Thongor of Lemuria

Uninformed critics have written off the Thongor novels as a bad Conan the Barbarian copy. This really isn’t true. Thongor the character is very much based on Conan, a raw barbarian of the North who cries, “By Gorm!” instead of “By Crom!” but the storylines in which he exists are quite different.  Carter described it accurately as “…in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars, cross-pollinated with Robert E. Howard’s splendid saga of Conan the Cimmerian.” And they do read like Edgar Rice Burroughs had written the Conan stories. Carter, being a writer who doesn’t hide his influences well, also cribs bits and pieces from J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Southey, L. Frank Baum, Doc Savage, Willy Ley, Sir Richard Francis Burton, Alexandre Dumas, Fritz Leiber, C. S. Lewis and William Hope Hodgson.

            What really makes these novels something different is the epic scale of the history of Thongor. Robert E. Howard wrote sporadic episodes from Conan’s life, with little planning and only a hazy outline of his career. Conan does become King of Aquilonia in the only novel, The Hour of the Dragon but his story ends there. Much of the sense of history in Howard’s Hyborian Age comes from fans and pastichers who followed him. And here Thongor and Conan part company. The history of Thongor is a long, fantastic tableaux that begins in the first novel, Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria and runs five novels later to Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus.

            In Wizard of Lemuria (1965) Thongor steals a flying boat from the Sark of Thurdis then goes rolling through a number of adventures including being attacked by dinosaurs, meeting the wizard Sharajsha, saving his best friend Karm Karvus in an arena scene frighteningly similar to one in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, rescues a princess, steals a stone that is made into a sword and finally defeats the Dragon Kings, a Permian survival similar to Robert E. Howard’s Serpent Men. This novel was revised as Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria in 1970. Carter cleaned up some inconsistencies and improved the text.

Thongor of Lemuria (1966) was also revised in 1970 to become Thongor and the Dragon City. This time Thongor and his friends wander through the jungles of Kovia, then get shanghaied to the lost city of Om. While the boys are busy with the vampire king, Xothun, war has broken out between Patanga, Shembis and Thurdis. Thongor saves the day using the weird magnetic devise of the vampire-king, pulling all the weapons from the hands of the attackers. Oddly this machine never appears again in any of the later books.

The title Thongor Against the Gods (1967) refers to Thongor’s campaign against the evil druids who run the cities from behind the scenes. Thongor races after his kidnapped wife only to end up in the dangerous region of the Blue Nomads. He rescues and befriends a deposed king and his son, Shandath, and ultimately must defeat Adamancus, a black sorcerer of Zaar, and discovers that city’s plans to take over the cities of the West.

Thongor and the City of Magicians (1968) sees Thongor kidnapped this time, by invisible enemies. These prove to be the black magicians of Zaar who take him to their city in the East. Shandath the Blue Nomad goes in search of Thongor, finds his way into the city as a slave and rescues Thongor from a terrible rite that will imprison Thongor’s soul to the Lords of Chaos for all eternity. Father Gorm, the all-father of the Nineteen Lemurian Gods, shows up to defeat the demon the Zaarians are raising. Shandath and Thongor are saved from the destruction of Zaar by their friends in the air patrol.

Thongor at the End of Time (1968) is probably the strangest of the Thongor novels. It begins with Thongor dying from a trap by the one remaining Zaarian sorcerer, Mardanax. The king goes through many metaphysical trials as the gods judge him. Meanwhile his son, Thar has been captured by the Pirates of Tarakus. Charn Thovis and the boy escape with the help of the loveable Barim Redbeard. Mardanax has taken over Thongor’s kingdom, but Thongor returns from the dead in time to save everything.

Thongor Fights the Pirates of Tarakus (1970) is a novel largely outside the vaster epic of the first five books. Kashtar, king of the Tarakan pirates, who made a short appearance in the fifth novel, returns with the Gray Magician, Belshathla and his Lamp of Madness. The wizard is not one of the Black Zaarians but a mage who has rediscovered the forbidden Science of Nianga. Karm Karvus is kidnapped and Thongor joins up with Barim Redbeard to save him and then stop an invasion fleet armed with Belshathla’s fog machines. The plot is familiar and adds little to the previous stories.

With Pirates of Tarakus Carter was trying to re-boot the series but he never wrote more than this one new novel. He did have over a dozen more planned. Thongor’s adventures would have seen him battle the Winged Men of Zand, return to his northern homeland and the deserts of Dalakh, the Fire Kingdom, fight Ghost Kings, Beastmen, and venture to the Isle of Monsters. Along with these books, Carter had planned out a series about Thar, Thongor’s son. Robert M. Price, the holder of the Thongor copyrights has written three new Thongor short stories: “The Creature in the Crypt”, “Witch-Queen of Lemuria” and “Mind-Lords of Lemuria”. He is working on the novel Thongor Conquers the Underground World, based on Carter’s plot synopsis. So we may yet get to see more of Thongor’s later adventures.

            This huge storyline makes the Thongor novels much different than the scattered tales of Howard’s Conan. But the epic tales of Thongor did not spring from Lin Carter’s mind. He borrowed large amounts of plot, characters and details from an obscure branch of Indian mythology known as the Puranas. This garbled mythos was reconstructed by Carter into the story found in the first five novels, giving us the flying boat (which later appeared in Arabic folklore as the flying carpet), the wizard Sharajsha, the Dragon Kings, the aerial ambitions of Thurdis, Thongor’s empire, his dealings with the black sorcerers, even the laser weapons of Iothondus. Carter merely dresses it all in the Pulp feel of the 1920-30s Barsoom and Hyboria.

Carter’s portrayal of women in the Thongor novels is dated by present standards. In the coarse of six novels Thongor falls for Sumia, princess of Patanga, eventually marrying her. Sumia is of the damsel-in-distress school, and Thongor does much rescuing of her. By the third novel, Sumia has gained enough personality to almost free herself from Zander Zan, a kidnapper. After that she begins to fade from the stories, busy with childrearing, or having her mind controlled by magic. Carter is writing in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs, who often wrote of women as frail but beautiful creatures, and Robert E. Howard, whose Conan treated them as playthings. Carter does little to improve the roles of women in Sword & Sorcery stories.

            The short stories of Thongor followed the first five novels. More Conan-like than the novels, these stories tell of Thongor’s youth, all predating Thongor and the Wizard of Lemuria. “Black Hawk of Valkarth” (Fantastic Stories, September 1974) is the very first Thongor tale, telling of his revenge on the warriors that wiped out his clan. “Demon of the Snows” (The Year’s Best Fantasy 6, 1980) and “The City in the Jewel” (Fantastic Stories, December 1975) take place in his solitary years as a wandering thief and adventurer. “Keeper of the Emerald Flame” (The Mighty Swordsmen, 1970) and “Black Moonlight” (Fantastic Stories, November 1976) are from Thongor’s days as a caravan raider and then Tarakan pirate. His supporting cast of Chelis and Fulvio are featured in both stories. “Thieves of Zangabal” (The Mighty Barbarians, 1969) tells how Thongor meets Ald Thurmis and they decide to become mercenaries at the end. The plots of these tales are imitative usually featuring a wizard or monster that Thongor must defeat.

            Any series about Lemuria will have some influence from occult writers like Madame Blavasky. Carter is very explicit about how little influence they had on his story. Lemuria was first a geological concept created by Haekel and others to explain the presence of lemurs in Madagascar and India. Thus the name of “Lemur”-ia. Blavatsky grabbed onto the idea, moving Lemuria to the Pacific Ocean and giving it a similar history to Atlantis. Though Carter acknowledges Blavatsky, W. Scott-Elliot, Chuchward and Edgar Cayce, he borrows little from them outside of magical crystals, the Rmoahal race and the idea that Lemuria predates Atlantis and that it will one day sink into the ocean. Carter is first and foremost a fantasy writer and not a theosophist. Of all the novels only Thongor at the End of Time even addresses mystical issues.

            Thongor attracted enough attention in 1973 to warrant Marvel Comics adapting “Thieves of Zangabal” and then the first novel in the comic book, Creatures on the Loose #22 (March 1973) –29 (May 1974). The scripts were written by two science fiction and fantasy writers, George Alec Effinger, and then Gardner F. Fox. The artwork was by Val Mayrick and Vince Colletta. Overall these comics were well done, sticking closely to the original stories. Part way through the series, Thongor’s hair goes from being black to red, perhaps to make him look more like Killraven or less like Conan.

            American World Pictures has a Thongor movie in pre-production. The summary of the story, an adaptation of the first novel, is not encouraging. Cyclops, Living Trees (as opposed to the dead kind), Green Ghosts and Living Ooze, all clutter up the furniture until Thongor must save the beautiful Sumia from becoming the Dragon King’s bride. Let’s hope it never makes it into production.

            Other than the comic and the one film project, Thongor and his friends have remained largely in the hearts of fans alone. No movie series or television shows. No endless number of pastiches like the Conan Franchise. No video games or collector’s cards. Wildside Press has reprinted the novels but it remains to be seen if Robert M. Price and Wildside can bring any new books to fruition. Thongor has faded along with the many other Conan copies of 1966-1976, an explosive decade for the Sword & Sorcery genre. But unlike poorer books from that time, like the entirely forgettable Quest of the Dark Lady by Reade Quinn, Thongor deserves more. Carter created a series that links Mythology and History with Fantasy in a way that we champion in J. R. R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Thongor is a novel delight dressed in familiar attire. These books acted as a bridge for me in my youth, allowing me to travel from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs into other fantastic realms. I thank Lin Carter for that and much more. Long live Thongor!

This article appeared in Apostle of Letters (2005).