>> This problem has noting to do with slime, consult clisp mailing lists,
>> although you probably won't get any help there, since clisp doesn't seem
>> to be actively maintained by anyone.
>
> That's not *entirely* correct, clisp starts fine if I use it manually
> outside of slime.
Lisp is not like C, no portable program should be able to crash the
implementation in such a way. If there's a crash, and no dirty tricks
are performed, then the implementation is to blame

Try clozure cl, it also has better slime support.