THONGOR AND THE WIZARD OF LEMURIA

Yeah, Thongor's a different barbarian, technically. This is the first time I've written something not exclusively about Conan on this blog. Sometimes it's fun to look into Conan's descendants: other characters with the epithet "...the Barbarian!"

This first printing is the copy I have.

There's this thing I like to tell my students when I'm teaching writing: stealing is good. Sometimes students get a little silly with this- last year, some students tried to make "Stealing is good" their class yearbook quote, but most of the time it goes over well.

Here's what I mean by that. Plagiarism is bad, but stealing is good. When you're just starting out, "stealing" from our influences is how you develop your own creative skills. I'm sure if you've ever tried your hand at creative writing, you looked back at your draft later and realized you were just ripping off your favorite authors, even if you weren't conscious of it. When I started writing songs with my first band when I was 17, I was completely and totally just ripping off Green Day, Blink-182, and the Misfits, even though I wasn't necessarily trying to. Heck, this blog basically started with me aping Tom Breihan's "The Number Ones" concept but with Conan stories. 

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But I think this is a very important part of someone's development as a writer or artist or musician. When you see a turn of phrase you like from your favorite author, steal it. When you are stuck while writing a song, ask yourself, "How would [musician I really admire] write this?" That's how you become better. Ultimately, you get to a point where you've sort of developed your own voice and you're chasing your own ideas, and you don't have to steal anymore, you just have your influences that you're standing on.

I get the sense that when Lin Carter was writing The Wizard of Lemuria, later retitled Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria, he was kind of still in the stealing phase. That doesn't mean this 1965 novel, which was Carter's first, is terrible or anything, but it does seem that he's wearing his influences on his sleeve a little bit too much. 

Thongor is a powerful barbarian character in a fictional past set several thousand years ago who, in The Wizard of Lemuria, meets Sharajsha of Zaar and attempts to stop an even older race of Dragon Kings from recapturing the earth in a hostile takeover. It's certainly a serviceable-enough sword and sorcery story.

​Carter wouldn't help write any Conan material until about two years after The Wizard of Lemuria would hit shelves, but Carter was obviously a Conan fan already. I kept track of all the suspiciously-similar elements while reading, mostly for my own amusement.

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Conan

Conan is a north-born barbarian outlander from the country of Cimmeria.

Conan's stories are set in a fictional prehistoric epoch taking place several thousand years ago.

Conan is a physically-imposing hulk of a person with a black mane of hair and a dark, tanned face.

Conan swears by the god Crom.

Conan wanders the Hyborian Age, "sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet."

Wizards sometimes use a dream-inducing Black Lotus powder as a drug.

​There is a jungle land called Kush.

Conan naturally distrusts wizards, as do most of his northborn clan.

At one point, Conan fights a man-headed serpent beast.

Thongor

Thongor is a north-born barbarian outlander from the country of Valkarth.

Thongor's ​stories are set in a fictional prehistoric epoch taking place several thousand years ago.

​Thongor is a physically-imposing hulk of a person with a black mane of hair and a dark, tanned face.

Thongor swears by the god Gorm.

​Thongor has spent years wandering in "wars as a vagabond, hired assassin, thief, and now mercenary, he had learned every trick of swordplay with every type of weapon..."


​Wizards sometimes use a dream-inducing Dream Lotus powder as a drug.

​There is a jungle land called Chush.

Thongor naturally distrusts wizards, as do most of his northborn clan.

​At one point, Thongor fights a woman-headed serpent beast.

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Now having read The Wizard of Lemuria, it makes a lot of sense that Carter was easily able to uproot his story "Black Moonlight" and turn it into the Conan tale "The Gem in the Tower" so easily.

I've been digging into Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series recently. In spring I read A Princess of Mars and I'm currently working my way through the second title, The Gods of Mars. It's almost impressive how much The Wizard of Lemuria reads like a John Carter story that Lin Carter shoehorned Conan into. Heck, there are a couple of lines in The Gods of Mars that seem lifted wholesale into Thongor's. John Carter at one point narrates in a moment of desperation, "To think, with me, is to act." Likewise, "For Thongor, to conceive of a plan was to attempt it." I just happened to read those two lines on the same exact day and got deja vu. Lin Carter writes a hell of a lot like Burroughs- a lot more than he writes like Robert E. Howard, and that's something that separates his work a little more from Conan.

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I'm not here to make an hbomberguy-style plagiarism argument or anything (remember, I said up top that I think stealing can be good). I do think it's interesting how Carter developed as a writer. I noted in a couple of my blog posts while creating my Conan chronology that I get the sense that Carter was a better plotter than his Conan writing partner, L. Sprague de Camp, but de Camp was a much better prose writer. He could construct a sentence far better than Carter seemed to be able to do. It seems to me like he got quite a bit better between this novel and when he started writing the Cimmerian. I mean, I really enjoy "Legions of the Dead," "The Thing in the Crypt," "Shadows in the Dark," Conan the Buccaneer, and Conan of the Isles. 

It seems like I'm fairly in line with the common opinion that Thongor is fine. Any time I've read reviews for The Wizard of Lemuria, people seem to shrug their shoulders, note the clear influence of Howard and Burroughs, and move on. I really enjoy Fletcher Vrendenburgh's breakdown of the Thongor books over on Blackgate. I might pick up more of Carter's barbarian if I find the right deal or if I'm bored, but I wouldn't bet money on it. 

At least I can feel a little better about having a Thongor Frazetta painting in my sidebar for the last year now that I've covered one of his books. But let's be real- if you didn't already know that was Thongor and not Conan, would you have noticed?

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