard quality of his characters. In particular, Carter feels that Tolkien fails to explore evil in a convincing way. Furthermore, he claims that "Lord of the Rings" fails to achieve the perfect gestalt -- i.e., that it's a work which contains a few great scenes, but that the story, taken as a whole, is not greater than the sum of its parts. It has been quite a long time since I read Tolkien, so I cannot argue these points. Carter may well be right. He holds up an earlier work -- "The Worm Ouroboros" -- as the great 20th c. epic, but admits that it is a far less accessible work, primarily because the style is somewhat archaic.

After reading "Imaginary Worlds," I feel an urgent need to make a to-read list. Too bad I didn't take notes while I was reading! But definitely, I'd like to read:

Gilgamesh (have not read it since high school); Vathek; Lilith; Worm Ouroboros; some Harold Shea stories from "Unknown" by Pratt & de Camp; perhaps "Out of the Silent Planet" or "Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis; "Wizard of Earthsea" by LeGuin (a re-read -- this was a childhood favorite of mine); something by Dunsany (Carter heaps lavish praise on Dunsany); the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake; and a book or two by John Bellairs.

I'm sure I've missed a few. Oh yes: Jack Vance (maybe "The Dragon Masters" or The Dying Earth?) and Andre Norton ("Witch World" sounds interesting).

Note: This was another find at the Milwaukee Airport, at Renaissance Books - a truly fine store with lots of used books. I cannot recommend the place highly enough. If you have a layover in Milwaukee, do stop in! You won't regret it.

[Nomadman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is very much a book of two halves. The first half, an overview of the early writers who helped to shape the modern fantasy genre, is pretty gripping stuff. Carter nails precisely what makes writers like Dunsany and Eddison so pivotal to the genre, as well as superb writers in their own right, and does so in a humorous and pithy style that clearly shows his great love and respect of the field overall.

The second half of the book, unfortunately, loses its way big time. Carter spends a couple of chapters on world building while berating various writers like Howard and Brackett for their inappropriate nomenclature, as well as well as writers like Tolkien for their 'lack of a religious element' in their works. While some of his points ring true (Howard _was_ a notoriously sloppy world builder, IMO) Carter more often than not fundamentally misses the point many of his examples were aiming for with their respective works, or chooses to criticise them on the most petty and quibbling aspects of their work.

More egregiously, he then proceeds to lecture the reader on effective world building, using his own execrable Thongor series as a main example (Ssaa! floaters! Herpes Zoster!). These chapters are nigh on worthless at best, and potentially harmful at worst (if one were to actually follow his advice, which seems unlikely), though they do provide quite a few belly laughs at Carter's expense.

[Alessandra · Rating 1 out of 5]

Two stars for Lin Carter's history of the pulp era of science fiction. Zero stars for his jaw-dropping "how to write fantasy" section at the back, which occupies a quarter to a third of the book.

Carter gives a reasonable history of the early pulps, although he does not seem to care for really original work. He sniffs at Tolkien as not up to snuff and is quite scornful of Michael Moorcock's work.

It is the last third of this book, Carter's world-building essay, that is a howling delight of awfulness. He gives detailed instructions which if followed allow one to build a perfect cliché-ridden pastiche of Robert E. Howard's old Conan stories, or at least how they were rewritten and "improved" by other writers after Howard's death.

Carter tells in the most confident of terms how to create countries, magic, items. His section on naming gives what he thinks are bad examples (he reserves especial contempt for Moorcock's city of R'lin K'ren A'a) and good ones (Herpes Zoster the wizard, good grief).

This is a funny book. But for the sake of decent literature everywhere, do not take his writing advice.

[Dave Maddock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having been published in '73, the book's outdatedness was also a strength. Carter focuses a lot more on the pulps and pre-Tolkienian work than an equivalent modern survey of fantasy literature would.

[Eugene Khodakov · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1973 Lin Carter introduced to the world his highly informative and absolutely invaluable guide to the history and the evolution of Fantasy. In this book he boldly embarks on lighthearted, funny, incredibly emotional and defiantly biased journey through this literary genre.

Sometimes Carter comes off as impatient and downright childish reader with very simple tastes. You may even assume at some point that all he wants from fantasy books are thickheaded heroes, purple prose and straightforward adventures. And yes, this man reveled in sword and sorcery clichés. He plunged into pulp paradise with reckless abandon. He loved the simplicity and gusto of the most derivative and self-indulgent action fantasies.

But none of that stopped him from becoming one of the best editors in the history of fantasy. During his long and incredibly productive collaboration with the publisher Ballantine Books he kickstarted and for several years managed the legendary series Ballantine Adult Fantasy, which reissued in cheap paperback form countless works of fantasy literature which were out of print for decades or lost and forgotten in back issues of pulp magazines. Carter put his vast knowledge of the genre to the best use and resurrected many literary works by bringing them once again to the public attention.

He rescued Lud-in-the-Mist (written by Hope Mirrlees) from obscurity. He restarted career of wonderful Evangeline Walton (by the means of publishing her old novel without her approval). He even tried to familiarize modern readers with proto-fantasy masterpieces of old (Orlando Furioso, Vathek).

This book was released when Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was nearing the end of its lifespan. Incorporated into the series as its 58 issue Imaginary Worlds became the ultimate guide for the series itself and for the literary fantasy as a whole.

Amazingly, before Carter nobody tried to undertake a comprehensive exploration of literary fantasy. Carter didn't have any reputable predecessors to defer to. He was a brave and undaunted pioneer. Of course, his book is fairly short. Limitations of the format forced Carter to skip many important facts and significantly abridge his narrative. But he had done his very best to reconstruct the history of fantasy for the new generations of readers. And even more importantly, on the pages of his book he created a mythology of sorts. The mythology of the genre.

On the throne of the fantasy empire he installs the famous Victorian painter and novelist William Morris. In Carter's story this man becomes the Allfather of Modern Fantasy, the founder of the great tradition. In his footsteps follows the Holy Trinity: Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison and James Branch Cabell. With great joy Carter tells us about the explosive popularity of pre-WWII American pulp magazines and about ingenious aces of these magazines: H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Fletcher Pratt, L. Sprague de Camp and their numerous contemporaries.

Lin Carter treats every author with lovely and fearlessly critical familiarity. But every biography he tries to present in the form of a dramatic tale of epic proportions. If the author lived a happy, fulfilling life, Carter paints him as a triumphant demigod, who descended from heavens to bless us with the fruits of his labors. If the author's life was riddled with unfortunate events, Carter transforms him into an enormous tragic figure, a literary martyr, who overcame pain and suffering for the sake of our amusement.

Carter's passion for fantasy is frighteningly contagious. His love for the art of lord Dunsany, William Hope Hodgson, T. H. White, Evangeline Walton and many, many others is so genuine! He evangelizes Fantasy with unmatched skill. This book is a wonderful gem.

[Aubrey]

From Tor.com:

Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy is a study of the evolution of fantasy fiction, beginning with its earliest predecessors to the work of then contemporary practitioners. Published in June 1973 as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, it is an ambitious title magnificently flawed by the hubris of its author.

The book’s first chapters on the careers of Lord Dunsany, R. A. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, William Morris and other early masters are extremely valuable, providing both biographical information and establishing a timeline for the evolution of fantasy settings from the mundane (earthly kingdoms and lost civilizations) to entirely original secondary worlds. Carter’s strong editorial voice and legendary ego are both at their most subdued during these first chapters. Unfortunately, both are soon enough loosed with disastrous results.

The midsection of the book tackles both the early pulp writers and the works of Carter’s mid-century contemporaries. It is here that Carter begins to shed any presumption of objectivity, sniping at the work of fantasy fiction’s masters with abandon. Robert E. Howard? Messy, at least until Carter and his colleague L. Sprague de Camp “tightened” his fiction up by rewriting and even inventing out of whole-cloth entire stories based on the smallest fragments of the Texas author’s work. Tolkien? All well and good, except for the “mistake” of not inventing gods and a religious hierarchy for Middle Earth. The fiction of Michael Moorcock? “Sloppy.” Naturally, these “problems” never stopped Carter from cribbing from his betters for his own anemic pastiche.

The final third of the book purports to be a look behind the curtain at fantasy world creation, but once again Carter’s ego gets in the way. The section on the creation of imaginary names is especially odious: Carter draws from the work of his contemporaries for examples of poor character and place names (admittedly, some of these are justified) and then has the unbelievable hubris to use his own work as a counter-example of these techniques done correctly. Outrageously enough, one such example given of his own work features a sorcerer with the dubious name “Herpes Zoster.”

Carter closes the book with some talk about swords and sorcery fiction’s future, but detours briefly to decry the work of science fiction’s “New Wave”, finding the movement’s use of fiction to examine contemporary social issues as well as the sentiment that genres should evolve to both be especially worthy of condemnation.

Imaginary Worlds does offer some value to fans of the swords and sorcery boom of the sixties. Carter cites many authors from that period who have now been lost to obscurity: a potential treasure trove for those devoted enough to seek them out at their local paperback exchange. Whether these same fans will still be able to trust Carter’s tastes after finishing this book is another question entirely.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roughly 75% of this book is a history of fantasy/sword and sorcery literature. The other 25% is Carter's advice on writing in the genre. The first larger part of the book was definitely superior to the second smaller part.

Carter is at his best in assessing the late 19th and early to mid-20th century authors and works in the genre of fantasy. He has a real love for the field and he's good at pointing out what makes it great generally, and what's best about it in particular authors and books. He really gives you a desire to go back and dig into the works of William Morris, E. R. Eddison, and Robert E. Howard. Carter also has loads of praise (as well as some critique) of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. As with most works of criticism, Carter's biases and idiosyncrasies show themselves concerning certain authors and works. However, overall, he gives due praise for the shining works in the field.

Concerning Carter's writing advice, though he has past away, and though his books are probably not near as popular as they once were, and given that his advice is dated in some ways (there are current popular fantasy books that break his rules), nevertheless I am sure that there are various things that a new fantasy writer could learn from this section. At the very least it shows what the expectations of the fantasy field were back in the early 1970s.

Carter is NOT a boring writer concerning the history of fantasy literature. For those who are interested in the subject, I highly recommend this work.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Travel back to a time when Lin Carter felt the need to defend L. Sprague de Camp's red-blooded-ness... a time when Tolkein's inexplicable cult following was at it's Led Zeppelin inspiring peak, and Ursula le Guin and Michael Moorcock were newcomers. Once there, be prepared to then simmer in a swamp of fanzine style criticism written in overwrought, anglophile prose... a swamp whose name has too many Zs, Xs and Qs and doesn't sound at all swampy.

This book helped me get through a rough couple of weeks, though, I got to say. And I didn't hate the world-building stuff at the end... I can remember poring over articles in Dragon magazine about how to construct monster languages, some ten years after this book came out. I also think it might be inspiring for people who want to write fantasy but don't think they are good enough. After you read this, you'll be ready to shove your ideas through your typewriter, to paraphrase Lin Carter losing patience with Robert E. Howard. I think the attention he pays to all the pre-Weird Tales novels and the lesser pulp authors in America is also fun. That he doesn't bother to explain their probably awful politics is OK with me, I can check that later in Wikipedia. But I think nowadays, with everybody and their mother gushing about Game of Thrones, it is kind of cool to think back to cats like James Branch Cabell.

[Solomon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A history of the modern fantasy genre from its inception (which Carter takes to be the novels of Morris in the 1890s) to the eve of its commercial success in the early 1970s, written by the Gertrude Stein of genre-fiction. In his introduction, Carter bemoans that fantasy has been "so curiously and so persistently ignored by the historians of literature", and even today there is some truth to this... but if you thought that meant he's about to give you a serious, measured, academic history of the genre, then you thought wrong. This book is opinionated, selective, and downright casual, but Carter's passion for the subject matter is so palpable that you are ready to forgive him almost anything.

The highlight for me was his obvious disdain for the Tolkien phenomenon and what he calls the "fanatic adulation" of Tolkien's admirers. I'm not sure I agree with everything he has to say, but I do admire the courage of his conviction... which is to say he's a b****, and I love him for it. If he was doing Booktube, I'd be smashing subscribe after a catty cavalcade of criticism such as the following:

"In the first place, it must be admitted that Tolkien is not much of an artist when it comes to prose style. He is distinctly mediocre when compared to such brilliant stylists as Dunsany or Cabell or Eddison. Only rarely does his rather pedestrian prose rise to any peak of eloquence or passion or power."

The latter chapters, that deal with the actual 'craft' of writing fantasy, do feel especially dated, but there are still some nuggets here and the chapter on names and naming was especially insightful with its development of 'aptness' as the criteria by which to judge the success of what Carter calls 'neocognomina' (which is probably not a real word, but certainly an apt one).

[Pete Jurchen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this book like a historian. Carter, who was instrumental in getting the hugely influential Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series compiled and edited, claimed this was the first history of the modern Fantasy genre. It’s full of his opinions and asides referencing his own works, which the reader should take with a grain of salt. Yet, his perspective is so valuable. He wrote this book between the publishing of The Lord of the Rings (which in paperback went viral in 1965) and the emergence of the financially-lucrative Tolkien clones starting in the late 70s. He approaches the Fantasy genre as it was prior to it being an established thing, before it was more-or-less codified with D&D. Flaws aside, this is an important and interesting work.

[Muzzlehatch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A companion-piece to the Carter-edited "Ballantine Adult Fantasy" series, this is a must-read for anyone interested in the obscure byways of Anglo-American fantasy from the 19th through the mid-20th centuries. Carter's scholarship lets him down at times and his personal biases are perhaps a bit too obvious, and there's no question that the book is more than a little self-serving as it points the way to much of Carter's own work -- but his enthusiasm and vast knowledge of the field ultimately win out. This may well be the origin of my interest in Lord Dunsany, Arthur Machen, and James Branch Cabell, and it remains a resource that I return to time and again. Out of print I believe, but easy enough to find for under $5 on eBay.

[яσвεят · Rating 3 out of 5]

همیشه دوست داشتم در میان آثار فانتزی علمی تخیلی ژانری که میخونم این چند ساله دید نقادانه به تاریخ سیر پیوست این آثار داشته باشم ، کتاب دنیاهای خیالی یک اثر غیر داستانی ست که از بدو تاریخی که خط میخی به وجود آمده تک تک آثار و نویسندگان فانتزی عصر گذشته را مورد بررسی قرار داده
طبعا امتیاز دهی واقعا میسر نیست چون چیزی نداره که بخوای لذت نبری ازش یا کمبود حس کنی
اما من دو امتیاز فقط به خاطر پانویس های فونت ریز کم میکنم

[Rebecca Huston · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to write science fiction or fantasy, I can not recommend this book highly enough. Mr. Carter explains more about the art of world-building here than just about anyone else -- and how to do it in a believable and creative fashion. Worth it for those chapters alone, along with a look at the evolution of fantasy literature.

[Bert · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I don't necessarily agree with many of his points, Carter makes a book about reading immensely readable, and got me excited to read many of the books he mentions.

[Albert Meier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carter explores the origins of fantasy literature, surveys the current (1970's) fantasy scene, and grapples with some of the skills necessary for solid world building. He defines fantasy literature as stories that take place in fictional worlds created by their authors. While he admits this somewhat arbitrarily excludes science fiction and retelling of myths and legends, it is as good a definition as I have scene for the genre.

His exploration of the roots of this type of story was interesting and insightful. He unearthed names and novels that I look forward to exploring. His covered of the magazine and fantasy boom of the 1930's was also well done.

When he came to the present day (or his present day), it became clear that he knew most of the active or recently active writers personally. That felt like his biggest strength and biggest weakness in this section. The insight not only into what was written, but the how and why, was fascinating. Yet it also felt like listening to a conversation of the "in" crowd. Jokes, personal teasing and praising, seemed to be catered to those in the know more than the general reader.

Finally, his discussion on world building was lackluster. His general comments on names, geography, and so forth were good enough, but instead of expanding these or providing more advice, he quickly began a survey of novels and authors, listing these names as good and true sounds and these as horrible and hackneyed. Same with evocative language. A lot of it felt subjective, which it is, to a degree.

One other note: He is not terribly enamored of Tolkien. That's fine, everyone has their own tastes. But some of his critiques were weak and as a huge Tolkien fan I was a little peeved.

Overall, well worth reading if you want to know about the origins of fantasy literature and the outlook of one write (and editor) of that genre in the 1970's.

[G. Salter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this quite as much as Carter's previous book "Tolkien: A Look Behind the Lord of the Rings" which covers a lot of the same material, but on the whole this book is very good. It provides a historically interesting, although dated and sometimes misguided look at fantasy literature and what defines it, as well as its best practitioners.

[Randy]

The chapters dealing with the history of fantastic literature are very interesting. Almost everything after that is best left unread.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book about fantasy writers and legends in the Tolkien tradition. Pretty good.

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved this history of secondary world fantasy when I was a teen, as it had tons of books and authors I hadn't read or even heard of. Awesome! Now that I've read most of them, it has less punch, obviously. As a history it's not bad, and he makes many good points (I agree with his somewhat admiring but unenthused take on Tolkien, for instance) though some bad ones (holding up Raymond Chandler as an example of someone without any writing style makes me think Carter never read him). I think he does a good job talking about some of the key points for fantasy worldbuilding, from little details that flesh the world out to choosing the right names for things.
The biggest weakness? Well, arguing that early works of myth or religion constitute "fantasy" is a stretch (Milton presumably believed in the Fall of Man so Paradise Lost is more of a historical work, surely). And Carter spends way too much time talking about his own contributions, such as his Conan pastiches (which were ongoing at the time) rather than, say, Andre Norton's Witch World (he mentions her but not much. Flawed, but it would still be useful if I were a fantasy newbie.