Witches of Appendix N: Lin Carter

 In today's Witches of Appendix N, I want to dive into an author I have not read since my early college days. Back in 1987, I stumbled on a rare (for me at the time) treasure, a used bookstore! I began to hunt down all the books I had wanted to read that my home library did not have. I had not yet discovered that my new university library was the most extensive open-shelf library in the state of Illinois. So armed with my handwritten Appendix N list, and some others, I went on my first adventure. 

I found a Thongor book by Lin Carter and another one edited by him, Flashing Swords #4. I paid something like $2 for both. I read the Thongor book and I wasn't exactly impressed. Ok sure it was pulpy fun, but I think after nearly a decade of hype, I expected more. I don't know what happened to that book, but Flashing Swords #4 I kept and still have. It featured an introduction by Carter, which I found more interesting than his prose, as well as stories by Jack Vance, Poul Anderson, Katherine Kurtz, and Michael Moorcock.

The experience soured me on Carter for a long time. Which is too bad, really, because I was always a fan of Lemuria and tales about it. 

I recently decided to revisit Lin Carter and Lemuria (among other places) to see if his worlds feature any witches. I knew he had evil wizards galore, but I could remember any witches per se.

I am not going to focus on all his works; there is too much, and some of it falls outside of the "Appendix N" definition. So, for me, this means no sci-fi and only fantasy published before 1977. With one notable exception. Well...that and the cover above. But that is the only Lin Carter book I still have. 

Thongor and Lemurian Magic

When we turn to Lin Carter’s Thongor of Lemuria novels, we find a world absolutely steeped in magic, though, interestingly, witches themselves are mostly absent.

The lost continent of Lemuria is filled with sorcerers, necromancers, and cults devoted to dark gods. We have cities like Zaar, ruled by black magicians; the Priests of Yamath, calling upon the Dark Gods with forbidden rites; and the ancient Dragon Kings, reptilian overlords who wield both sorcery and advanced science. There are even the evil druids of Lemuria. Black Druids who try to emulate the Dragon Kings, Yellow Druids, the magician-priests who worship Yamath, and the Red Druids, magician-priests of the God, Slidith.

What’s striking, however, is that named witches or sorceresses are virtually nonexistent in Carter’s original Thongor novels. While plenty of pulp sorcerers fill the landscape, female magic-users are conspicuously rare. The closest we get comes much later, in Thongor and the Witch-Queen of Lemuria by Robert M. Price, written after Carter’s death. My notable exception.

Most of the wizards and other magic-users are evil. One exception is Sharajsha the Great. A mighty wizard of Lemuria and a friend of Thongor. His exploits with Thongor could be where I got the idea for my own "Starsword." 

In short, Lemuria is rich in dark sorcery, but witches, as we think of them, never truly walk its jungles and haunted cities.

Gondwane and Magic

When we move from Lemuria to the last continent of Gondwane, Lin Carter’s World's End series, we enter a far richer landscape for magic and witchcraft. The Thongor books were light on witches, but Gondwane is filled with decadent magicians, ancient traditions, and powerful sorcerers.

In The Enchantress of World's End (1975), we meet Zelmarine, Queen of Red Magic. While Carter never calls her a witch outright, she fully embodies the pulp sorceress archetype: beautiful, dangerous, and wielding real magical power. Zelmarine easily fits the "witch-equivalent" role I’ve seen in many other Appendix N works.

Zelmarine is not just a sorceress; she is also a temptress. So fairly typical of the genre. I do find her interesting in the sense that she is entirely red, skin, hair, eyes, teeth, the lot. She would make for a great witch. But, sadly, that is about all she has to offer us. Like many of Carter's characters, she is not much more than this. 

Gondwane itself teems with magicians, enchanters, and warlocks, far more than Thongor’s Lemuria ever did. Even some that are not 100% evil in nature, our Red Enchantress here. Carter blends elements of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth and Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique with his own brand of pulp world-building, creating a setting where elaborate magical schools and rivalries dominate a decaying world.

It's also worth noting that Carter introduces The Illusionist of Narelon, in The Warrior of World's End (1974), one book earlier. The Illusionist's presence may have contributed to Gygax's inclusion of the Illusionist class in the AD&D Player’s Handbook. At the very least, he reflects the kind of specialist magician that AD&D codifies soon after. Illusion magic was rarely featured in the pulps before this.

The Warrior of World's End (1974) also gave us the Vorpal Blade's use in an Appendix N source, obviously from its previous introduction in  Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. This is not the only thing Carter borrows from Carroll. Some of the names of lands and people seem to come right out of same font of nonsense words as does Jabberwocky. 

The Gondwane books are light and never seem to take themselves very seriously. The characters are less characters and more caricatures. Plus, after a bit, I grew tired of the exceptionally silly names. But hey, kudos to Carter for making his end-of-time world sound alien. 

I *can* see a lot of what is in these books making its way into AD&D and other writings. It could be the recency effect in his reading and writing. 

A good example is Deirdre, the cavalier of "Artifact of Evil," is more or less a grown-up version of Xarda, the "knightrix" of Jemmerdy. Deirdre is likely Gygax's homage to Xarda, either consciously or not. Or maybe both are homages to Red Sonja.

According the experts, Hoi and Jeff at the Appendix N Book Club, Lin Carter was a friend of Gygax's and it is very, very likely there was a lot of cross-pollination between his tales and D&D. 

Conclusion

Revisiting Lin Carter has been a mixed bag, a blend of nostalgia and reevaluation. While I came in search of witches, I found instead a patchwork of pulp sorcery, weird magic, and the unmistakable fingerprints of an author who, despite his flaws, helped shape the genre that shaped my youth. There may not be witches by name in Lemuria or Gondwane, not in the way I hoped, but Carter’s worlds still crackle with the kind of raw, chaotic magic that feels just a few pages away from something I’d drop into a campaign. In the end, it’s not always about what’s printed on the page; sometimes it’s about what might have been, or what could still be, with a little creative license.