Quote:
Originally Posted by Slite
Currently re-reading Lin Carters Callisto series. And it still amazes me how such a blatant plagiarism of E.R. Burroughs Mars-series could possibly be written and published  |
Back in the day, you could do that. Lots of stuff used Burroughs as inspiration, even when he was alive. See Otis Adelbert Kline as a good example.
I knew Lin and his wife Noel, back when. He was an interesting guy, and I always wondered if he were capable of better than the hackwork he normally produced. I suspect it was a case similar to the late Robert Moore Williams, widely considered the preeminent SF hack writer. Williams once commented in a fanzine: "I write what the editors
pay me to write. My work
sells, and I have the royalty statements to prove it! It takes talent to stink 'em up just right!"
We do owe him a debt as the editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, released in the wake of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which introduced E.R. Eddison, William Morris and others to a wider audience.
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Dennis