Manly and John

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Interesting line-up. Blood-’n-guts space opera that typified the second quarter of the 20th Century. Every major magazine is there. Well, except for John Campbell’s Astounding, and Manly Wade Wellman sold to Campbell too.

It’s hardly the kind of list that implies that the author was one of science fiction’s few authentic, legitimate artists…but he was. In ways, Wellman must have felt, back when he was starting out, like a caveman who wants to paint in oils or write a piano concerto: there was simply no outlet for things like the Silver John stories when he broke in, or for many years thereafter. And until there was, he wrote science fiction and mysteries and Westerns and anything else that he could place in the voracious penny-a-word pulps. He even borrowed Edmond Hamilton’s Captain Future long enough to write The Solar Invasion. Along the way he also wrote as Gabriel Barclay (8 stories), Gans T. Field (35 stories), Hampton Wells, Levi Crow, M. W. Wellman, and Will Garth (26 stories).

The first great fantasy magazine of the century (at least, if you will consider Weird Tales to be a horror magazine) was John Campbell’s Unknown, but it wasn’t a market for the Silver John stories. First, it dealt in urban fantasy, which was not what Wellman wanted to tell, and second, it was killed three years after its birth by the World War II paper shortage, and except for one issue in 1948, was never resurrected.

Wellman had to wait for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which began just before the century’s midpoint, to find a home for his fabulous tales of Appalachia, and his singular protagonist, the unforgettable Silver John.

To say that Wellman lived in a literary family is an understatement: his brother, his wife, and his son were all writers too (and good ones). He gave an early hint of what he could do when he found a magazine market that would give him free rein. It was Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and he won the very first Ellery Queen Award for Best Mystery Story in 1946. There was a pretty good field that year; the runner-up was William Faulkner (who, it is said, never quite got over losing to a refugee from the despised pulps.) Then, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Wellman won an Edgar (which was then known as the Mystery Writers of America Award) in 1955, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1956, but that didn’t raise any eyebrows because he’d already been writing the Silver John stories for a few years.

Wellman was born in Angola in 1903. His family returned to America when he was six, and he soon developed an abiding love of the Appalachian area—which didn’t stop him from getting degrees from Wichita and Columbia. He sold his first story, listed above, in 1927, and went full-time freelance in 1930, moving to New York to be nearer his markets. Soon after the end of World War II he moved to North Carolina, where he taught at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and where he would spend the remainder of his life. He also built a cabin close to his very best source material atop Yandro Mountain in the Smokey Mountains; it was named for the monster-covered mountain you’ll encounter in “The Desrick on Yandro.”

We’ve had a lot of science fiction and (especially) fantasy that was rooted in Hindu mythology, and Greek mythology, and Roman mythology, and you-name-it mythology, but until Silver John hit the scene we’d never had any stories rooted in the folklore and mythology of Appalachia—and it was a mythology that played to every one of Wellman’s many strengths.

First there was the music. Wellman loved the folk songs, hymns and ballads of those Southern mountains. He knew them inside-out, knew the men who kept the musical traditions alive, and used many of those songs in his stories, as well as adding some of his own. Silver John is also known as John the Balladeer, for he travels the mountains with his silver-stringed guitar, keeping alive the music and traditions just as his creator did, singing for his supper as Wellman wrote for his own. Many of the songs that appear in the stories can still be heard today, recorded by such notables as the Weavers, the Dixie Ramblers, the Bitterroot Mountain Bluegrass Band, and others.

But there’s a lot more to the stories than just the music. For one thing, there are the creatures drawn from the local folklore, creatures like the Behinder (which is never seen, and always hides behind its victims), the Bammat, and the gardinal, creatures you won’t find anywhere except the mountains that Wellman loved so deeply. Most writers follow H. P. Lovecraft’s lead and explain, in frightened whispers, that their creatures are hideous but indescribable. Not Wellman—or Silver John, if you prefer. The Flat is a carpet with an attitude, the Skim is a cross between a discus and a frisbee, and so on. Lovecraft’s monsters were very New England-ish; Wellman’s are rustic and almost familiar.

And then there’s religion. It’s a very real, very intimate part of the mountain people Wellman wrote about, and it’s a very real part of the stories as well. Parts of the Bible are literal truth in the Silver John stories, and no, it’s not the author preaching; it’s the author using every aspect of mountain life and belief to dramatic advantage—and it’s Silver John drawing the strength from that religion to face up to the devil in his many manifestations.

Let’s not overlook the language, either. A lot of science fiction and fantasy writers make up languages out of whole cloth—and it shows. Some try for foreign dialects by mimicking bad character actors doing the same thing on television. Not Wellman. He had an ear for the dialect of the mountain people, and every single line rings true for it.

Finally there’s Silver John himself, the narrator of these tales, the character who has secured Wellman’s place in our field’s history. Humble, honest, curious, a Korean War veteran, a musician, a singer, a folklorist, a wanderer, a collector of some songs and myths and a creator of others.

I first encountered Silver John in what remains my favorite of his adventures, “Vandy, Vandy.” I immediately set out to find more stories of this remarkable traveler, and in quick order I found (and loved) “One Other,” “Call Me From the Valley,” and “The Derrick on Yandro.”

It was 1963 when Arkham House brought out Who Fears the Devil?, a collection the first eleven Silver John stories. I was 21, a new husband and newer father, and I couldn’t afford it…but I bought it anyway. There were two characters I was bound and determined to collect in any and all forms in which they appeared, and Silver John was one of them. (C. L. Moore’s Northwest Smith was the other. Not a bad daily double.)

The stories were entertaining, familiar in a racial-memory sort of way, and educational (most Americans thought that the Kingston Trio and the Limelighters were doing true-quill folk music back then)…but they were also comforting and uplifting. Silver John has a healthy respect for the devil, but he doesn’t fear him, because he’s got the twin shields of innocence and right (in a religious sense) to protect him. It makes for some very interesting confrontations, never quite terrifying, never ever pedestrian, just stories than somehow feel exactly right.

Ballantine brought out Who Fears the Devil? in a mass market paperback, Wellman kept writing Silver John stories, and eventually Baen Books brought out a much larger collection, John the Balladeer. Wellman wasn’t content to keep Silver John confined to short stories. If you like this collection (and the smart money says you’ll love it), you can also look for Silver John in five novels: The Old Gods Waken, After Dark, The Lost and the Lurking, The Hanging Stones, and The Voice of the Mountain.

And now that I’ve praised the stories and touted you onto the novels, let me tout you off something. Hollywood made a film out of the Silver John stories, done with Hollywood’s usual taste and respect for the material. It is called The Legend of Hillbilly John, and the change from Silver John to Hillbilly John pretty much says it all.

Anyway, there are some brilliant and evocative stories waiting up ahead for you. There’s the one that got it all started (“O Ugly Bird!”), the last story Wellman ever wrote (“Where Did She Wander?”), a couple that have never appeared in any Silver John collection (“Frogfather” and “Sin’s Doorway”), and some that it is not an exaggeration to say have already become classics.

A suggestion: dip into the collection, read one or two a night rather than going through it all in one sitting. Make it last. Let Silver John get to know you as you get to know him. Chances are you won’t meet many more admirable characters in your life—or more interesting ones either.